O’Grady exits with strained right oblique as Marlins go on to lose 3-2 to Nationals

Chris O’Grady was excited to pitch for his first time at Nationals Park. O’Grady had mentioned on twitter that he was looking forward to getting to pitch back where he was in college.

Unfortunately while facing Ryan Zimmerman on his fifteenth pitch O’Grady placed his hands on his knees and grasped the right side of his stomach. After the team trainer rushed into the field and visited Chris, he threw two warm up pitches and signaled to the trainer that he felt alright. Things looked to be going in a positive direction until Daniel Murphy popped out and O’Grady once again showed signs of pain.

The Marlins were forced to replace O’Grady with Odrisamer Despaigne who allowed two runs, the first an RBI single by Matt Wieters and the second a home run by Bryce Harper.

But Despaigne surprised us all with an RBI single to drive in Tomas Telis from second base. Later on in the sixth inning Giancarlo Stanton tied the game with a home run to left-center field off of Max Scherzer to tie his career high for home runs in a single season (37). This puts Stanton two home runs ahead of Aaron Judge.

Junichi Tazawa entered the game for Drew Steckenrider in the seventh and was able to keep the Nationals tied at two. Then, Jarlin Garcia recorded a sub-par outing in the eighth inning after allowing a single from Wilmer Difo who ended up on third base after a sacrifice from Andrew Stevenson and a groundout from Brian Goodwin. Then, Adam Lind entered as a pinch hitter for Brandon Kintzler and hit an RBI single to bring in Difo.

Top of the ninth inning, Miguel Rojas hits for Derek Dietrich and was able to hit a single off of pitcher Sean Doolittle. Telis flied out to center and Mike Aviles flied out to right. Tyler Moore was brought in to pinch hit for Jarlin Garcia and Moore put up quite a battle by taking two balls and two strikes and later fouled off four balls before being struck out.

Needless to say, the Marlins have been red hot in the past couple of days but a team like the Nationals is not easy to beat. The Marlins deserve props for being able to hold on to a 2-2 tie against the best team in the NL East when the starting pitcher was injured in the second inning.

Tomorrow, the Marlins take on the Nationals again as part of a five game series. The starting pitchers will be Vance Worley (5.31) for the Marlins and A.J Cole (4.91) for the Nationals.