Nationals belt six more homers

WASHINGTON—The Washington Nationals are closing in on their first post-season berth and they’re not easing up—even against one of baseball’s worst teams.
For the second-straight game, Washington tied a franchise record with six home runs last night in a 9-1 rout of the Chicago Cubs.

Bryce Harper hit two homers and Gio Gonzalez won his 18th game. Adam LaRoche, meanwhile, kept up his tear at the plate with three hits for the Nationals, who have won four-straight and own the best record in the majors at 84-52.
They maintained a 7.5-game lead over Atlanta in the NL East.
“Good teams take nothing for granted,” stressed Washington manager Davey Johnson. “Guys down at the bottom, sometimes they have more energy and more to prove than guys at the top.
“We’ve been down there enough,” he noted. “We know what it’s like, we’re not letting up.”
LaRoche has hit three of those 12 long balls, but his streak of reaching base in nine-consecutive plate appearances was snapped by a seventh-inning strikeout.
The 19-year-old Harper had his second multi-homer game. Previously, only Mel Ott and Ken Griffey Jr. had accomplished that feat as teenagers.
“I don’t think anybody’s satisfied where we’re at right now,” Harper stressed.
“We don’t want to let down to anybody. We don’t want to play at that level,” he noted.
“We want to play at our level.”
Elsewhere in the NL, Philadelphia beat Cincinnati 6-2, New York downed St. Louis 6-2, Pittsburgh doubled Houston 6-3, Atlanta nipped Colorado 1-0, Milwaukee topped Miami 8-5, San Diego edged L.A. 4-3, and Arizona upended San Francisco 6-2.