Stephen Strasburg: Exceeding Exceptional Expectations

It's the top of the 7th inning. The crowd has been standing for a few minutes now. The cheers are booming; the crowd in awe. All eyes are on every single pitch. A spontaneous "Let's Go Nats" chant starts in the upper deck and makes its way around the entire park. The Blackberry's are put away; cameras are flashing. This playoff atmosphere wasn't for the playoffs at all. It was for the Washington Nationals who were 4 games below .500 entering Tuesday night, and the kid who has lived up to exceeded every unreasonably outrageous expectation: Stephen Strasburg.

Everyone knows about the outing by Strasburg by now, but it's worth repeating. Strasburg pitched 7 innings of 4 hit, 2 run baseball. Oh and he didn't walk a single batter. Oh, and he struck out 14 Pirates. You may be saying to yourself, wow, when's the last time a pitcher did that in his debut? The answer: 1971 when J.R. Richard struck out 15 for the Houston Astros. Yea, 29 years ago.

Strasburg did his 7 innings of work on 94 pitches. The last time someone got 14 strikeouts on less than 96 pitches? Never. In the history of Major League Baseball. Never ever. (Thanks to @AdamKilgoreWP for the stat.)

Strasburg's first strikeout of the night was against Lastings Milledge on 3 pitches. The die hard Nats fans ate it up. The crowd erupted. After Strasburg gave up a 2 run home run to Delwyn Young in the 4th inning, he retired the next 10 batters in a row. 8 of those 10 batters were struck out. Delwyn Young's home run came on a Strasburg change up after he threw two in succession.

In the 7th inning, Young was Strasburg's 13th strikeout victim of the game. On 3 fastballs. 98 mph. 98 mph. 99 mph. He learned from that mistake. After the game, Pittsburgh's Ronny Cedeño said, "His change-up is like 89-90-91 miles an hour, man. That's hard to hit." That it is, Ronny. Especially after seeing a 99 mph fastball.

And then, there was the offensive comeback. The Nationals heart of the order was just that. Zimmerman, Dunn, and Willingham all had home runs, with Dunn and Willingham's back-to-back in the 6th to shoot the Nats ahead of the Bucks 4-2.

Washington never looked back, scoring another run in the bottom of the 8th. The Nats Clipp'd n Saved for Stephen Strasburg's first career win and Capps' 19th save on the season. A comeback that Capps desperately needed after blowing 3 of his last 4 save chances.

As a lifelong baseball fan, I have never been to a game that was so exciting with such an electric crowd. It is a game that not only Nationals fans, but baseball fans, will remember forever. Strasburg summed it up perfectly himself on MLB Network last night after the game. After he got 3 shaving cream pies to the face, he was asked if the cream stung. His response: "A little bit, but it's the greatest feeling in the world." For us, too, Stephen.

Nats Take Game 1 from NL-leading Padres

Well, after a weird start to Game 1 against San Diego, John Lannan had a great outing for a 5-3 win. When Padres Manager Bud Black submitted his lineup card on Friday evening, he listed Adam Russell as the starting pitcher. The problem with that? Well Adam Russell had just been sent down to AAA Portland earlier in the day. It was Clayton Richard who was supposed to get the start. The Nats officially protested the game; the umpires accepted, which meant if the Nats had lost, the league would have reviewed the game.

It wasn't a problem though, largely because of a 7 inning outing for the Nats starter Lannan, now 2-2. It was the first time any Nats starter had gone 7 or more innings since May 9th. On Friday, Lannan got 12 ground ball outs on only 88 pitches and 1 earned run. Good old fashioned Lannan ball. The Nats are surely thrilled to have the old-school New Yorker back. The Nats are now 23-0 when leading after 8 innings. That's a stat that you like to see from your team. Here's the breakdown:

The offense was almost non-existent for either team until the top of the 4th when Josh Willingham crushed a 3-run homer to deep center field off Clayton Richard (the actual starter). In the top of the 7th, with Richard still pitching, Ian Desmond went deep to left for his 4th HR on the year. This put the Nats up 4-1, and the Nats never looked back... almost.

In the bottom of the 7th, the first base ump missed a call on what almost became a crucial play in the game. Adam Dunn clearly tagged out Oscar Salazar in a not-so-close play at first. The Nats should have had their first out there. That play translated into a run for San Diego, making the game 4-2.

In the 8th, Clippard came in and looked great. His fastball was dancing all over. The kid needed some time off, which he's gotten lately. Unfortunately, it's because the Nats haven't been winning as many games, but Clippard looks like he's gotten enough rest to be effective here for a bit.

The Nats got a 5th run in the 9th after Adam Dunn laced a double to right center that would have been a home run in basically any other ball park. Adam Kennedy came in to pinch run, got moved over to 3rd, and Ian Desmond laid down a beautiful bunt for hit on a squeeze to score Kennedy, making the lead 5-2. Here's where the game got stressful.

