PHILADELPHIA - His right knee still sore after getting struck by a fastball Monday night, Bryce Harper is out of the Nationals lineup for tonight's game against the Phillies, and it's possible the reigning NL MVP will miss the remainder of this series.
Harper, who was diagnosed Monday with a contusion, was wearing a sleeve over the knee this afternoon and was still moving gingerly around the visiting clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park. Though he doesn't believe the injury is serious, he does...
PHILADELPHIA - Let's get right down to it, because this is what you really want to know: Bryce Harper is not in the Nationals lineup tonight.
That's not a huge surprise after Harper took a fastball off the outside of his right knee in the seventh inning last night, ultimately departing after trying to run the bases. Though he officially was diagnosed with a contusion, the 23-year-old slugger was still in some obvious pain postgame, walking gingerly around the clubhouse. Nobody believes the...
PHILADELPHIA - Daniel Murphy was the main topic of discussion last night, considering he went 3-for-4 with a homer, drove in the game-winning runs in the Nationals' 4-3 victory over the Phillies and raised his MLB-leading batting average to .395.
But Murphy never would have been in position to win the game if not for an equally important at-bat by Jayson Werth a few minutes earlier, so let's give the 37-year-old left fielder his due as well.
With two outs, two on and the Nationals still...
PHILADELPHIA - Daniel Murphy isn't going to do this the entire season. It's just not possible in this day and age to do what only a handful have come close to doing in the 75 years since Ted Williams last broke the .400 barrier.
But Memorial Day has now come and gone, and Murphy still owns a .395 batting average, so why shouldn't the Nationals enjoy every moment of this remarkable run? Especially on nights like this, when Murphy not only produces but produces in big spots to help lift his...
PHILADELPHIA - The Nationals lost Bryce Harper to an apparent right knee injury. They refused to also lose another game to the Phillies.
Harper's seventh-inning departure shortly after taking a pitch off the outside of the knee cast a pall over this Memorial Day series opener at Citizens Bank Park. But thanks to a furious rally by his teammates, most notably Jayson Werth and Daniel Murphy, the Nationals turned what would have been a demoralizing loss into an impressive, come-from-behind, 4-3...
PHILADELPHIA - Bryce Harper was forced out of tonight's game against the Phillies after taking a seventh-inning pitch from Jeremy Hellickson off his right knee, but the Nationals MVP slugger appears to have avoided serious injury and may not have to sit out more than a day or two to recover.
"It hurts," Harper said, limping slightly around the clubhouse following the Nats' 4-3 victory. "Whenever you get squared up like that, definitely something that didn't feel good. I think we'll...
PHILADELPHIA - The Nationals have had all kinds of trouble producing against the Phillies over the last month. But at least they can count on their most reliable offensive threat to deliver for them, no matter the opponent.
Daniel Murphy has provided all of the Nats' offense so far tonight at Citizens Bank Park, doubling in the top of the second and then homering in the top of the fourth, knotting up this series opener at 1-1.
Murphy drove Jeremy Hellickson's 0-1 pitch over the out-of-town...
PHILADELPHIA - If ever there was a road trip tailor-made to break Bryce Harper out of his slump, this might well be it.
The Nationals open a three-game series tonight at Citizens Bank Park, a hitter's haven that has been awfully kind to Harper of late. Then they head to Cincinnati, home of the bandbox otherwise known as Great American Ball Park and the worst pitching staff in the majors.
Perhaps this is the week Harper gets himself back on track after a difficult month that has made his...
PHILADELPHIA - Hello from Citizens Bank Park, where tonight the Nationals open a three-city, nine-game road trip with a Memorial Day opener against the Phillies. This, of course, is the same Philly club that shockingly swept the Nats last month in D.C., but it's not exactly playing like the same club. After winning a bunch of one-run games early in the year, the Phillies have now lost seven of their last nine games and desperately are trying to maintain a winning record.
The Nationals will try...
Wilson Ramos was playing with his 20-month-old daughter Saturday night, impressed with her ability to operate an iPad. Somehow, she managed to change the cartoon she was watching into a video clip of a certain Nationals catcher hitting a home run at Wrigley Field earlier this month.
"For some reason, she was pointing it out and saying: 'Daddy! Daddy!' " Ramos said through interpreter Octavio Martinez. "Kind of like saying: 'This is you.' For whatever reason today, I took that same...
