The Washington Nationals lost a heart breaker on Monday in Miami to the Florida Marlins. The Marlins got a walk off home run in the bottom of the tenth inning to win the game 6-5. The Nats are now 33-51 this season.
Tim Redding started for the Nats and was less than stellar. Redding went five innings and gave up eight runs and four hits. Although he only threw five innings, Redding needed 111 pitches to get that much work in. Jon Rauch came on in the ninth and threw a scoreless ninth inning. However, he gave up a home run in the tenth inning to Josh Willingham and the game was over. Rauch is now 4-2 this season.
Cristian Guzman, Paul LoDuca and Willie Harris all had two hits for the Nationals. Elijah Dukes and Dmitri Young each hit solo home runs off of Florida starter Ryan Tucker. The offense built leads of 4-3 and 5-4 but the pitching just couldn’t hold the leads. With injuries taking their toll on Washington they had Jesus Flores hit clean up. He struggled and went 0-4.
The Nationals and Marlins will play again on Tuesday night. Hot shot prospect Collin Balester is set to make his Major League debut on the mound. Game time is 7:10pm.