It’s been 53 days since a Nationals starting pitcher completed seven innings, that stretch came to an end this afternoon in Minnesota. Jake Irvin, pitching in front of hundreds of family and friends, gave the Nationals a tremendous 7.0 inning performance this afternoon. And thanks to some timely hitting, Irvin guided the Nats to their second straight series win.
The scoring got underway on the very first pitch of the game, as CJ Abrams began what was an excellent game with a 418 foot solo homer to put the Nats ahead early. Abrams began his game with the homer and then a single then two straight hit-by-pitches that took the bat out of his hands. While on the bases, he added three stolen bases on the day. At one point, he stolen second and third base to set the Nats up for a go-ahead run after he scored on a Sac Fly — all manufactured by Abrams.
The Twins struck back in the bottom of the second as Irvin made one of the few mistakes of his game today to Matt Wallner. Wallner got every bit of the fastball left down the middle, sending it 452 feet and sending this game to a 1-1 tie.
It was a bullpen day for the Twins this afternoon, as they lifted Cole Sands after just two innings. The Nats took advantage of a lead off single and two stolen bases by CJ Abrams in the top half of the third against tough lefty Danny Coulombe, as Luis Garcia Jr. brought him in with a sacrifice fly to make it 2-1 Washington.
The Twins grabbed that run right back in the bottom of the third on a sacrifice fly of their own by Trevor Larnach. That tied what was a seesaw game early on at two apiece, but fortunately for the Nationals that would be all the scoring Minnesota did all day.
The sacrifice fly spree continued in the fourth inning, Paul DeJong getting in on the action this time. That would make it a 3-2 game, and the Nats never surrendered the lead again.
The top of the fifth was the big scoring inning again today, just like last night. The Nats busted this game wide open in the top of the fifth thanks to RBI singles by Josh Bell and Alex Call, capped off by a sacrifice fly from Daylen Lile. Just like that it was 7-2, giving Jake Irvin plenty of room to keep attacking the Minnesota hitters, and he did just that.
- Jake Irvin: 7 innings, 5 hits, 2 runs (both earned), 0 walks, 2 strikeouts, 86 pitches
- Cole Sands: 2 innings, 3 hits, 1 run (1 earned), 0 walks, 2 strikeouts, 27 pitches
Building off of Irvin’s brilliance, the Nats’ bullpen slammed the door closed with a scoreless eighth from Konnor Pilkington and a scoreless ninth from Kyle Finnegan. Bittersweet for Finnegan in particular, as any day could be his last as a National. While I myself have some doubts as to whether or not he’ll be dealt, if this is indeed our last chance to see him throw in a Nationals uniform, he deserves a lot of gratitude and respect for the job he’s done as closer for this team during the rough years of the rebuild.
Before I get to today’s positives, we have to talk about James Wood. This has become unbearable for Wood and the team. Another 0-4 day from him this afternoon, with four more strikeouts. That gives him an 0-12 line in this series with ten of those being strikeouts.
Since the break, Wood has gone 4-35 with 18 strikeouts. Those are numbers by the way, that we’ve learned to live with when Riley Adams does them — but Adams isn’t considered a star part of the core of this team. Hopefully, Wood can find himself — and soon.
In case you guys haven’t noticed, I’m still more miffed at Drew Millas not playing more than he is than I am with what Wood has been doing. But I digress. Back to Wood, in 76 at-bats in the month of July, 34 of them ended in strikeouts. So over this past month he’s struck out in 45% of his at-bats. It’s hard to pinpoint a specific issue with what he’s doing right now, because a majority of his strikeouts aren’t bad calls anymore, he’s either chasing something in the dirt, usually multiple times per at-bat, or he’s staring at a fastball right over the heart of the plate.
While I’m the last person that’s going to come out and say hitting is easy or something crazy like that, I’m also not going to say we shouldn’t expect a guy to go through slumps in his career. But more than anything, I’d love to see Cairo give him a day or two out of the lineup to mentally reset and try to change his approach. It feels like lately he’s swinging a lot more to try and force his way out of this slump, and that’s a green light for a pitcher to tear you apart.
On the brighter side of today, the Nats have won back to back series for the first time in a month. I’ve already shouted out our three pitchers today, Irvin, Pilkington, and Finnegan were excellent this afternoon. Offensively, Josh Bell mashed all afternoon en route to a three-hit game, and CJ Abrams and Alex Call chimed in with two-hit efforts of their own. Overall, it was a really good balanced game from the whole lineup, with seven of the nine Nats starters getting hits.
The Nats will fly to Houston tonight where it will be quite a challenge tomorrow night, the boys will face Framber Valdez (11-4, 2.67 ERA), the left-handed ace of the Astros. He’ll present quite the challenge for the Nats’ lineup which has struggled against lefties this season, and definitely would not be the worst night to give Wood a break. Brad Lord (2-5, 3.39 ERA) will make his second start since leaving the bullpen, start number one was a success earlier this week against Cincinnati, let’s see if he can build on that and give the Nats an early edge in the site of the franchise’s greatest triumph.