Good ol' Matty Capps came in to attempt a save and looked a bit rattled to start once again, like he did in his first blown save of the game. He let a guy on first to start, and then Desmond, after a great game offensively, had 1 official error early in the game, and a costly non-error error in the 9th going for a spectacular play that got no outs with 2 men on base. Capps then continuously pitched away to Jerry Hairston, Jr. and allowed a slow rolling single, and the bases were loaded with no outs.

After he was put in this situation, Capps started to get squeezed. No strikes anywhere. So then Capps was forced to throw it over the plate for an RBI single, making the game 5-3 with the bases still loaded. Then Capps had to face the very dangerous (and significantly thinner) Matt Stairs. After leaving pitch after pitch up in the zone, Capps throws a breaking ball down the middle of the plate that Stairs just looked at, probably in awe that he had the audacity to throw it, for the 1st out. Then Capps struck out Venable for the 2nd out. To end the game, David Eckstein grounded out to Zimm. A good old fashioned Capps style save. Which he apologized for at the end of the game saying, "I'm sorry to make it interesting." Class act.

One bad note for the game, Maxwell looked terrible once more. He was swinging at bad pitches and never really made solid contact. He was (one more time) sent down to AAA Syracuse to make room for a pitcher, J.D. Martin, who will start today against the Padres in place of the injured Scott Olsen.

Rest for the weary confident

Today is the Washington Nationals first day off in 15 days. Since their last day off, the club has gone 9-6. In this time, the Nats have gotten quality start after quality start from their pitchers, and as you will see in the right column of this blog, 5 of the 8 Silver Elvis Wig winners have been starting pitchers, including 2 for Livan Hernandez already and one for the rookie starter Luis Atilano (2-0 with a 2.25 ERA).

Twenty-two games, or just over 1/10th of the way, into this marathon of a baseball season, your Washington Nationals are 12-10. The current starting rotation has a combined 4.31 ERA, and it is still dropping (Olsen cut his ERA nearly in half in his last outing, although it is still not quite in respectable territory at 6.14). Their combined on base percentage is .317, and that includes all bench players that have played for the Nats this season, excluding pitchers. While that's a bit lower than you'd like, it's not really representative of the quality of baseball this team is playing this season. Let's look at some on the field guys that have contributed most to the club this season. We'll save the pitchers for another off-day.

• Ivan Rodriguez: Pudge has had one of the best years a 38 year old catcher who was, by all accounts, "past his prime" could ask for. He's still batting .400, has a .422 OBP, and is perhaps the main reason for the quality of this young (minus Livan) pitching staff.

• Josh Willingham: The Hammer has worked on a lot of things this off-season, not the least of which are his defense and his batting eye. Willingham has moved himself into the territory of an above acceptable (assonance for the win!) left-fielder. He has a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage this season and even has a double play from left. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, he has started every single game this season. He has had a few circus catches: one against the Cubs and one against the Dodgers at home to basically save the game. As for his batting eye, his OBP is .446 while is batting average is only .286. The man his more accurate at calling balls and strikes than the computer-generated pitch track on MASN.

• Ian Desmond: Ian is a marked fielding upgrade at shortstop from last season. He has 3 throwing errors in 86 opportunities, but all 3 of them were in the first series of the year when he was still working out his nerves. He has exponentially better range than Cristian Guzman had last year and has a gun for an arm. It's amazing to watch him play the position, and he gets better and more confident every single game. (See two diving plays against the Cubs that would have been double plays if it weren't for Guzman's inexperience at 2nd). He has a .710 OPS, and his hitting is getting better as the season goes on. He does need to work at taking more pitches by swinging less at first pitches. This will help get his OBP up from .310.

• Nyjer Morgan: T. Plush has picked up where he left off from last year. He has moved back to sliding head first into 2nd base on steals and is already visibly more comfortable on the bases. His OBP is a solid .372 and has stolen 6 bases on 10 attempts. That percentage will get better as the season goes, as going back to head first slides will certainly increase his efficiency (as long as he doesn't end up hurt because of it). As always, it's just great to have a guy this fast in center field.

• Willie Harris: Willie hasn't been the leading producer at the plate, no doubt about it. His BA is a measly .167, although he does have a passable .311 OBP. Willie's contribution is mostly in the field. He has saved games on multiple occasions with acrobatics on the field. And we're not talking situations where he misplayed the ball and then had to make it up with a crazy catch (see Marlon Byrd: April 28th game. Still a crazy catch by Byrd, however). Harris has caught some line drives that no human being should have been able to make a play on. This type of contribution is keeping the Nats in games late.

• Alberto Gonzalez: Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, the Attorney General is hitting .300 with a .364 OBP after 30 at-bats. I swear, none of those stats were typos. He is hitting and getting on base far more than Adam Kennedy and has proven to be a perfect replacement for Zim while he recovers from his hamstring problems. He has made some routine plays at 3rd, but has also made some Zimmerman like throws and picked some line drives that could have easily been singles to the outfield. He's made a couple errors, but is still sporting a .926 fielding percentage. The AG is having a great year, and is a major reason that the Nats can still compete with injuries to Zimmerman and Harris.

