After two solidly pitched and well played games defensively the Nationals came unraveled Sunday falling to the Braves by a score of 11 to 2.
Despite being credited with just 1 error there was actually several flubbed plays defensively that helped put runs on the board for the Braves. Defensively there was definitely a stark difference between what we saw in the first two games and what we saw on Sunday.
What we saw Sunday was poorly thrown relays, missed fly balls that should have been caught and what should have been a routine double play get botched. It was sloppy, ugly and not good baseball.
Of Sunday’s game Nats Mananager, Jim Riggleman said “We just didn’t play good baseball today. We are in the middle of the ballgame. It’s a two-run deficit and it’s hard to explain. It had the feel of a five- or six-run deficit, because we were not playing good baseball.”
Following the game Ryan Zimmerman said “When you have a chance to go out and win a series, we should have played with a little more urgency. The first two games of the season, we played very well. I just think we expect more out of ourselves than we did today. It’s not like we didn’t go out there and try. It’s just, we need to have a little bit more sense of urgency when we have a chance to win a series. We believe we can win the series against every team.”
One encouraging thing did come out of Sunday’s game and that was the season debut of Jordan Zimmermann who went 6 innings and gave up 2 earned runs on 4 hits and 3 walks. In total the Braves scored 3 runs while Zimmermann was in but one was credited to an error. Not a bad out when you consider the fact that the 2 runs he was credited with giving up can be traced back to poorly fielded plays and on top of that he was being squeezed by the ump who was not giving him much room to pitch with on either side of the plate.
It also needs to be noted that poor fielding was not the Nats only undoing Sunday as a large part of the blame falls on the bullpen. Between relief pitchers Gaudin, Coffey and Broderick they gave up 8 runs in 1.2 innings of relief pitching.
up next for the Nats- 7:10 pm game on Tuesday @Marlins… game can be seen on MASN
Add us as a preferred source on Google