Adam Ulrey's Montreal Expos Diary

July 20, 2002 - Game 97
Penny beats Expos again 3-0

The Expos have been playing bad baseball of late and it's starting to catch up to them. They dropped another game by playing poor defense and not hitting. Once again, the Montreal Expos ran into Brad Penny at his best. Penny dominated the Expos, pitching six innings to win for the first time in nearly three months as the Florida Marlins beat the Expos 3-0 Saturday night. Penny improved to 7-1 lifetime against the Expos, and Mike Lowell stroked a two-run homer as the Marlins won for the second straight game after losing eight in a row.

The Expos, were hopeful that the recent acquisitions of Bartolo Colon and Cliff Floyd would help propel them into the wild card chase. But that has not happened as they have lost seven of their last ten games. They have been playing horrible defense and this game was no different as they committed three errors.

"It's a simple game of catch-and-throw," Montreal manager Frank Robinson said. "We're not playing well defensively. We're shooting ourselves in the foot."

Masato Yoshii did his job, pitching a beautiful game, giving up just six hits and no earned runs in six innings to see his ERA drop to 3.67. He received no help from his offense. Penny weaved his magic; scattering four hits two by Vladimir Guerrero and one each by Jose Vidro and Andres Galarraga. The first of Guerrero's hits was his 1,000 of his career. Lowell hit his 15th homer of the year and with his two RBIs now has 62 for the year. Braden Looper came on in the ninth to pick up his first save of the year, pitching a perfect ninth inning. The other Marlins run scored on Luis Castillo's fielder's choice that scored Andy Fox with the first run of the game.

The loss left the Expos at 49-48 on the year and they are slowly fading away from any chance at the post season. Unless they put together some type of long winning streak they have no chance of keeping their season alive.