The Nationals managed to overcome injuries to Dylan Crews and Jacob Young, both by winning the games each departed and by having more outfield prospects ready to be called up to take their place.

It may be too much to ask for them to adequately overcome their latest potential injury loss: MacKenzie Gore. Though the early indication suggests it's not serious.

A brilliant start by Gore tonight ended on a decidedly sour note when the left-hander departed mid-batter in the top of the seventh after throwing an errant fastball and grimacing in some type of discomfort. He had not surrendered a run to that point, but he still wound up charged with the loss when the Nats bullpen gave up a quartet of late runs while falling 4-0 to the Giants, snapping the team’s five-game winning streak.

The Nationals do not provide in-game injury updates, so it was impossible to know what exactly caused Gore to come out following his 91st pitch until postgame. The lefty did appear to be telling Davey Martinez "I'm fine, I'm fine" as his manager approached him, and he returned to the dugout instead of heading directly to the trainer’s room, for what that’s worth.

The postgame revelation: Gore's upper left leg tightened up on him five innings after he was struck by a Willy Adames comebacker, an incident that left an impressive welt on his thigh but should not keep him from making his next start.

"We put some heat on it right after it happened, and by the seventh it was just pretty heavy and dead," he said. "It was the back leg, so ... I mean, I didn't want to do what I did, but there was kind of nothing I could do at that point."

The Nats had to be relieved by the diagnosis; certainly they can’t afford to lose their burgeoning ace for any length of time. Though he took the hard-luck loss tonight, Gore still boasts a 3.47 ERA with 93 strikeouts (13 more than any other pitcher in baseball right now) through 11 starts.

Gore took the mound tonight on the heels of the strangest start of his career, and really one of the strangest starts in major league history: the first time anyone has ever allowed 10 hits while striking out nine in fewer than four innings. While also throwing 102 pitches, by the way. What, if anything, would the left-hander take from that outing into tonight’s game? Or would he just brush it off as an anomaly?

Martinez said this afternoon he wanted Gore to focus on the positives from that start. So he did, and he kept striking guys out at a high rate. While throwing a lot fewer pitches per inning.

Gore set the tone from the outset, retiring the side with a pair of strikeouts in a 14-pitch top of the first. He struck out the side in the third. He closed out the fourth with another strikeout, this time getting a double play out of it when Wilmer Flores was called for batter’s interference as Keibert Ruiz tried to throw out a stealing Jung Hoo Lee at second base.

"I thought we kind continued to do what we've been doing," he said. "We got after guys. We were able to get some early contact tonight and get outs."

Gore ended the fifth with a strikeout, then the sixth as well (his ninth of the night). At this point, his pitch count was a very respectable 84, the Giants having put only three batters on base, none of them advancing beyond first.

"It was very encouraging, for sure," Martinez said. "But we know he's got it in him. We talked about it earlier, about pounding the strike zone, being efficient. He had all that stuff going on today. He was really good."

Everything looked peachy as Gore returned to the mound for the seventh in what was still a scoreless game, but he opened the frame with a leadoff walk of Lee, then yanked a 1-0 fastball to Matt Chapman and appeared to grimace on the follow-through.

The Nationals dugout noticed, and within seconds Martinez and head athletic trainer Paul Lessard were jogging out to the mound. Gore could be seen brushing off the duo as they approached him, but the conversation continued. And ultimately Gore agreed with his manager’s decision to remove him in the middle of an at-bat in the seventh inning of what had been a dominant start.

"I started noticing it about the fifth pitch, him shaking the leg out a little bit," Martinez said. "I brought Paul out there, and I thought that was good enough."

"We made the right decision," Gore said. "It got me good, and it got stiff, really."

Jackson Rutledge had already begun to warm in the bullpen, so the big right-hander didn’t need much time to declare himself ready to take over for the departed Gore. Perhaps he should’ve taken advantage of his unlimited warmup time, because he never looked comfortable once the game resumed.

Inheriting a 2-0 count, Rutledge finished off the walk of Chapman, which was officially charged to Gore. He did induce a double-play grounder out of Wilmer Flores, but he followed that with an RBI single up the middle surrendered to Adames, giving the Giants the game’s first run. And then it really fell apart, with Rutledge losing all command and issuing three consecutive walks, the last of which forced home the inning’s second run.

"I think I just wasn't in the best mindset today," Rutledge said. "I was trying a little bit too hard, really just trying too hard to throw strikes, rather than just being comfortable and letting it rip."

Zach Brzykcy and Andrew Chafin then combined to give up two more runs in the eighth, with Chafin also taking over a bases-loaded jam and immediately uncorking a wild pitch (already his fourth in seven innings since joining the club).

It might not have mattered as much had the Nationals lineup been able to mount any kind of attack against San Francisco right-hander Landen Roupp, but that wasn’t happening tonight. The Nats did get one-out doubles from Luis García Jr. and José Tena in the second and fifth innings, respectively, but their teammates couldn’t drive either in.

They also got an opposite-field single from Daylen Lile on the first pitch he ever saw as a major leaguer, duplicating Robert Hassell III’s achievement from 24 hours earlier. But Lile went nowhere after reaching first base, just as all of his new teammates experienced on a frustrating night at the plate.

"Me and Robert talked about it," Lile said with a wide smile. "He was like: 'They're going to give you a fastball, so might as well take advantage of it.'"

All told, a lineup that totaled 37 runs during the five-game winning streak was shut out on five hits in this one.

"We just got away from our plan," Martinez said. "There was a lot more pull-side ground balls. When we stayed on the ball, we hit it well to the other side of the field. I think that should've been our approach against this guy today."