This ballclub, because of the guys I just listed, plus the starting pitching, Clippard, and Capps, are 3rd in the NL East, one game out of 1st, and 3.5 ahead of the last place Braves. The great thing about this season's Nats is that you know they're going to compete in every game, and that, with this kind of start, it is almost impossible to have another 100 loss season. The pitching, fielding, and batting have all come together for perhaps the best season the Nats have had since their remarkable run in 2005. I'm excited to see how it turns out, so stick with me here on Capitol Baseball all season to see how it shakes out.

Game 21 = Defense and Umps

Because of the mid-game blog post, I'll make this post as brief as possible. Today's game was defense all the way (as it must be for a Cubs night game at Wrigley in April). Minus the one throwing error on the double play attempt by Cristian Guzman early in the game, the Nationals not only played flawless defense, they played exciting defense tonight.

When you have a guy like Livan Hernandez on the mount, you know that the defense behind him is going to have to play their best, because he pitches to contact. Well, the Nats did not disappoint. It started early with a diving play by Ian Desmond up the middle to prevent a Fukudome double, then an incredible catch by Alberto at 3rd on a Derek Lee line drive. Then there was another Ian Desmond pick and flip for the double play turn attempt. While it didn't work, on one of many questionable calls by the umps (see below), it was a show of why Desmond is going to be a quality shortstop for years to come. Finally, in the 6th, Willingham, who is much improved defensively, made an extended, leaping catch.

There were three very questionable ump calls on the night. Riggs came out to argue 2 of them.:

• The double play early in the game off of the amazing Ian Desmond turn from short. (Riggs argued).
• Justin Maxwell was called out stealing 2nd in the top of the 7th.
• On the last out of the 7th inning, Gonzalez was called tagged out at first on an errant throw by Theriot. On the replay, he was clearly never tagged by Lee. Clear as day. (Riggs argued this as well).
• A horrible missed strike in the bottom of the 8th with Clippard pitching to Marlon Byrd. This pitch was literally down the middle of the plate on the pitch track. Luckily, it didn't have any effect in the run column, and Tyler got out of the jam.
  

Luckily, the defense was so strong, that even some questionable calls couldn't take the win from the Nats, and they're once again, a game above .500, putting them as W, L, W, L, W, L, W, L, W, L, W over the last 11 games. Let's see if the team can get a second W in a row to get them 2 games above .500 in tomorrow's matinee at Wrigley to end the series.

Livan Hernandez Looks to Continue Domination

Well Livo is back and going for his 3rd win against Hi My Name is... Tom (Gorzelanny). While Gorzelanny is 0-2 and Hernandez is 2-1, it may not be as easy as it looks for the Nats. First, the Nats bats have cooled significantly in the last week or so. And not that they're not getting hits, but they're having trouble capitalizing off of their hits. Second, the Cubbies have gotten hot over the last week, even in the cold Chicago climes. In Gorzelanny's first three starts, his offense gave him almost no run support (although in his second start he left after taking a line drive to the shoulder). The Cubs offense may be ready to do just that.

Hernandez looks to come out and have basically the same type of outing he had last time out against the Rockies. Unfortunately, he pitched against Ubaldo Jimenez, who just came off of a no-no the start before. He was hot. Ideally in this start, he'd rather not give up 2 big flies to lose the game, but at Wrigley Field for a night game early in the season, home runs probably won't be a huge issue. We all saw the driving wind keep in at least 2 home runs last night. Hernandez will continue working to keep is ERA below 1.00, that's right: 1.00, after 4 starts.

The fact of the matter remains: Livan Hernandez looks as good as ever. He has given up 2 runs in 24 innings pitched. It doesn't get any better among starters in the league. He obviously can't keep this type of production going for the entire season, but the longer he can keep this going, the longer the Nats can stay viable until they get some injuries taken care of.

On the injury note, Pudge is back (woot!), but Zimm will remain out, and I would venture a guess he'll be out until the team goes to Florida. However, if the club loses tonight, don't be surprised if Riggs takes his chances on the day game being a bit warmer for Ryan's hurt hammy. The Attorney General gets the start tonight to give Adam Kennedy a night off, only his second of the season.

Note about the lineups to end the post: Both Josh Willingham and Adam Dunn haven't had a day off all season. This is Game 21. At some point, Riggleman will be sure to look for a day off for both of them. However, don't look for it anytime soon as long as the Hammer is still on fire at the plate (1.000 OPS; with team leading 18 BBs) and while Dunn is finally swinging a decently hot bat.

1. Tony Plush, 8
2. Ian "We Need to Get This Guy a Nickname" Desmond, 6
3. Guzzie, 4
4. Big Donkey, 3
5. Hammer, 7
6. Pudge, 2
7. J. Max, 9
8. The Attorney General, 5
9. Livo "I Swear I'm 35" Hernandez, 1