Mets 3, Nats 2
It was perfectly nice for the Nats to see rookie catcher Wilson Ramos go 2-for-3 with a double and his first career home run. After all, the 23-year-old is expected to be a big part of the future in Washington. And his impressive day came after rookie second baseman Danny Espinosa’s brilliant 4-for-5, six-RBI afternoon on Labor Day.
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But the promise of 2011 is hard to take when you keep losing games. The Nats (60-80) somehow found a way to drop another one on Wednesday when Nick Evans doubled home the go-ahead run in the seventh inning off reliever Sean Burnett. Check out the details here.
That play summed up the afternoon pretty well. Evan slapped line drive after line drive into and over the Washington dugout – once even clipping third-base coach Pat Listach. Then the ball slipped past first baseman Adam Dunn for an RBI double to break a 2-2 tie.
“A right-hand hitter hitting a ball against a left-handed reliever down the first-base line, you might see that two or three times a year,” said a bewildered Nats manager Jim Riggleman. “That’s what he did.”
Burnett had been going away to Evans and finally figured he could take a chance inside. He did. Yet Evans fought off that fastball. Burnett second-guessed himself afterwards, wondering if Evans’ desperate swings maybe required another outside pitch. But how bad a pitch could it have been if the bat broke in two?
“You don’t see too many broken-bat fastballs [inside] go down the first-base line,” Burnett said. “But I guess when you’ve got a lefty on the mound anything can happen…It stinks. [Nats starter] Livan [Hernandez] threw such a good game you don’t want to give up a run there when it also gives him the loss, too. That’s the hardest part.”
Of course, a few runs off R.A. Dickey would have made that play moot. New York’s knuckleballer kept the Nats off balance much of the day. Ramos was the only player to reach base more than once. He had actually caught Dickey when both were in the Minnesota Twins organization. That happened during spring training in 2009.
Ramos said he had a good idea about Dickey’s tendencies and was waiting on his knuckleball. It’s a harder-than-normal version of that pitch that has confused National League hitters since Dickey made his 2010 debut at Nationals Park on May 19. He is now 10-6 with a 2.91 ERA. Ramos said that as a right-handed batter you absolutely can’t try to pull that pitch or its an automatic ground out to third base or short. Instead, he ignored any fastball from Dickey and tried to hit the knuckleball up the middle of the field. On both hits he lined the ball towards left center.
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