Jordan Zimmermann has been so good over the past month or so that a night like last night, where he allows six runs in just five innings of work, feels like a real disappointment. If you felt that way, you weren't the only one. Nationals manager Davey Johnson was a little bummed about it too. But according to Ben Goessling of MASN, he was more upset about how Zimmermann handled the little things.
The thing that bothered me the most that whole ball game, I'm not one over my whole career with good young pitchers, good arms, I've got a couple guys in scoring position, I've got a base open, if he gets ahead of the guy I don't expect him to make bad pitches. I expect him to - the hitter's gotta hit a pitch off the plate and a nasty pitch. He hung a slider right down the middle, it was flat, drove in a run and the squeeze didn't cover first. Those things upset me. I thought he battled and maybe he didn't have his best stuff. But one thing when you got two strikes on a hitter, you don't just give him a cookie.
The real odd thing about these comments is that they came in response to a question about whether or not Zimmermann being hit affected him at all. He went kind of off topic just to spear Zimmermann on his effort. I'm not saying it was unjustified, Zimmermann didn't have his best stuff or effort, but it does seem a bit odd to lampoon him in this fashion.