Livan Hernandez pitched seven brilliant innings, holding the Braves scoreless on only four hits and two walks. Hernandez was surprisingly dominant, allowing only one batter to reach second base.
In the midst of this dominance, there was one slight problem: Hernandez pitched another inning, and things didn't go so well in that inning. Someone disguised as Hernandez must have pitched that fourth inning because that person was awful, totally unlike the guy who pitched the other seven innings of the first eight. Whereas Hernandez was sharp and managed to discipline and fool the Braves' lineup, this imposter kept throwing up fat pitches that the Braves crushed. Don't believe us? Look at the stats: the imposter gave up four runs on three hits, two of which were home runs, and a walk. One of those homers was by a guy (Brian McCann) whose OPS this season is only .397. Does that sound like the work of the guy who pitched the other seven innings of the first eight? Certainly not. Maybe Hernandez had to go to the bathroom or make a call when it came time to pitch the fourth.
It didn't help that the Nationals hitters looked like they were in elementary school. Of course, you can't expect much when you're infielders have OPS's of .776 (Wilkerson), .683 (Cruz), .532 (Guzman), and .716 (Castilla). No lineup with that production is going to do consistently well. Why the Nationals don't take some chances on players like Ryan Zimmerman and Rick Short is beyond us. They're already here with the big club so why not play them? What do we have to lose? It's not like we'd be benching Albert Pujols and Barry Bonds.
Anyway, we'll know later today what this loss does to the standings, but it sure would've been nice to skip that fourth inning!
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