It’s been a really good week overall from the Nationals’ bullpen. Unfortunately, when your bullpen enters that week second to last in the league in ERA, they’re likely doomed to regress to the mean eventually. We saw that regression tonight.
The game started off with another solid start by Michael Soroka, not only holding the Angels to one run over his start tonight, but also taking a big step towards getting past his sixth-inning mental/stamina block. More on that later.
The Angels’ one strike against Soroka came in the bottom of the second inning, Taylor Ward came in to score on a groundball double play hit into by Logan O’Hoppe. Soroka would limit all damage there for the rest of his outing, giving the Nats’ offense, one night removed from a 19-hit outburst, a great shot at taking the series tonight.
As good as Soroka was tonight, Kyle Hendricks looked just as good, at least as far as the scoreboard says. The Nats managed much more traffic on the basepaths than the Angels did, but time after time, they just could not come through with the clutch RBI hits that they continually generated last night. The missed opportunities started in the very first inning for Washington, stranding two runners in that frame, and then one apiece in innings two and four, respectively.
It wasn’t until the top of the fifth inning that they finally broke through against Hendricks, CJ Abrams smacked a solo shot 400 feet to left-center to tie the game up at one apiece. As Soroka continued to roll, we skip ahead to the bottom of the sixth inning. Soroka finished five innings at 78 pitches, most Nats fans wouldn’t blame Dave Martinez if he took him out at this point, bearing in mind the struggles that the sixth inning has plagued Michael with this season with a previously 22+ ERA in 6th innings. But as they say, the only way to overcome an obstacle is to face it head-on. That obstacle became even greater when that frame began with a hard lead-off single by Kevin Newman, leading me and I’m sure plenty others to a feeling of “here we go again.” Then, the ball finally bounced Soroka’s way as the next batter, Luis Rengifo, hit a tapper back to the mound for a double play. One batter later, Michael Soroka had completed six innings of one-run ball for only the second time this season.
- Michael Soroka: 6 innings, 2 hits, 1 run (1 earned), 1 walk, 5 strikeouts, 86 pitches
- Kyle Hendricks: 5 innings, 5 hits, 1 run (1 earned), 0 walks, 5 strikeouts, 74 pitches
Things took a swing in Washington’s favor in the top of the seventh inning. Daylen Lile worked a one-out walk, stole second base, and came around to score the go-ahead run on an RBI single from Riley Adams. Adams has been one of the biggest bright spots for the team this weekend. So far, he has recorded back-to-back games with two hits and an RBI, a huge positive for the team, as this could lead to some long-term success for Riley at the plate.
The bottom of the seventh rolled around, and a 2-1 Nats lead quickly flipped over on its head. Brad Lord was unavailable for this game. Jose A. Ferrer was going to pitch the eighth inning and closer Kyle Finnegan the ninth — all by the plan. Of course the Nationals needed to get through the seventh inning unscathed, and Martinez chose Zach Brzykcy as the guy to hold that 1-run lead.
Future Hall-of-Famer Mike Trout led off the inning against Brzykcy with a no-doubter home run to left to tie it up, breaking the bullpen’s run of consecutive good performances. That wasn’t the only damage to come out of that inning. After Brzykcy failed to retire any of the three batters he faced, Eduardo Salazar got the next two guys out to put him an out away from ending the inning in a tie game. Then Christian Moore punched a single into left field to put the Halos in front 3-2 on a chase pitch in a 2-strike count, followed by a meatball that turned into a three-run homer from Kevin Newman, his first of the season. The pitch to Moore was perfectly executed, yet, it found a seam through the infield for the go-ahead run instead of the third out.
“That’s what we had today for our bullpen.”
— manager Dave Martinez said
“Those are the pitches that I was supposed to throw. It was in the report, and [Moore] made the adjustment and got the hit.”
— Eduardo Salazar said, via interpreter Mauricio Ortiz
Salazar still could not get out of the inning, loading the bases again before Ryan Loutos came on and walked Taylor Ward to force another run in. The Nats entered the bottom of the seventh ahead 2-1 and left 7-2, a seemingly unbelievable concept if we weren’t already used to bullpen blowups of this nature on the season during most of the months of March amd April.
The Nats put together a rally opportunity in the eighth but could not bring anyone home, then the Angels got another run in the bottom of the frame thanks to Gustavo Campero‘s first big league home run, and three outs later the Angels officially evened the weekend series at a game apiece.
The positives tonight for the Nationals were still a little more abundant than in other losses we’ve seen this month. Starter Michael Soroka pitched one of his best games of the season, not only looking as sharp as he usually does over the first four innings, but he finally managed to stretch out that success over six full innings. On the offensive side, James Wood, Nathaniel Lowe, and Riley Adams all put together multi-hit nights, with Daylen Lile also finding his way on base twice via a walk and a hit, and the Abrams home run were all of the offensive highlights to score just two runs.
But the story in this one is the bullpen is once again a liability and ranked as the worst in baseball. Today, the reliever’s ERA sits at a 5.93, just seven points from a 6.00 mark that seems impossible given the hard throwing arms that all teams possess the today’s game.
The silver lining from tonight is that all of the Nats’ top main relievers are available and ready to go in tomorrow afternoon’s rubber match as the Nationals seek to win their first series since they took two out of three in Arizona on May 31st. Mitchell Parker (5-8, 4.59 ERA) gets the ball for Washington tomorrow against righty Jack Kochanowicz (3-8, 5.49), who pitched a gem at Nationals Park last season. The rubber match will commence at 4:07 tomorrow afternoon, allowing all of us to watch a game without having to fight to stay awake or worry about how much sleep we’ll get that night. The Nats need a series win in the worst way. It’s been almost a full month since the last one, and I can’t speak for all of you, but given the competition we played this month, I’m getting pretty restless.
