‘a closer’s windup’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

And on the coldest day at Wrigley Field so far this season Livan Hernandez said, “Let the Nats Win.” And it was so.

Okay, so maybe he didn’t really say that. But it happened.

The Cubs (10-11) spent Tuesday night demonstrating their greatest weakness – a one-dimensional offense relying on the home run – and Jim Riggleman’s Nationals (11-10) reaped all the benefits.

Livan allowed one run on six hits over seven innings, raising his impressive ERA from 0.75 to 0.87, which is still pretty gosh darn impressive. Capps pitched a scoreless ninth, which was also his ninth consecutive save. Long story short: the Nats out-pitched the Cubs.

Yes, that really happened. The Nats out-pitched the Cubs. They even scored a few runs while they were at it, leading the Nats to their eventual 3-1 victory.

Nyjer Morgan lived up to his lead-off man title by tripling to left center in his first at-bat. Ian Desmond singled to bring Morgan home, and Cristian Guzman followed that up with an RBI triple to center. Talk about the top of the line-up getting it done (something the Cubs offense is incapable of doing so far this season on a consistent basis). The Nats had all the runs they would need to win  three batters into the entire game, without Ryan Zimmerman.

With that said, the Nats close the series at Wrigley this afternoon with a 2:20 game time before heading to Florida to face the Marlins.

Luis Atilano (1-0, 1.50) will get the start for the Nats and Ryan Dempster (2-0, 2.60) will take the mound for Chicago.

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.