Bullpen falters as Nats get swept by Braves (updated)

As the bottom of the fifth came to a close at windy, gray Nationals Park late this afternoon, the home team finally had reason to feel encouraged for the first time in this four-games-in-48-hours series against the Braves. Brad Lord had tossed five scoreless innings to continue his September resurgence. The lineup had figured out Atlanta starter Hurston Waldrep at last, scoring three runs in rapid fire to take the lead and snap a 15-inning scoreless streak.

And then Miguel Cairo sent Lord back to the mound for the top of the sixth, a curious decision in the moment that only looked worse when the rookie right-hander gave up hits to two of the three batters he faced before getting pulled.

Not that the bullpen performed any better. Clayton Beeter really turned the top of the sixth into a mess, the Braves ultimately scoring four runs before tacking on two more against newly promoted reliever Sauryn Lao and three more off Shinnosuke Ogasawara to hand the Nats a thoroughly frustrating 9-4 loss that completed a miserable three days at the park.

When this series opened Monday evening, the Nationals trailed the Braves by four games at the bottom of the National League East standings, still with a shot at catching them for fourth place before season’s end. Four straight losses to Atlanta, however, dashed any hope of that and left the Nats at 62-91, matching their loss total from each of the previous two years with nine games still to be played.

"It's never easy to lose," rookie right fielder Dylan Crews said. "We want to win every single day, trust me. We want to go out there and win every single time we walk out onto that field. But we've got to fix some things. We've got to command the strike zone a lot better, from both sides. We do that, a lot of good things happen."

The results of this series could have been quite different. The Nationals needed only to score one run in regulation Tuesday night, but couldn’t and wound up with an agonizing 5-0 loss in 10 innings to complete a doubleheader sweep. Today, they needed only to protect the 3-0 lead they carried into the sixth inning, which they ultimately did not despite the performance of their young starter.

These final outings are important for Lord, who is trying to close out an encouraging rookie season on a positive note. Back-to-back rough starts against the Yankees and Rays at the end of August raised the question if he had finally hit the wall, but the 25-year-old has now responded with three consecutive strong outings, none better than today’s showing.

"Those two or three starts that I had in August, things just didn't go my way. I didn't execute very many pitches in those outings," he said. "You've just got to put your head down, keep working every day, flush those and forget about them."

Through five scoreless innings today, Lord did what he does best. He threw strikes (nearly a 70 percent rate), issued only one walk and avoided loud contact. He did have to pitch his way out of a couple of jams in the third and fourth, but did so in each case and stranded a runner at third base in the process.

"It's all about taking it one pitch at a time," he said. "You can't really think about the big picture when you're out there. It's something I always try to go for, just to go deep into games."

But because the Braves did make him work, fouling off a staggering 31 pitches, Lord’s pitch count was already up to 92 at the end of the fifth, even with zero runs crossing the plate. His season-high count was 93. And given his heavy workload as both a starter and reliever in his first major league season, it was appropriate to assume he would be pulled right there.

But Cairo, who admitted he was working with a depleted bullpen on the heels of Tuesday's doubleheader, decided not only to send Lord back out there for the sixth, but not to have anybody begin warming up at the start of the inning just in case things went south. Which they did.

"I know he's got a lot of pitches," Cairo said, "but we're just trying to buy outs. And we were short in the bullpen."

Lord needed eight pitches to retire Matt Olson to begin the inning, bringing his total up to 100. When Ronald Acuña Jr. singled on the first pitch he saw to start the rally, Beeter finally began warming up in the bullpen, with pitching coach Jim Hickey slowly walking to the mound to stall for time. Lord proceeded to surrender an RBI double to Drake Baldwin on the next pitch, and that’s when Cairo finally made the switch (though not until after catcher Riley Adams also was sent to the mound to stall for more time).

"Getting up to 100 pitches today, I needed to do that," Lord admitted. "It is a sense of accomplishment."

Whether Beeter was fully ready or not, the reliever wasn’t sharp from the get-go. He threw seven straight balls, issuing two straight walks to load the bases. And though he struck out Michael Harris II, then then served up the two-out, two-run single to Marcell Ozuna that tied the game and left Lord with two runs charged to his name and no decision to be awarded.

"I noticed my velo wasn't quite all the way up there, but maybe it took me a few pitches out there to really get the velo where it's supposed to be," Beeter said. "But I felt good and felt like I was still able to make good pitches and get people out. ... The walks turned that inning from one run into multiple runs. The hits are going to happen when big league hitters make good swings. But if I can limit the walks, it lessens the number on the scoreboard."

Beeter would give up another RBI single, this time to Nacho Alvarez Jr., that gave Atlanta the lead, a strange play that also saw Daylen Lile throw Ozuna out at third right as Ha-Seong Kim was crossing the plate in front of him. After challenges by both teams, both original calls were upheld, with Ozuna out at third but Kim safe at the plate by the narrowest of margins to complete the Braves’ four-run rally.

That rally stung all the more because it immediately followed the Nationals’ first rally in a long time. Held scoreless for 15 consecutive innings, they finally broke through with a three-spot in the bottom of the fifth, making a much-needed adjustment in their approach against Braves starter Hurston Waldrep.

Through four nearly perfect innings, Waldrep had the Nats’ batters eating out of his hand thanks mostly to a splitter that rarely landed in the zone yet still induced regular swings. By the end of the fourth, the rookie right-hander had thrown 19 splitters, 14 of them outside the strike zone. Yet the Nationals swung at eight of those, whiffing at five and fouling off the other three.

They finally got the message in the bottom of the fifth, laying off those pitches below the knees and taking advantage of several thrown up in the zone. During the rally, three of the Nats’ four hits (Luis García Jr., Robert Hassell III, James Wood) were doubles, each of them coming on a splitter at the waist or higher. Crews added his own RBI single on a 2-0 cutter, and thus did the home team flip the script on what was shaping up to be another woeful day at the plate.

"His bread-and-butter is his splitter, so he's going to go to that as much as he can," Crews said. "I think if you can eliminate that, it gets him into trouble. Early on, we couldn't resist not swinging at some of those pitches. We made some adjustments there in the fifth to get him up and capitalize with some runs there."

That script, unfortunately was flipped for only a few fleeting moments.