Independent voices from the TWT Communities
It didn't take Mattheus long to look around the Nationals' clubhouse this spring and realize that, of the relievers on the team's 40-man roster, there is precisely one who throws with his left hand: Zach Duke.
The Washington Nationals parted ways with left-hander Sean Burnett on Wednesday afternoon when Burnett agreed to a two-year deal with a club option with the Los Angeles Angels.
Even before the Washington Nationals' contingent had arrived at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel on Sunday afternoon, the question was being bandied about by members of the baseball community: What will the Nationals do next?
The Nationals tell us they've started a new tradition here, one of winning. It is difficult to argue with the results. They've won enough to make the playoffs. They hope it isn't another 79 years before it happens again.
Gio Gonzalez might not have done much to aid his Cy Young cause on Thursday night, a nightmarish three-run first inning before five scoreless innings muddling his latest pitching line in the Washington Nationals' 7-3 win over the Philadelphia Phillies. But Michael Morse did more than enough to compensate.
Bryce Harper had his first four-hit game and pinch-hitter Tyler Moore launched a go-ahead homer off R.A. Dickey in the seventh inning to send the Washington Nationals past the punchless New York Mets 5-3 on Tuesday night.
Twenty minutes after the last pitch of their 4-1 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies, no one but team personnel was let in or out as the Washington Nationals' first four-game losing streak since June set in.
On better baseball teams, the collection of odds and ends that makes up a team's bullpen tends to be much greater than the sum of its parts. And we're seeing that now with the Washington Nationals, who all of a sudden are one of the big leagues' "better teams."
Bryce Harper homered his first time up in New York, then hit a tiebreaking single to key a six-run burst in the 10th inning Monday night that sent the Washington Nationals over the Mets 8-2.
The Washington Nationals used Chien-Ming Wang in relief for the first time Friday, summoning him with one out in the fifth when manager Davey Johnson felt it was time to pull the plug on Ross Detwiler's night.
As Henry Rodriguez took the mound at Citizens Bank Park on Monday night, all eyes from the Washington Nationals' dugout and bullpen were on him. The warm-up pitches, they knew, would tell them all they needed to know.
It might be hard, but let's not make World Series reservations just yet for the 12-4 Washington Nationals.
Nationals pitcher Edwin Jackson may have taken the loss, but in the words of manager Davey Johnson, reliever Tom Gorzelanny "took this one on the shin."
The Washington Nationals learned early Monday afternoon that their closer, the man who'd saved 43 games for them in 2011, was going to spend his Tuesday visiting Dr. James Andrews and getting a second opinion on his tender right elbow.
Tyler Clippard remembers it well, the bullpen that birthed his All-Star relief career. It was horrible.
"Anytime you give up six runs in a game, that's a little bit difficult to swallow," Gorzelanny said. "It doesn't matter what the [expletive] the score is. You gave up runs. We were still losing and that's tough. I tried to keep us in the game. It didn't happen."
Tom Gorzelanny can't keep game within reach for Nats in relief →
On Friday night, he told Philadelphia reporters that "hopefully one of these days I won't have to go back and forth."
