Great Day for a Ballgame

• Nationals 4, Rockies 0

For one game at least the Zach Day-Preston Wilson trade worked out even better than the Nationals could have hoped. Behind stellar pitching from John Patterson: 8 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 8K, the Nats cobbled together 2 runs on 7 hits through the first 7 innings to take a 2-0 lead. Then, in the bottom of the 8th, Christmas in July came to RFK.

Zach Day's homecoming was memorable, though perhaps not in the way he intended. After walking leadoff batter Brad Wilkerson on 4 pitches, Day allowed back-to-back-to-back singles to Jose Guillen, Brian Schneider and Preston Wilson to drive in two more runs. The Chief worked out of a two-on, no out jam, and pitched a scoreless 9th for his absolutely ridiculous 33rd save.

Despite much agitation to make Day the Nats Player of the Game, that honor really ought to go to John "Stretch" Patterson, who pitched another gem and was just 3 outs away from a complete game shutout. A mini-cheer also for Goooz, who came off the bench as a defensive replacement and made a nice play to record the final out on a broken bat infield hit.

Now I'm sure Watson & Dave will wax rhapsodic over Frank's brilliant line-up changes that inspired the team and powered them to a much-needed victory. But I'm just going to take a moment to point out that the Nats scored just 4 runs last night, equal to their offensive output in a 5-4 loss on Monday, and also right in line with their season average for runs per game.

Daywatch: Zach's less than inspired outing certainly didn't look good, but I think of it this way; he hasn't pitched well at RFK all season, why would you expect him to do better now?

Dayline for 7/19/05 (ND) - 0 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 0 K (total wins: 0)

Nats NL East lead: 1.5 games