Down by six in the seventh inning, Miami used two home runs to bring the score closer.
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Max Scherzer vs. Tom Koehler in the suddenly more interesting finale tomorrow, 7:10 PM eastern start time. Marlins RHP Jose Fernandez is 7-0 with a 0.99 ERA in his career against Washington. He has a chance to win at least 10 games for the third straight season.
I think it’s fair to hold Fernàndez’s innings pitched against him, but hopefully he can comfort himself with the knowledge that those exterior limitations are literally the only thing holding him back from being a Cy Young front runner.
“We’ve probably given up a couple of his leads”, Mattingly said. “He’s frustrated, we’re all frustrated especially when you’re not scoring runs”.
Dietrich’s hit tied the game before Ichiro Suzuki’s groundball to second scored Justin Bour to make it 4-3 Marlins in the sixth. “It’s impressive. Everybody knows who he is and what he has done in this game”. The former American League Cy Young Award victor has yielded just 10 runs and struck out 48 during that stretch and owns a sterling 11-4 mark with a 3.23 ERA on the road this season. “It wasn’t like a hard drive or anything”.
Stephen Drew smacked a double off the top of the right field fence over Stanton’s head in the first inning before Fernandez retired the next 21 batters.
Wilson Ramos broke through in the top of the eighth with a soft liner to centre and Brian Goodwin followed with a single to right.
Fernandez struck out Danny Espinosa and got pinch-hitter Daniel Murphy to ground out to get out of the jam.
Nationals: LHP Gio Gonzalez (11-10, 4.48) will take the mound on Friday in Pittsburgh against RHP Jameson Tailon (4-4, 3.39) to begin a three-game series against the Pirates in the final road trip of the season. “He’s feeling really good”, Mattingly said.
Nationals: Baker denied a report about Harper dealing with a shoulder injury.
“He’s the epitome of the shutdown inning”, Baker said. Even the pitcher, A.J. Cole, knew it was gone.
“I tried to throw a (Zimmerman) a curve ball there”, Koehler said. Scherzer should have the edge but I don’t expect much from them in the playoffs… He won’t wow you and he’s very unlikely to go deep into his start, but he can get you to the middle innings without it being a blowout. I wasn’t talking about the present. “Nobody knows where it came from because he’s not on the injury report and we treated that already in the past.”.
Marlins: RHP Bryan Morris (lumbar disc herniation) was reinstated from the 60-day DL and was designated for assignment.
Scherzer is 6-0 in his last eight starts and he is 8-1 since the All-Star Break (13 starts).
Urena endured one of his worst starts of the season Saturday at Philadelphia, allowing seven runs on seven hits in just two innings.
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Marlins: RHP Tom Koehler (9-11, 3.96) takes the mound looking for his first win since August 9 against San Francisco.
