The Poor Step-Child’s Big Day

The Orioles’ farm system is bubbling over.  Matt Wieters and Nolan Riemold are taking hold at the major league level and Chris Tillman, Jake Arrietta and Brian Matusz are surging through the upper minors.  Did anyone in the Mid-Atlantic look down the pike to watch the Washington Nationals win three in a row?  The life of the poor step child is a lonely one.

I watched Matusz pitch his first Double-A game in Bowie.  The lanky lefty’s big bender was unhittable.  He struck out 10 in six innings and half of them were hitters left watching the slow stuff float by.

In Yankee Stadium the rumored demise of Manny Acta came and went with the quiet man still in the dugout.  The Nationals lost the first game of the Yankee series predictably enough, leading 3-2 going into the seventh inning when Elijah Dukes misplayed two fly balls into the winning runs and the New York won 5-3.

Then Chien-Ming Wang lost to John Lannan the next night by a 3-2 margin.  Most chalked it up to the “blind squirrel finds a nut” syndrome and Wang’s ongoing struggles.

In the rubber game, the beleaguered Acta cobbled together the best defensive alignment he could manage with Cory Patterson in center and Willie Harris in left.  The results were surprisingly efficient.

Willie Harris robbed A-Rod of a double.  Austin Kearns played two caroms off the wall expertly and threw out Nick Swisher at second base on one of them.  The double play tandem of Guzman and Hernandez turned an athletic double play in the ninth to cut off a rally.  But it was rookie Craig Stammen–barely ranked in the top 30 Washington prospects–who was the story.

Stammen had never won a major league game in his six starts since coming up from Triple-A Syracuse, but he shut out the Yankees for six and a third innings.  The much maligned bullpen completed the 3-0 shutout.

A two-game winning streak was the longest the Nats had known all season, putting together back-to-back wins only four times.  With more of the top AL East teams to come, the odds of building on the wins at Yankee stadium seemed like blind optimism.

But Toronto’s Blue Jays are beat up and without both Roy Halladay or closer-du-jour Scott Downs.  Brian Tallet–taller and lankier than Matusz–has had a surprising season filling in for the numerous injured Toronto starters.   He was very good in the first game against the Nationals, but Jordan Zimmermann, the Nationals very promising rookie was just as good.  The story though was the Nationals bullpen.

Ron Villone, Julian Tavarez, Joe Beimel and Mike MacDougal are providing Washington with something they have not seen all season–a real relief corps.  Their average age is 36, but youth is wasted on the young.

Macdougal saved both games in New York and looked good doing it.  His fastball was touching 97 and he was pounding the strike zone.  Manny Acta was his usual stone-faced self, but inside he was a four-year old at his birthday party.

On Friday night Acta’s wishes came true and maybe a prayer or two were answered as well.  In an eleven inning contest, Acta sent six relievers out after he pulled Jordan Zimmermann.  Not a one of them allowed a run.

The highlight was the eighth inning.  Acta summoned Joel Hanrahan from the pen with one out and the bases loaded.  The score was tied 1-1.  Hanrahan has more hit batters and chucked more wild pitches to the back stop than probably anyone in the majors.  Acta’s faith in Hanrahan seemed lacking in any logic or reason.  His job may well have been on the line with the decision.

Hanrahan got two quiet outs in the eighth and three in the ninth.  Beimel and Colome pitched the tenth and eleventh and in the bottom of that frame the Nationals managed a run on an Adam Dunn single to win.  “Three wins in a row,” a phrase that  rolls off the tongue, salves a wounded pride, and maybe even saves a job or two.

Like the stock market, the Nationals may have finally bottomed out.  Up is a long, long climb for Washington, but many a long march has started in Yankee Stadium.  Mark this day in Washington’s baseball history.  It may be the start of something, or not.