Nats 2, Rockies 0
It’s not exactly rarified air. The Nats beat the Rockies on Sunday afternoon – check out our game story here – and hit the .500 mark again as we head into Major League Baseball’s All-Star break. Let’s keep things in perspective. This is a fourth place team that’s about where it deserves to be in the standings. But when an organization routinely loses 90-to-100 games a season for five years in a row this is what we call progress. Just don’t go nuts.
“Not to me it doesn’t. It’s how many you get over .500 that counts,” manager Davey Johnson said when asked if .500 matters to this club at this point in the year. “We’re a young club coming up and trying to establish ourselves as somebody to be reckoned with. And I guess I haven’t been holding up since I’ve been here. I’m under .500. I’m not real proud of that. But I like the direction we’re heading in.”
Jordan Zimmermann posted another quality start. Make it 14 on the season. He pretty much embarrassed Rockies No. 2 hitter Mark Ellis with a wicked slider in the first inning and never really looked back after that.
“My slider was the best it’s ever been,” the normally understated Zimmermann said. “I could throw it wherever and whenever I wanted to. And the fastball was pretty good today. I just kept them off balance and got a key ground out there when I needed it.”
So no surprise that Johnson heard some grumbles when he pulled Zimmermann with one out in the seventh inning. At the time he was sitting on 88 pitches and had recovered from a leadoff single by Todd Helton to get a pop out. The crowd murmured. Even Johnson’s own players wondered what he was doing.
“All of them asked me ‘Why’d you take him out?’ – or something like that,” Johnson said. “Maybe they didn’t ask me in that form.”
But Johnson knows Zimmermann only has a few innings left in him this year. It was a hot day at Nationals Park – the game-time temperature was 88 degrees with little breeze – and he’d labored a bit during a 20-pitch sixth inning. Johnson just wasn’t going to let his young pitcher make a mistake late to cost himself a game. Plus, his bullpen’s been doing the job anyway. In the end it worked out.
As for the second half, Johnson says the organization will roll with Zimmermann until he hits his pre-determined innings limit of about 160. He is at 120 following the win over Colorado. No word on exactly when Zimmermann will start the second half. Livan Hernandez is set for next Friday in Atlanta. After that the rotation is up in the air – though it would make sense to hold Zimmermann for the July 19 game at Houston. That’s the fifth game after the break.
“I’m going right along regular with [Zimmermann],” Johnson said. “I’m not going to treat him like a fifth starter because he’s certainly not a fifth starter. When his turn comes up he’s going to go out there.”
Meanwhile, reliever Tyler Clippard was preparing to fly to Phoenix on a private jet with Rockies All-Star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki. That’s a long flight for what will amount to a batter or two during Tuesday’s game. But Clippard earned his way there. Sunday he notched hold No. 23 on the season when he escaped a two-on, out-out jam with a strikeout of Jason Giambi and a fly out from Ellis. He now has a 1.75 ERA in 41 appearances.
“What I’m most excited about is meeting the other guys from around the league, picking their brains maybe a little bit and getting to know them,” Clippard said of his All-Star goals. “Take in all the festivities and enjoy it as much as I can. You don’t get to do this very many times so I’m going to enjoy the heck out of it.”
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