Mets 7, Nats 3
Some brutal honesty was called for after the Nats suffered an ugly 7-3 loss to the New York Mets on Friday night. Not exactly the start you want to a holiday series and a 10-game homestand – especially now that Washington has lost nine of its last 10 games. Michael Morse had an RBI single and Rick Ankiel hit a two-run homer, but the Nats left eight runners on base against New York knuckleballer R.A. Dickey and their own starter, lefty Ross Detwiler, had his worst game of the season. Read the details in our game story here.
“The way we’ve played all year long has been admirable,” Washington manager Davey Johnson said. “But it’s the approach and how we go from here on. We’ve been in a lot of tough games, we haven’t hit like I know we’re capable of hitting. If you look at our production on-base with guys in scoring position, we’re not good. You look at the bench production, we’re not good. Do I think our approach is getting better? Yes. But the results aren’t there yet.”
Detwiler just couldn’t drive the ball into the strike zone. At all. He abandoned his breaking pitches and watched the Mets smack seven hits in just three innings. That led to six earned runs total.
“I didn’t do it at all,” Detwiler said when asked if getting his pitches down was an issue against the Mets. “I think there was one pitch that I threw down in the zone and it got hit on the ground. But when you do that one time in three innings you’re going to get hurt pretty bad.”
A common theme on Friday was how the Nats mix developing their young players this September, setting some of them up to be regular contributors in 2012, and still not accepting losing. That’s not always easy. Johnson said as much before the game and again afterwards. At one point, shortstop Ian Desmond came up in the second inning with runners at second and third. But he got anxious. Instead of laying off Dickey’s knuckleball, Desmond jumped at one up in the zone and flew out to center.
“It’s an admirable attitude, but you’ve got to take what’s there,” Johnson said. “And [Desmond’s] gotten a lot better at that. [Danny Espinosa] has the same tendency, [Wilson] Ramos same way. And I feel they’re learning more about themselves and they’re growing. And that’s what I want to see.”
“These guys are really young playing at this level. And the more you play the more you get exposed,” Nats third baseman Ryan Zimmerman said. “If you can’t do something well the other team finds out really quick. It’s kind of good that these guys are going through that process at such a young age. Not that we don’t go out there and try to win every game, but we’re not in the playoff race right now so for them to get that out of their system now so that next year or the year after that [when we] are right in the thick of things they’ve already been through it.”
In other news, starting pitcher Livan Hernandez will make one more start this season – Sunday against the Mets – and then be shut down. Washington is adding Stephen Strasburg to the rotation starting Tuesday. This move will also allow Tom Milone – making his major-league debut on Saturday against the Mets – to get four starts down the stretch. Brad Peacock, the Eastern League pitcher of the year and the Nats’ top pitching prospect in the upper minors, will likely piggyback onto Strasburg’s starts. That rotation of John Lannan, Chien-Ming Wang, Detwiler, Strasburg/Peacock and Milone would leave one open spot on Sept. 21 – the day after a doubleheader vs. Philadelphia.
Espinosa did not appear in a game for the first time all season. Johnson’s coaching staff told him Espinosa needed a break. It didn’t hurt that he had struggled against Dickey, the crafty knuckleballer. Espinosa even admitted to Johnson that an earlier game against Dickey this season ruined his timing for the rest of a series against the Mets.
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