Washington 3 BALTIMORE 1 (ESPN Boxscore)
I would like to thank the Nationals for defeating the forces of Peter Angelo$ last night to take the season series. The players may not realize the importance of what they just did, but I do. After going on and on about what a vindictive coward Angelo$ is, a season series victory and a sweep in Baltimore is pretty sweet.
Nationals Complete Their 3-Game Sweep of Orioles – The Post
Nats complete sweep of Orioles on the road – The Wash. Times
Last night’s game saw victory #4 for Jason Simontacchi. Although he gave up nine hits and walked four batters, the righty allowed only one run to cross the plate. Jon Rauch got his 11th hold of the season while Chad Cordero got a 1-2-3 ninth for his 10th save.
The Nats scored one run off of Oriole phenom Jeremy Guthrie, a two-out Felipe Lopez double to score Ryan Langerhans. Lopez may be mired in a terrible slump, but with two outs he is hitting .315 this season. In fact, the story of the series was the Nats scoring with two outs.
Ryan Zimmerman knocked in the winning run in the eighth, a single that Cristian Guzman scored from second on. In the ninth, Langerhans doubled home Nook Logan to give the Nats an insurance run.
All the broadsheets on the Nats beat note the progression (The Post) of Matt Chico this season (The Wash. Times). The lefty, who never pitched above AA before this season, is starting to take command of his pitches. He hadn’t been aggressive (The Free Lance-Star) during the first part of the season like he was during spring training. I think his development is the most promising of 2007, so far. May it continue!
Levale Speigner may be coming around too; he started using a new grip on his pitches on Sunday when he beat Johan Santana in Minnesota.
Zimmerman is talking about Father’s Day in The Wash. Examiner this week. Last Father’s Day he hit a walk-off homer to beat the Yankees at RFK.
The Nats are going to be patient (The Free Lance-Star) with prospects like Esmailyn Gonzalez, who makes his Gulf Coast League debut on Tuesday.
The subhead of The Sun’s gamer today says “Swept Orioles lose fifth in a row, sink to level of lowly 29-37 neighbors.” It seems to me that since the two have the same record and Nats beat them 4 out of 6 times, maybe the Nats are not the lowly ones here. Just some food for thought, hon.
Lastly, I am pleased to see that Nats fans didn’t head to Camden Yards en masse, thus denying Angelo$ more Washington welfare. Good job!