The Home for Washington Nationals Game Talk

I sat on my couch, head in my hands, in utter shock at what I was witnessing during this afternoon’s circus-show of a performance. We’ve seen Nats pitching have blowup innings; that’s nothing new. But in the bottom of the third inning this afternoon, the Nationals gave us the mother of all blowup innings. Cade Cavalli and Shinnosuke Ogasawara, in one single inning (that took 41 minutes by the way), allowed nine runs on five homers, faced 16 batters, and needed 77 pitches to get three outs.

Let, me preface this article by quickly giving an apology/an explanation. I’ve been pretty awful the last couple weeks about getting one of these out for every game, and I’ve discussed this with Steve already, I know it’s a non-issue for 99% of you, but I do still feel responsible. I am a full-time college student as a lot of you know, and the first couple of weeks back on campus have been a swarm of things I need to do for the various organizations I serve in, and there’s just some nights where it isn’t possible for me to get to my article. I know you all are tremendous supporters, I’m thankful for every one of you, which is why I felt you all deserved an explanation.

Today’s performance was all too predictable, yet all too frustrating in the same sense. Ranger Suarez set a new career high in strikeouts with 11 of them over seven scoreless innings against the Nationals this afternoon, and they just had no answer. All except for Jacob Young, who went 2-2 off the lefty, but was completely left out to dry in this one by the rest of the offense.

While we’re on the topic of being left out to dry, Jake Irvin did not do the Nats’ bullpen any favors today, getting pulled with one out in the third inning, forcing the bullpen to account for 17 outs. Luckily, they completed what was an excellent bullpen week with 5⅔ scoreless innings of work, keeping the offense in the game all afternoon.