Photo by Keith Allison

It was his first day back in a Major League line-up for the first time in 44 games, but that didn’t keep Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos from leading his time to an 8-5 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers on Independence Day in the Washington.

Ramos (3-for-4) tallied his first hit since May 15 early on in the fourth inning before coming up big with a three-run homerun in the seventh to give the Nats back the lead and help his team win the Fourth of July match-up. The game marked a career-high 5-RBI day for Ramos.

Manager Davey Johnson made a few minor adjustments to the line-up for this particular match-up, swapping Jayson Werth and Ian Desmond in the order, which ended up working out for everyone. With Desmond hitting second and Werth hitting sixth, the pair had six hits, drew two walks, and struck out just once against Brewers starter Donovan Hand.

Rookie start right-handed pitcher Taylor Jordan made his second big league appearance in the afternoon’s game and threw 5 1/3 innings on 85 pitches, 60 strikes, while giving up six hits, two earned runs, and striking out three. Johnson was pleased with what he saw from Jordan and only wished that the team could’ve maintained their lead with him in the game in order to keep him from the no decision he ended up with.

Jordan had a slightly rocky start to the game having hit the second batter he faced with one out in the top of the first inning. That batter, shortstop Jean Segura, ended up stealing second base before scoring on a RBI-single hit by catcher Jonathan Locroy.

Washington retaliated in the bottom half of that frame to take an early 2-1 lead thanks to a pair of back-to-back RBI-singles hit by first baseman Adam LaRoche and Werth. Desmond tacked on a third run to give the Nats a 3-1 lead in the third inning on a sacrifice fly hit by third baseman Ryan Zimmerman to outfielder Carlos Gomez in center field.

Milwaukee kept it close by scoring another run in the sixth inning off Jordan but then really blew it open when right-handed reliever Drew Storen entered the game in the seventh. Storen gave up three hits, three runs, and two homeruns in one inning of work allowing the Brewers to tie up the game 5-5.

Ramos’ bout of heroism in the seventh erased Storen’s work, though. His three-run homerun gave Washington an 8-5 lead that they were able to maintain with a couple of innings pitched by righties Tyler Clippard and Rafael Soriano.

Despite Storen’s poor performance, he was still charged with the win and is now 3-2 for the season … all thanks to Ramos’ big day back.