It looked like the Washington Nationals had their game against the San Francisco Giants in the bag. The Nats chased Giants pitcher TIm Lincecum out of the game in five innings, they were scoring runs and starter John Lannan was throwing some mean ball. Alas, it was not to be. A late game implosion in the eighth-inning lead to the Nationals eventual defeat in 13-innings 5-4.
With the score 4-0 in the bottom of the seventh, Lannan served up a home run to Aaron Rowand which then sent Lannan out of the game for reliever Todd Coffey in the eighth. With one out, Coffey gave up a single and a double to put two Giants on the bases before manager Jim Riggleman had enough and sent out Sean Burnett.. Burnett has been having a bad season so far and on Monday night his troubles continued as he gave up a two-run, broken bat double to Aubrey Huff to make the score 4-3. Reliever Henry Rodriguez came in next and gave up an RBI single to Nat Scheirholtz to tie the game.
The game went into extra innings and was decided in the thirteenth. With no more pitching options in front of him, Riggleman sent pitcher Craig Stammen to the mound. Stammen, who was just recently called up to the Nats from Syracuse after Doug Slaten went on the DL gave up the game winner on a Freddy Sanchez RBI single.
It is the second night in a row the Nationals have had a game go into extra innings and the second night in a row they've allowed a team to creep back up on them. On Sunday the Arizona Diamondbacks battled back into the game and took the game into extended innings, but the Nationals were able to get the win. That luck did not follow them Monday night.
The Nationals fall to 26-34 on the season.