Tanner Roark was dominant last night and better than the 2-earned runs he was charged with due to a ball with an unlucky ricochet off of the outfield fence and a misplay on a flyball that should have been caught that turned into a triple. To put Roark’s outing in perspective, 11 outs were compiled by the strikeout and only 10 by the fielders behind him. The sinker pitch over the plate had become a BABIP nightmare for Roark where he was leaving those balls-in-play up to fate.

“[Tanner] doesn’t look worried. He was looking worried before,” Nationals manager Dusty Baker said. “It looks like Tanner’s back, big time.”

In Roark’s first start in 2017 he was fastball dominant with a steady diet of sliders, and last night Roark went with very few four-seam fastballs and went curveball crazy. Roark also modified his changeup slightly with much better results. The batters could not adjust to the curveball and Roark’s changeup which were as good as they have ever been. Before last night, Roark averaged about 2 curveballs per inning and last night he threw almost 4 curveballs per inning.

“It was something that started feeling good,” Tanner Roark said. “[The curveball] is probably my second best pitch, and it felt good today. You got to throw it and keep it down and not try to make it break. That’s how I’ve been feeling — with every pitch.”

As batters tried to read the ball out of Roark’s hand, they didn’t know if they were getting the slider or the curveball at times. The “swing & miss” looked “Scherzer-like”as the batters had to sit back on the slower curve and made emergency hacks at the hard slider. The result was a season-high 11 strikeouts surpassing his previous high of 8 K’s.

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