Different players approach days off in different ways. Some like to take a full mental and physical break, and just watch the game from the dugout, available only in case of emergency. Others like to take the opportunity to work on something, maybe find what has been missing from their swing that perhaps provoked the day off.
Jayson Werth has taken both approaches during his career, preferring rest when he's physically ailing but wanting to tinker when he's healthy and perhaps struggling.
So...
The Nationals have nearly been no-hit by Michael Wacha before. They certainly didn't want to find themselves in that same boat today, so it's safe to say they breathed a sigh of relief when Michael A. Taylor broke up the right-hander's shot at history before things started to get too serious.
And then it's safe to say they were downright giddy when Taylor's double in the bottom of the fourth set the table for a three-run rally that has given them a 3-1 lead.
Taylor's leadoff double...
Matt Belisle believes he's ready to come off the disabled list and rejoin the Nationals bullpen. The club, however, wants the veteran right-hander to continue his rehab assignment. So after three appearances at high Single-A Potomac, Belisle is now expected to head to Double-A Harrisburg.
Belisle, out since April 26 with a strained right calf, pitched two innings last night for Potomac, allowing two runs on four hits (one of them a homer). He also struck out three. That came after two...
Since the Nationals have lost only three series this season, this isn't a familiar position for them today, needing to beat the Cardinals to salvage a four-game split and avoid a 2-5 homestand. So there's a little bit of pressure on them this afternoon after back-to-back losses.
The good news: Stephen Strasburg is pitching for the Nats, and he has been fantastic, with eight quality starts in 10 tries this season. In seven of those starts, he has allowed two or fewer earned runs. Five times he...
It wasn't the prettiest hit he's recorded all season, and it probably should have been caught by Cardinals right fielder Stephen Piscotty, but Daniel Murphy won't complain about the second-inning single last night that gave him a new Nationals club record.
That single, which came on a blooper to shallow right field that went in and out of a diving Piscotty's glove, was Murphy's 41st hit of May. And that's more hits than any player in Nationals history has ever recorded in a single...
Pitchers can live with the hits they surrender, even the home runs. What they can't live with are the walks they issue that drive up their pitch count and prevent them from reaching the game's latter innings.
So when Gio Gonzalez was upset with himself following the Nationals' 9-4 loss to the Cardinals tonight, it wasn't so much because of the six runs he surrendered via a flurry of two-out hits (including one by opposing pitcher Adam Wainwright). It was because he couldn't even complete...
As he walked off the mound following a dominant top of the first, having struck out all three batters he faced on 15 pitches, Gio Gonzalez had the look of a pitcher primed for a big night.
As he walked off the same mound following a disastrous top of the second, having allowed four runs on 40 pitches, Gonzalez had the look of a pitcher primed for a long night.
Suffice it to say that things escalated quickly here at Nationals Park, where the Cardinals lead 5-2. The Cardinals rocked Gonzalez...
Dusty Baker likes to plan days off for his regulars well in advance, giving them plenty of time to prepare. So there was nothing unusual about Baker's conversation with Anthony Rendon at the start of the week, during which the Nationals manager told his third baseman he'd be getting Saturday night off.
"I told him Monday or Tuesday. I told him he'd be off Saturday," Baker said. "So I said: 'Give me all you've got until your day off on Saturday.' And he did."
Did he ever. Rendon has...
It's a hot, muggy Saturday here in the District, as sure a sign as we've experienced yet that summer has arrived. Which, the Nationals can only hope, means the ball is going to fly out of the park tonight. Dusty Baker has insisted all along he thinks he's got a warm-weather lineup. We saw it earlier in the week when the Nats hit five homers on another warm night. We'll see if it holds true tonight.
That Nationals lineup will be facing an ace in Adam Wainwright, though this isn't the...
Max Scherzer likes to try to disrupt the timing of opposing batters and baserunners. He's perfectly content to hold the ball in the set position for three, four, even five seconds, hoping to catch somebody napping.
Because of that, Scherzer has become quite accustomed to the opposition calling for time, stepping out of the box and hitting the reset button. And he takes no issue with any batter who does that.
He did, however, take exception with plate umpire Alan Porter's decision twice during...