Nats pitcher Jordan Zimmerman
courtesy of afagen

Jordan Zimmermann became the first pitcher in the National League to reach 19 wins this season on Friday night as he led the Washington Nationals to a 8-0 complete game shutout victory over the Miami Marlins at Nationals Park. Zimmermann was as strong as he’s been all season and threw 107 pitches and 79 strikes. He gave up two hits, walked a batter, and struck out nine.

The Nats bats were relatively quiet leading up to a big sixth inning rally against Marlins right-handed start Jacob Turner. Before Turner gave up a total of seven hits and five runs in five and one-third innings of work, the Nats manged a walk and two singles before exploding in the sixth.

Washington batted around in that sixth inning starting with leadoff man and outfielder Denard Span and ending with an eventual fly out to right field by third baseman Ryan Zimmerman. The Nationals managed seven hits and seven runs that inning. The entire lineup ended up with a hit except shortstop Ian Desmond who grounded out and Zimmermann who reached on a fielder’s choice.

Zimmermann held onto a perfect game until Miami’s right fielder Giancarlo Stanton drew a two-out walk in the fourth. He kept it a one-hitter until leadoff man and second baseman Donovan Solano hit a two-out single in the sixth. But ultimately, the complete game shutout ended up being a two hit game for Miami when left fielder Chris Coghlan hit a two-out single in top of the ninth.

“I’ll tell you, you could tell from the first pitch of the ballgame that Zimm wasn’t gonna be denied,” Manager Davey Johnson said after the game.”He was going right after them. He was throwing hard. His slider was 88/89 […] it was overmatching stuff and in the ninth inning he still bringing it so it was very impressive, well needed for our bullpen.”

“You could tell from the get go that […] he wasn’t gonna turn it over to anybody in the pen, that was pretty obvious,” Johnson said.

The Nationals are still five games back in the second Nationals League Wild Card race.

Rachel Levitin

Rachel moved to DC in the fall of 2005 to study Journalism and Music at American University. When she’s not keeping up with the latest Major League Baseball news, she works on making music as an accomplished singer-songwriter and was even a featured performer/speaker at TEDxDupont Circle in 2012. Rachel has also contributed to The Washington Examiner and MASN Sports’ Nationals Buzz as a guest blogger. See why she loves DC. E-Mail: rachel@welovedc.com.