The National League East leaders opened the second half of the season with a franchise record, a series sweep and a significant upgrade — exactly how the Nationals wanted to keep their momentum going.
Ryan Zimmerman on Monday set the Nationals’ career home run record with a solo shot and Bryce Harper connected again as Washington powered their way to a 6-1 victory for a four-game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds.
Zimmerman’s 235th career homer moved him ahead of Vladimir Guerrero for the most in Expos and Nationals history.
Photo: AP
Guerrero quickly tweeted his congratulations, saying he does not mind being second.
“It’s special to be in one place your entire career,” said Zimmerman, in his 12th season with the team that made him a first-round draft pick. “You can’t do stuff like this if you’re not in the same place for a long time. So I feel very lucky to have spent my entire career here, honored to have hit more home runs than any Expo or National. It’s cool.”
The Nationals emerged from the All-Star break with an emphatically successful series — 13 homers, including three by Harper, and 35 runs overall by the league’s top offense.
It was their first four-game sweep of the Reds and it left them 6-1 against Cincinnati this season.
The Nationals improved to a season-high 20 games over .500 (56-36) with their ninth victory in 11 games.
The Nationals’ roster got a little better during the series, too.
Washington shored up their weak bullpen by getting relievers Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle from Oakland on Sunday. They were to join the squad in Los Angeles yesterday for the start of a series against the Angels.
“We know we have a good team and we’ve put ourselves in a good spot to start the second half, but we’ve got a ways to go,” Zimmerman said. “Obviously, we acquired two talented guys for the bullpen, and we’ll just try to keep scoring runs so that they can come in and lock the games up.”
Stephen Strasburg (10-3) recovered from his shortest start of the season by fanning 11 in seven innings and allowing four hits, including Eugenio Suarez’s homer.
Strasburg left his previous start — a 13-0 loss to Atlanta on July 8 — after Nick Markakis’ liner deflected off his hip in the third inning.
He allowed only two hits — including an infield single — in his final five innings.
“Your body wants to pretend it’s the off-season,” Strasburg said of the break between starts. “It took a little while to get going.”
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB