Marlins ace Johnson squares off with Nats

Baseball Betting Lines

07/17/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Josh Johnson can match a Washington pitching gem with one of his own tonight, when the Florida Marlins ace takes on the Nationals in the second test of a three-game series between NL East Division foes at Sun Life Stadium.

The Nationals rode rookie sensation Stephen Strasburg to a 4-0 win on Friday night, when the youngster scattered four hits and walked three while fanning seven batters over six innings to lower his earned run average to 2.03.

Strasburg and Florida's Ricky Nolasco each held their opposition scoreless through five frames.

Washington's Josh Willingham hit a three-run double in the top of the sixth inning after Nyjer Morgan and Cristian Guzman started the sixth with back-to- back singles off Nolasco (9-7).

Adam Dunn drew a one-out walk to load the bases and Willingham cleared them by driving a 1-2 pitch into the right-center field gap, with the former Marlin taking third on the throw home.

Brian Sanches replaced Nolasco and Ivan Rodriguez lofted a sacrifice fly to center to score Willingham.

Nolasco gave up seven hits and struck out eight in 5 1/3 innings. He had won his previous four starts.

Johnson, a 26-year-old from Minneapolis, is a pristine 6-0 in 13 career appearances against the Nationals with a 3.55 ERA across 71 innings.

He faced them in consecutive starts earlier this season on May 2 and 8, going 1-0 with a no-decision while allowing nine hits and five runs, with four walks and 13 strikeouts over 12 innings.

He was a 4-0 winner over the Los Angeles Dodgers in his most recent performance, scattering six hits and striking out eight in eight innings.

Johnson is 6-2 in 11 home starts in 2010 with a stingy 1.52 ERA.

Washington counters with former Marlins ace Livan Hernandez, who'll make his 30th career start against the team for which he starred en route to a 1997 World Series title.

Now 35, the Cuban export is 13-8 with a 3.52 ERA in those matchups, including a no-decision in a May 9 game the Nationals won, 3-2.

In that outing, Hernandez allowed five hits and a run in seven innings.

He debuted with the Marlins with one big-league appearance in 1996, then won nine games in the regular season for the championship team a year later.

He won 10 games for Florida in 1998, then five in 1999 before being shipped to the San Francisco Giants at the trade deadline.

The Nationals, whom he was with in 2005-06 and rejoined last season, are among seven teams he's been employed by since leaving Florida. The Nationals have won 10 of the past 16 meetings between the teams.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.