Back in the saddle again

Yesterday was the first Nationals home game I've missed all season. Good thing I didn't miss anything. Oh, Stephen Strasburg was shut down, the Nats and Marlins played a game which finished nearly six hours after it was scheduled to begin, Jayson Werth hit a dramatic game-tying home run in the bottom of the ninth and the Nats then won it in the bottom of the 10th? Yup, sounds about right. You step away for one day and everything goes nuts. Thanks to Pete Kerzel for filling in yesterday while I was off running the Tough Mudder. I made it out alive, thankfully, albeit with scratches and scrapes all over my body and a calf cramp which looked like something out of the movie "Alien". Even though muscles which I didn't even know existed are now sore today, I had an absolute blast doing the event with a big group of friends. As we get back to baseball, I've got some notes to pass along on Sean Burnett, who has been out of action since Sept. 3 due to elbow inflammation. Burnett played light catch yesterday and is currently throwing again today. He said yesterday's session went well and assuming he doesn't have any issues today, he plans to throw off a mound tomorrow. The left-handed reliever has been on anti-inflammatories lately, and he says the meds plus nearly a week of rest has helped, although he acknowledges he probably won't be at full strength until the season's over. "They've made it better, that's for sure," he said. "I'm a little stronger, but (it's) September. You're not going to be 100 percent, for sure. But it's better than what it was a week ago, and that's what I'm looking for." As I mentioned a bit ago, both Ryan Zimmerman and Ian Desmond are out of today's lineup, but there's nothing to be concerned about there. Manager Davey Johnson had mentioned a couple days ago that he planned to give Zimmerman a day off today, and Johnson has been trying to find ways to get Steve Lombardozzi in the lineup. By resting Zimmerman and Desmond, he can get Lombardozzi and Chad Tracy some at-bats to try and keep them fresh while also giving two of his regulars a breather after they both played all of yesterday's marathon game.