Tonight was one of the nights that leaves me grinning, filled with hope for what this team could be in a very short time. Tonight was a night that gives Nationals fans the rare opportunity to sit back and just enjoy watching a beatdown of a good baseball team, not an opportunity we are afforded very often. The Nats played the very definition of a complete game tonight. The offense was tremendous, the pitching was great, and the defense made some outstanding plays to help keep this game in Washington control.
The first three innings went by without any contributions to the scoreboard. Mitchell Parker and Stephen Kolek both began this game trading zeroes and doing so very efficiently. Then, in the fourth inning, things took a major swing in the Nats’ direction. The crooked number finally came for Parker, who hasn’t received much of anything in the way of run support lately, as the Nats got RBIs from James Wood, Nathaniel Lowe, Josh Bell, and Brady House in the fourth to go up 4-0. The Padres would respond, however, as Manny Machado led off the bottom of the fourth with a solo homer to narrow the deficit to 4-1.
One of the many joys of tonight’s game was the way the Nationals kept responding to each jab thrown by the Padres. In the top of the fifth, they did just that, responding to the Machado homer with RBI hits from Luis Garcia Jr. and Bell to extend the lead to 6-1 and knock Kolek out of the game.
Into the sixth inning, Parker had to be saved by his teammates, aided throughout the night by some excellent defensive plays, most notably from Jacob Young and Daylen Lile. In the bottom of the sixth, he hit a small bump, and Lile committed home run robbery saving a 2-run homer and notching an out as Parker’s pitch count was nearing 100. Parker did allow a two-out RBI single to Gavin Sheets, but he would bear down and end the inning after that, keeping the lead at 6-2.
Manager Dave Martinez has been rather aggressive lately with keeping his starters in questionably long. I’m not sure many people expected to see Parker back out for the seventh, but Martinez liked the left-on-left matchup against Jake Cronenworth. Unfortunately that backfired big time. Cronenworth knocked Parker out of the game with a homer to right center, cutting the lead to three and leaving Parker with a dirty taste in his mouth from the end of what was really an excellent outing from him.
- Mitchell Parker: 6 innings, 6 hits, 3 runs (all earned), 2 walks, 1 strikeout, 96 pitches
- Stephen Kolek: 4.1 innings, 5 hits, 5 runs (4 earned), 1 walk, 5 strikeouts, 80 pitches
The Nats got long balls from Wood in the eighth and Bell in the ninth to extend the lead to 10-3, and it was all smiles in the Nationals’ dugout. The Padres mounted a Nationals-esque ‘too little too late’ rally in the ninth against Zach Brzykcy, getting a three-run homer from Fernando Tatis. After a two-out walk, Martinez showed he wasn’t messing around anymore and gave the ball to closer Kyle Finnegan, who came in, faced one batter, and got Machado to fly out to close out one of the best wins of the season thus far for the Nats.
“They played the game the right way.”
— manager Dave Martinez said after the game
The positives from tonight were plentiful. Parker pitched much better than his stat line would say; he was aggressive all night and did a great job of keeping Padres batters off balance and inducing a lot of soft contact. CJ Abrams and Wood both came through with three-hit nights, Garcia, Lowe, Bell, and House all followed up with two-hit games to supplement a massive offensive outburst. On the bullpen side of things, Brad Lord came in and was once again brilliant, throwing two perfect innings to bridge the gap from Parker to the ninth inning, and the rookie is looking more and more like an effective big league pitcher who could be a great piece for the Nats going forward.
One storyline to monitor is Keibert Ruiz; he started the game tonight but was hit by a foul ball in the head while standing in the dugout early on in the game and had to exit, to get a CT-Scan, and was replaced by Riley Adams. Hoping for good news there, we should know more tomorrow.
Game two of this series will begin tomorrow night at 9:40 PM. Trevor Williams (3-8, 5.54 ERA) gets the ball for the Nationals against Ryan Bergert (1-0, 1.88 ERA) for the Padres. The Nats’ win tonight moved them to 2-2 so far on this brutal West Coast trip, leaving them three wins away from getting through it with a winning record, which was my goal for the trip and would be a huge win for the team as a whole. Tomorrow night is a great opportunity to get even closer to that goal and to win a series on the road against a very good San Diego team.
