WASHINGTON, D.C. — They local hype for Stephen Strasburg is over. The Washington Nationals rookie righthander, who had packed them into Nationals Park for nearly two months is no longer much of a gate attraction. A 21,000+ crowd yesterday was confirmation. I was their in attendance with my better-half; she had not seen Strasburg pitch in person yet.
A solo home run to Adam LaRoche put the Arizona Diamondbacks ahead 1-0 in the second inning. Compounding that was a throwing error by Strasburg over the glove of 6’6″ first baseman Adam Dunn. Two unearned runs scored. Strasburg got out of the 2nd without allowing any more damage, but was not as efficient as he has been in the past. Still, after 5 innings, Strasburg had thown about 85 pitches and had 7 strikeouts to show for effort. He also had 3 runs from the Nats offense taking him off the hook for a decision. Ivan Rodriguez had knocked in a run in the bottom of the second and Josh Willingham hit a two-run homer in the 4th. By the way, both times my wife has been to Nationals Park, Willingham has homered.
Things got weird in the bottom of the fifth. A young man in a red shirt entered the field from the third base and pranced around looking for attention. The crowd and 3rd base coach Pat Listach noticed him before security did. He was joined by several others, including a few who tried to spread out a sign, but were unsuccessful. It took a few minutes to apprehend all of the runners and I could not help but think of Yakety Sax as they all ran around. My thoughts were along the lines of “how dare they interfere with Roger Bernadina‘s at-bat like that — have they no decency?” Such shame I never learned what their cause was during their um, demonstration — I could find it and link to it, but I don’t want to encourage that sort of thing.
Actually, they were apparently, protesting Strasburg, who did not come back in after that for some reason. I think that is a weak excuse by Jim Riggleman.
Tyler Clippard relieved Strasburg and pitched two innings. Ian Desmond knocked in Adam Kennedy to put the Nats up 4-3 in the 7th. Ryan Zimmerman added a homer to left to end the scoring at 5-3. Drew Storen retired the side in order in the ninth for his second save.
By the way, leftover curly W pretzels are offered for a donation behind left field after the game. We gave them a dollar each.
OTHER RECAPS
Stephen Strasburg strikes out seven in Nationals’ 5-3 win over Diamondbacks – The Post
Stras solid, but bullpen wins game – Nats Insider
Lastly, I was going to write about the false courage of Rob Dibble re: commentary on women fans, but Capital Punishment finally addressed the most interesting point of the whole thing — Dibble wasn’t talking about baseball either.