Offense goes silent as Lynchburg blanks P-Nats

By Dan Clendaniel For the News & Messenger
Published: July 19, 2008

For two seasons, the Potomac Nationals have licked their chops at the chance to play the Lynchburg Hillcats.
Prior to Saturday night’s game at Pfitzner Stadium before 4,769 fans, Potomac was 9-4 against the Hillcats in 2008 and 23-9 against Lynchburg over the last two seasons.
Six times this season, Potomac has battered the Hillcat pitching staff for at least ten runs in a game, including a 13-5 shellacking of the Pittsburgh affiliate on Friday night.
That all changed last night due to the pitching of Lynchburg’s Tony Watson.
Watson entered the game against the first-place P-Nats with an unimpressive record of 5-9.
But a look behind the numbers showed that Watson, a ninth-round draft selection last year out of the University of Nebraska, had a top ten ERA of 3.63. More impressively, Watson had yielded no more than four hits in any of his last five starts since June 22.
Pitchers in the Carolina League are normally on fairly strict pitch counts. Thus, it was no surprise when Lynchburg manager Jeff Branson lifted the 6-4 Watson following the seventh inning.
All the 23-year old Iowan had done was not allow a single hit to the top hitting team in the league.
“You have to give credit to a pitcher like that [Watson],” said Potomac manager Randy Knorr, whose first-place team is still 1½ games ahead of Lynchburg in the Northern Division.
Watson walked two and struck out eight over 97 pitches in seven innings in the longest outing of his brief professional career.
“I knew it was coming,” said Watson about being lifted after seven innings. “I would have liked to have gone out and finished it but they are trying to develop us down here [in the minors]. My pitch-count limit is usually 95 and I went two pitches over that tonight.“
Kevin Roberts relieved Watson in the eighth inning and quickly gave up a pair of hits to Aaron Seuss and Pat Nichols. But Roberts preserved the shutout as Lynchburg won the series finale, 2-0.
“Tony was unbelievable tonight,” Branson said. “He did a nice job keeping the ball down and keeping their hitters off-balance.
“Any time your pitcher goes that deep and doesn’t give up a hit, it’s a hard decision but you want to save him for later in his career.“
Potomac countered on the mound with Ross Detwiler, the 22-year-old lefty who was the team’s top draft choice (sixth overall) in 2007. Detwiler has had an up-and-down season, with a 5-5 record entering the game and an ERA of 5.42.
Detwiler pitched well at times but could not match the zeroes that Watson kept posting on the scoreboard.
“Ross has been pretty consistent in his last four starts,” said Knorr. “Tonight he was missing off the plate in just about every inning but he got out of most of it.“
Detwiler stranded the Hillcats twice with the bases loaded but surrendered single runs in the second and fourth innings that led to his sixth loss of the season.
In the second inning, after a pair of singles, Detwiler plunked the Hillcats’ Jared Keel with an inside pitch to load the bases and set up Chris Jones for a run-scoring sacrifice fly to left field for the first run of the game.
In the fourth, Keel doubled and scored with two outs on a single by James Barksdale.
Detwiler thus left on the short end of a 2-0 deficit. On the positive side, he gave up just four hits in his five innings.and pitched out of major jams. On the other hand, Detwiler walked two and hit two batters.