Nats take the O out of Odalis, give him his first win

The Nats traveled north today to try and end a three game skid by facing the New York Mets at Shea. Things finally went well for the red white and blue, as Odalis Perez helped his own cause going 3 for 3 at the plate en route to the Nats topping the Mets 10-4. On a cold and extremely windy night in New York, play for both teams was far from perfect, however the scrappy Nationals team was able to keep focus the longest and make the fewest amount of mistakes.

It was an important win for the club who has cooled down incredibly in May after a hot second half of April. With the win tonight the Nats moved to 5-5 this month, continuing to succeed in the struggle of becoming a .500 team. The Nationals will make their runs and have their cold streaks, but I think a great goal for this club would be to finish at 82-82. The ability to win the gut check games like tonight shows mentally the team is strong enough to hopefully reach that goal.

Odalis Perez does it all

“We might take the O out of Odalis tonight,” Don Sutton.

In his last outing The Nats Blog blasted Odalis Perez for his unfocused play. He had mental lapses in the field, at the bat, and on the mound. Odalis more then made up for it tonight. On a night where an unfocused starter would destroy a teams chances to win, Perez locked in and did everything he could to minimize inevitable mistakes and control the pace of the game. Perez went 6 1/3rd innings and allowed 4 earned runs. He let up 11 hits but only walked two and was able to keep the many Mets base runners from scoring.

Odalis earned his long overdue first win of the year tonight, and he did everything in his power to do so. Perez helped the Nats out by leading the team in hits, going 3-3 with 2 RBI’s, a vast improvement from a guy who struggled getting a sacrifice bunt down in his last start. All I can say is this win was a long time coming, Perez had led the Nats in quality starts this season and couldn’t get any run support. He got plenty tonight.

Jesus loves the majors

When the Nats took Flores from the Mets in the Rule 5 Draft, few expected him to stay in Washington. Flores was a young catcher who didn’t have much experience in the minors, and many believed he wasn’t ready to spend a whole year in the big leagues which he would be required to by Rule 5 Draft regulations. Flores however exceeded expectations in 2006, starting 42 games and playing very solid defense for an oft injured Brian Schneider. After weathering the year in the majors he was officially a member of the Washington Nationals for good, and the Nats planned to stick him in triple A to let the kid develop into a future star.

Things didn’t quite go as planned. After acquiring several new veteran catchers to fill the back up and starting roles on the big league club, they did what 30 year old catchers do, get hurt. Flores was forced to start the season in the majors and excelled. He was playing to stay in the majors, and was playing at a level to deserve it. Sadly as the politics of baseball go, when Lo Duca and Estrada got healthy Flores was demoted to Columbus. While the reason isn’t clear, the catcher who was hitting well over .300 in the majors was only hitting .180 in the minors. Was it an attitude problem? Was it apathy? No one knew.

However with injuries to the Nats old catchers again Flores found himself starting tonight at Shea stadium and started to produce like Major League Jesus and not Triple A Jesus. Tonight he went 1-3 with 2 runs and 2 RBI’s en route to helping the Nats win. He also threw out a stealing Jose Reyes who actually had a great break off of Odalis Perez. Does this mean he needs to stay in the majors? No, its just one game, but it does mean the Nats front office should take a deeper look at his level of development before shipping him back to the Midwest anytime soon.

GUZMAN WATCH

Cristian did not have a good game tonight. He did however smack a meaningless double in the top of the 8th to stop an 0-6 night. This doesn’t really matter for our purposes as most of Guzman’s stats are meaningless. He did however have a good play in the field after Zimmerman speared a line drive into the air, which Guzman fielded and was able to get to first before the runner could reach the bag. Meaningless hits and highlights, the key ingredients to trade bait!!!