Nats come to life late, pick up 3-2 walk-off win

The Nationals made some changes to their roster earlier today. Their offense then changed its M.O. tonight, putting up two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning and turning what could've been another frustrating loss into an uplifting 3-2 walk-off win. Trailing 2-1 going into the bottom of the ninth, the Nats got three straight hits to open the inning and set up Steve Lombardozzi, who delivered a walk-off sac fly to plate Adam LaRoche with the game-winning run. Leading off the ninth, Ryan Zimmerman smoked a double to the gap in right-center and barely beat Rick Ankiel's throw to second. Zimmerman then moved to third on a Bobby Parnell wild pitch and LaRoche followed by singling through the right side to plate Zimmerman with the tying run. Ian Desmond then roped a double to the left-center field gap, and after an intentional walk to Roger Bernadina to load the bases, Lombardozzi got into a nine-pitch battle with Parnell and then lifted a fly ball to left that was deep enough to score LaRoche on the sac fly. The team that has had amazing trouble scoring runs late in games got two of them in the ninth tonight. The Nats were set down in order in five separate frames tonight and had just two at-bats with runners in scoring position prior to the ninth. They also made two errors, one of which - a LaRoche throwing error in the fifth - resulted in two unearned runs. Those were the only two times the Mets crossed home plate against Nats pitching tonight. Jordan Zimmermann worked eight stellar innings, and his ERA fell to 2.16 on the season. He doesn't get stuck with the loss thanks to the late comeback, and the Nats move back to .500 with the win.