‘9TH_1891’
courtesy of ‘MissChatter’

First off, for all the weary readers out there — I know there are typos in the headline and no, they’re not a mistake. I got the idea from a tweet issued last night during the game.

The joke’s on whoever screwed up the printing of these two team’s game day jerseys — the Natinals incident occurred last April and the San Francicso snafu this April. But joke headlines aside, last night was quite the game.

For those of you who didn’t catch the Nationals west coast contest against the San Francisco Giants last night, it can be summed up into very few words — they made a mockery of veteran pitcher and Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum.

Washington is now 24-23, a feat that wasn’t reached until the club won it’s 24th game of the year last July 4, having pounded the Giants’ ace in a 7-3 victory.

In the guy’s defense, he was by no means on top of his game. That mixed with the Nats patience at the plate set a steady pace of running Lincecum ragged by running up his pitch count (he threw 96 pitches in 4 2/3 innings). SS Ian Desmond even went as far as to say the team started noticing some problems in Lincecum’s curve ball early in the game in addition to the fact he was leaving his fastball up in the hitting zone, according to MLB.com’s Bill Ladson.

This is when the Nats bats got smart.

Adam Kennedy, Josh Willingham and Desmond had RBI hits in a destructive third that started what would eventually become a win for the Nats after nine innings of baseball.

Lincecum ended up allowing six runs on six hits. He left last night’s game metaphorically scratching his noggin thinking, “Well, what happened here?”

I can’t speak for Lincecum because I am by no means a Major League Baseball pitcher and Cy Young award winner. What I can speak to is that the Nats Luis Atilano, who has only pitched seven games, threw just fine against a fourth place NL West team, lasting 5 1/3 innings and giving up two runs on four hits.

The Nationals continue their series with the Giants today at 3:45 eastern time with Craig Stammen (1-2, 5.96) on the mound versus Barry Zito (6-2, 2.80).