Nats bats have been silenced by the Braves outstanding pitching. Atlanta won game #2 4-0. Braves are a tough team and are for real. -- Al
I watched parts of that game. Terrifically pitched. Too bad the Mets ran out of pitchers but that is a problem in today's game with all the specialty bullpen pitchers. One inning seems about the limit for most relief pitchers, leaving a team short in the bullpen if a game goes more than 11 or 12 innings. The Cubs got 5 good innings from one guy last night, giving them more options than the Mets. The Nats also went 14 innings and if the game had gone 15, we would have run into the same problem the Mets did, having only so-so pitching options left. Long relief seems to be a mostly lost art in today's bullpen/game. On the upside, Brad, deGrom was lights out. He has been all season. He's got 8 QS in 12 games, a 4-0 record with a 1.49 ERA. With any luck/run support he should have had 9 wins by now. He has gone 7 innings in each of his last 4 starts, allowing only 3 runs total (one in each of 3 games, 0 in the other), and has only 1 win with 3 ND's to show for it. He is having a Cy Young type year but it is being torpedoed by lack of run support. He is flat-out, one of the best pitchers going today. -- AlI don’t know which is worse: the Mets playing terrible offensive baseball yesterday into Sunday morning and losing 7-1 in 14 innings or me watching the whole disgusting thing
Watching the Cubs for the last three games, I really like their team and their bullpen looks really good, especially their closer Bryan Morrow. Of course, anyone looks good against this tepid offense. The Mets bullpen looked really good until they brought in some non-entity named Buddy Baumann. At that point I knew it was over.
Nats couldn't pull off the split. Braves won with a walk-off HR. This one goes against the manager Martinez. Some odd choices in his use of the relief pitchers. Nats lead 2-1 after 6 and were lined up to use their 3 relief aces, Kintzler, Madson, and Doolittle. For some reason Martinez used 'Gopherball' Kelley in the 7th, who promptly lived up to his nickname...score tied. Then in the bottom of the 9th, with Madson and Doolittle still available, Martinez brought in SP Roark on 2 days rest (having started and lost the first game of the series on Thursday), and he promptly gave up a double and the walk-off Hr. Martinez screwed this one up, bad. -- Al
I read his post-game statements. He was not happy with the whole weekend and the way the team is playing, especially the defensive shifts that management is calling. -- Al
Yep. All the defensive shifting in the world becomes null and void when the ball goes over the fence. I'm sure Arrieta was victimized by the juiced ball.:rolleyes2: -- Al