Kahnle Earns Second Career Save

The Colorado Rockies beat the Washington Nationals yesterday by a score of 6-4.

Why should you care about this? Two reasons.

1. The Nationals lost, which is good for the Mets. New York holds a 1.5 game lead over Washington in the NL East.

2. Shaker graduate Tommy Kahnle earned the save for the Rockies. It's his second save of the season, the first being on Friday night.

Kahnle is the new Rockies closer after Jon Axford was removed from the role and LaTroy Hawkins was traded to Toronto.

Kahnle worked a scoreless ninth inning on Sunday, despite walking two batters.

On Friday night, he struck out Bryce Harper in his first save effort. The 26-year-old flamethrower has a fastball in the upper 90s, and he's drawn praise from his teammates:

"He's got as good of stuff as any guy in the league," catcher Nick Hundley told the Denver Post.

Kahnle is one of two Shaker graduates in the Rockies system: Jeff Hoffman was recently traded from Toronto in the Troy Tulowitzki/Hawkins deal that included Jose Reyes going to Colorado.