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Things were a little different around here the last time Lucas Giolito started a game at Nationals Park.
On Aug. 28, 2016, the Nationals were 20 games over .500, well on their way to a division title under new manager Dusty Baker. Trea Turner was the leadoff-hitting center fielder. Daniel Murphy hit third and owned a .994 OPS. Oliver Pérez, Koda Glover and Matt Belisle came out of the bullpen in relief.
Giolito, of course, was one of the top pitching prospects in baseball at that time, viewed internally as the next great member of a rotation that already featured Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg and Gio González.
And then a few months later, he was gone, one of three pitching prospects dealt to the White Sox in exchange for outfielder Adam Eaton, a trade that sent shockwaves through the Winter Meetings at National Harbor and revealed that perhaps the Nats didn’t view Giolito quite as favorably as everyone assumed they did.
We can debate the merits of that trade for eternity. Giolito and Reynaldo López certainly went on to have some success elsewhere, even if it took a while to materialize. Eaton played an important role on a Nationals team that won the World Series in 2019. Maybe it all worked out in the end.
All these years later, Giolito finally returned to pitch on South Capitol Street, and he finally put together the kind of dominant start folks around here used to hope would be commonplace. With 7 2/3 innings of one-run ball, he overwhelmed the Nats lineup and watched as his teammates ransacked Michael Soroka during the Red Sox’s 11-2 blowout win on Independence Day.
Ten days shy of his 31st birthday, Giolito has bounced around in recent years, from the White Sox to the Angels to the Guardians and now to the Red Sox, who gave him a two-year, $37 million deal and then watched him miss the entire first season following elbow surgery. He’s healthy now, though, and in his 12th start of the year put together one of the best performances of his career, improving to 5-1 with a 3.66 ERA.
"It's been a long road," Giolito told reporters when asked about his journey over the last decade. "I pitched very different back then, very long arm action. I think every baseball player’s career, you have your ups and downs, you have your trials and tribulations, highs and lows. However you want to put it. It’s been a long road. I look forward to many more, even the downs. When you come back from those, it’s probably more satisfying than being good all the time. I just look forward to continuing to work and for us to really get hot and start winning a lot more games."
Soroka was highly touted himself back when he contended for NL Rookie of the Year honors in 2019 with the Braves. He’s still trying to rediscover the best version of himself, which has been on display at times this season but too often has taken a back seat to the version a holiday crowd of 37,355 watched today.
Soroka has the ability to string together zeros and strike out more than a batter per inning thanks in large part to a breaking ball that for the most part has been unhittable. And yet the right-hander also has been hit incredibly hard at times, his stuff evidently not good enough to survive poor execution, which explains how his ERA now stands at a hefty 5.40.
It was all on display again this morning, when Soroka at one point retired seven of eight batters faced, the lone exception a bunt single by David Hamilton. Four of the seven outs came via strikeout. So what was the problem? It was everything that came before that stretch, and definitely everything that came after it.
Though he escaped the top of the first unscathed, Soroka did have to extend himself to strand a pair of runners. He wasn’t as fortunate in the top of the second, surrendering two runs on three hits, including Ceddane Rafaela’s RBI double and Jarren Duran’s two-out RBI single.
By the time he reached the top of the fifth, Soroka’s pitch count already stood at 78, the Red Sox into their third trip through the lineup. Soroka would not record another out, allowing five straight batters to reach, one of them (Wilyer Abreu) via a bases-loaded walk, the next (Trevor Story) via a two-run single.
"I didn't think I had too much for fastball, fastball command today," he said. "And I think ultimately, it bit me. We got into the fifth, and they were putting good swings on balls. It's tough when you don't command your fastball that well. It's just one of those days where I think kind of a perfect storm, where I'm not throwing all that well and didn't quite catch a couple breaks. It added up, and unfortunately got away from us."
Zach Brzykcy would enter from the bullpen, and four more runs would score before the inning was over, the first two charged to Soroka, who ended his day with a season-high seven earned runs to his name.
Brzykcy, whose ERA is now up to 7.40, needed 29 pitches to record three outs, so he wasn’t about to help cover innings in the wake of Soroka’s abbreviated start. The Nationals trailed 9-0 but still had to use a large portion of their bullpen just to get through this game.
That included Ryan Loutos, the right-hander who was optioned to Triple-A Rochester on Thursday when Andrew Chafin was activated off the 15-day injured list but was immediately recalled today when Trevor Williams landed on the IL. Asked to finish a game his team already trailed by more than a touchdown, Loutos gave up a two-run homer to Story (who finished with four hits) and threw 33 pitches over two innings, forcing the Nationals to also use Eduardo Salazar before this blowout loss was officially over.
"We had four guys down in our bullpen," manager Davey Martinez said. "We tried to stretch (Soroka) out as long as possible. We tried to have him get out of his own mess a little bit. But once he gave up that base hit with the bases loaded, I figured he was done."
