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For the Nationals, Unrivaled Results
Orioles starter Bruce Chen pitches better than he has through much of the season but still winds up losing to drop to 0-5 on the year.
(Nick Wass - AP)
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"He's one of those off-speed pitchers you have to be real patient against," Perlozzo said. "We weren't patient enough with him. He's going to make you fish for some stuff."
And he did that best when he was in trouble. With one out in the fourth and runners on first and second, Hernandez came through with a strikeout of Jeff Conine -- one of three for Conine in the game -- and got Nick Markakis to fly out. With the bases loaded and no outs in the fifth, he got a groundball that third baseman Ryan Zimmerman might have been able to throw home had he not bobbled it, allowing a run to score. But Zimmerman recorded an out at third, and Hernandez got a pop-up, and then Marlon Byrd made a diving catch on Javy Lopez's sinking liner to right. Base runners? No problem.
From there, Hernandez retired the last six men he faced, re-setting the Nationals' bullpen for the upcoming series against the Houston Astros. Mike Stanton worked a perfect eighth, and Chad Cordero a scoreless ninth for his fifth save. Everybody else could relax.
"That was a huge help for everybody out there," Cordero said. "When he does that, we know we're going to get the rest we need, get in the rhythm that we all want."
And with that, the Nationals felt in a rhythm for one of the few times all year. In the last month, they had only won consecutive games once. Now, they have three wins in their last four, with a week of home dates still ahead.
They have one hitter, Alfonso Soriano, who is so feared that after he singled twice he was walked intentionally in his next two at-bats. They have another, Vidro, who used two hits to get his average up to .346. And they got the kind of pitching that allows them to forget the missed opportunities in the sixth and the seventh, when they put runners on third with one out and couldn't get a run.
Rivalry? Battle of the Beltways? Interstate 95 Insurrection? Forget all that. The Nationals wanted better baseball over the weekend, and they got it.
"We got three of the last four," Vidro said, smiling. "It definitely feels a lot better."
