TDIB: Jays 6 Nationals 1

Thursday, June 29 2006 @ 08:35 AM EDT

Contributed by: Gwyn

So this is what good starting pitching is like.

Star of The Game: Let's give some love to Lilly. A Six Inning shutout with six strikeouts and just a couple of walks (one intentional). He looked great last night, and having thrown just 91 pitches when he was pulled was probably good for at least another frame; if Gibby hadn't needed his Scott Downs fix that is.

Unsung Hero: Cat's notes on yesterday's pitchers in his files will presumably just read 'try to play agiants these guys more often'. He was three for five with three RBI and lifted his OPS to .943, which is, scarily, still only good for fifth on the team.

For the Nats: Not much to write home about, they've now dropped seven of the last eight and dropped behind Florida and into a tie with Atlanta for last in the NL East. Frank Robinson had one of those impressive sounding closed-door mettings with his team after the game and said lots of things to the press about stepping-up and soul searching and asking what you can do for the team. Unfortunetaly, becoming a lot more talented, would be the best thing a lot of these guys could do for the team. Ryan Zimmerman has looked pretty good to me the last couple of nights, certainly living up to his billing, and had a couple of hits last night while providing his usual gold glove calibre defence.

Elsewhere in the East: Everybody won. ARod came through in the clutch for the Yankees, belting a twelfth Inning walkoff homer and giving huge numbers of Yankee fans a chance to turn their obsessive navel-gazing attention from Arod's lack of clutch hitting to, oh I don't know, whether he's a 'true Yankee' yet or not or something. Pedro had a rough first return to Boston, just as he did to Montreal, and was roughed up for six runs in three innings, even suffering the ultimate indignity of a Seabass home-run. Baltimore beat the Phillies behind another strong Erik Bedard outing, check out Bedard's numbers for June - he might have started to listening to Leo Mazzone. Tampe bay won the local derby with the Marlins behind four pitchers, including two relief innings from new-boy Jay Seo.

Don't miss: Ten things I didn't know last week. It's bang up to standard again today, with a nice namecheck for Rob.

Today: Halladay goes against Patterson as the Jays go for another sweep. Don't blink or you might miss this one.

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