Winning Against Odds

If you look at the box score from Wednesday night's game, it looked like just another Nats-like win. A one-run game without a ton of runs and a solid pitching performance from the starter and the pen. Everyone starter besides Jayson Werth got a hit, but that's for another post. If you saw the game, though, frustration probably outweighed excitement until Morse scored on Ramos'

Gorzelanny got through 6 innings of work and was surprisingly pitch efficient (82 pitches) after throwing more than 50 pitches through just 3 innings of work, but it didn't come pretty. There were 3 very, very loud outs to deep centerfield, that would have been home runs in almost any other ballpark in the country. Not to mention the home run that Aramis Ramirez hit in the 6th to center field went as high up the batters eye as Zimm's walk off blast on Opening Day 2008. He just crushed it. Gorzelanny's developed a propensity for giving up home runs and lots of them, and not solo ones.

The real problem wasn't Tom Gorzelanny's home runs, though. It was the Nats ineptitude with runners on base. The offense put 16 runners on base (13 hits, 3 walks) and stranded 11 of them. That's right, they left 11 runners on base, with many of them in scoring position with 1 out or less. When Davey Johnson talked about a laugher the other day, this game would have been a prime candidate. It just didn't happen.

Perhaps the best thing to take from the win was Ryan Zimmerman's breakthrough night. Zimm went 3 for 4 with a towering 2-run home run to left field and a walk. Let's all just hope that Zimm is able to keep doing that, because if his offense takes off, there is absolutely no telling where this team can go from here. They can even win games like that, where they had no business even being in it.