Saturday/Sunday Nats wrap-up OR Altitude sickness

The Washington Nationals dropped both the Saturday night game (5-1) and Sunday afternoon game (10-5) to the Colorado Rockies, in Denver. Neither Tim Redding (Saturday) nor Joel Hanrahan could contain the Rockies batters.

Neither game was particularly compelling, if you're a Nationals fan, so I thought that I'd give an abbreviated account of both.

The Saturday game was more fun for me, personally, because I got to watch it from the comfy confines of Miss Chatter's backyard as we and several friends enjoyed "baseball on the barn". William Yurasko was there with his wife, as was D.C. Sportschick with her boyfriend husband. Despite a little rain (less than the folks who went to the Redskins-Ravens pre-season game got, apparently) a good time was had by all. Miss Chatter whipped up some excellent picnic food, including burgers and hot dogs on the grill. Yours truly brought some stadium-issue 16 oz. aluminum Budweiser and Bud Light bottles, and Mr. Yurasko brought the Beefeater and Schweppes tonic. Too bad we had more fun than the Nats did.

I suppose that, after the "Friday night massacre" of that terrible 9th inning, some of the enthusiasm for this road trip was knocked right out of me.

The highlight of the Saturday game was watching reliever Chris Schroeder work 3 innings and strike out 5 batters.

Ryan Report: Zimmerman went 0 for 4. Austin Ryan Kearns went 2 for 3 with a walk.

Here's the boxscore, if you are so inclined: http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/news/boxscore.jsp?gid=2007_08_25_wasmlb_colmlb_1&c_id=was

Here I had hopes, too, that somehow Rockies reliever Jorge Julio would come to our rescue and give up some runs, but it was not to be. It would appear that Rockie's pitching coach Bob Apodaca has worked with Julio to correct his error-prone ways. Well, that just takes all of the fun out of seeing him come in for a relief appearance for me. As soon as I saw him on the mound, I perked up and got my hopes going. Alas, he allowed no runs.

The Sunday game, like the Saturday game, began with the Nats scoring first. Unhappily, Joel Hanrahan had a terrible outing. He simply couldn't get anyone out. It wasn't any fun to watch. The Nats lost 10-5 and it wasn't ever really close after the 2nd inning.

Ryan Report: I was very relieved to see Ryan Church back in the lineup, having sat out the past 2 nights to allow Wily Mo Peña some playing time. It has had me greatly worried, since I believe that Ryan Church isn't ideally suited for coming off the bench, and I'm concerned that the team might get TOO used to playing without him. He only went 1 for 4, but that 1 was a 2-run homer that sparked the Nats back to life a little bit. Zimmerman went 1 for 3 with a 2-out homer. Austin Ryan Kearns had another good day, going 2 for 4 with 2 R.B.I.'s

For the morbidly curious: http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/news/boxscore.jsp?gid=2007_08_26_wasmlb_colmlb_1&c_id=was

Yeah, I'm not sorry to see the last of Coors Field for the year. Perhaps they'll have better luck against the Dodgers.