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As the hits kept on coming, one after another, MacKenzie Gore stood on the mound with a look on his face that suggested anger, frustration and bewilderment all wrapped up in one.
The Nationals ace, an All-Star just a few weeks ago, the majors’ strikeout leader just a month ago, had faced six Athletics batters to open tonight’s game. Five of them had scored, all five of them having recorded base hits, two of them home runs.
Before having a chance to come up to bat themselves, the Nats already were well on their way to a 16-7 loss, yet another in a string of unsightly, lopsided August losses that have somehow made the disasters that were June and July look tame in comparison.
The Nationals have lost six in a row, the combined score of those games a jaw-dropping 70-26. They've lost the first four games of this homestand 54-20, and that doesn't tell the full story because 11 of the runs they've scored have come in the ninth inning of games that were already well out of hand.
"This is embarrassing," Gore said. "We shouldn't just try to act like nothing happened here. What has happened this homestand is not acceptable, no matter what happened last week. We're all better than this. This is embarrassing. We've got to not let it affect everybody. We've got to be able to come together as a group and get better. What happened this homestand, it's hard to watch."
Gore, for his part, was right in the middle of it all tonight.
If there was supposed to be one thing the Nationals could count on during a miserable summer, it was their ace’s ability to give them a chance to win every time he took the mound. They might not provide him any run support, but he would at least leave them in a good position whenever his night was complete.
That simply has not been the case over the last month. In three of Gore’s last four starts, he has surrendered at least six runs. In the other one, he walked six batters.
Go back to June 15, and the left-hander owned a 2.89 ERA and 12.3 strikeouts per nine innings. That ERA is now all the way up to 4.29, that strikeout rate all the way down to 10.6 per nine.
"We've made a little mess here the last couple of weeks," he said. "It's been frustrating. We're all frustrated. This has got to the point where we're better than this. We've just got to make the adjustments. Something needs to change. ... We can't keep trying the same things and expecting different results as a group."
If there was any reason to believe Gore’s recent struggles were a byproduct of speculation he could be dealt prior to last week’s trade deadline, he pretty much put those to rest during the top of the first tonight. With the knowledge he’s still part of this team through the remainder of the season (and in theory the next two seasons), he took the mound and immediately served up a leadoff homer to Shea Langeliers on a fastball down the pipe.
Gore didn’t have time to shake that off before he found himself in more trouble, surrendering three straight hits on three straight pitches, the last of them bringing home another run. He managed to record an out at last when he induced a fly ball out of Colby Thomas, but he followed that up with another grooved fastball, this one to Darell Hernaiz, who sent it flying to left-center for the inning’s second homer and a 5-0 lead.
"He threw strikes," interim manager Miguel Cairo said. "They were just right in the middle of the plate."
"Yeah, but typically I throw the ball over the plate, when I'm good and bad," Gore said. "But there were some balls over the middle of the plate, and they hit them hard. No swing-and-miss tonight, and they were on everything. I'm sure some of that was location. I mean, they hit everything."
Things would get modestly better for Gore after that, but he never did pitch a clean inning. He retired only two of four batters faced in the second, helped out by a double play grounder. He gave up another run in the third on a leadoff walk and back-to-back singles. And after he gave up back-to-back hits to open the fourth, his night was over after a mere 60 pitches.
Already trailing 7-0 at the time, Cairo had to turn over the game’s final six innings to a bullpen that already had been thrashed by the Brewers during a weekend sweep that featured three games very much like this one. Into the fire stepped Clayton Beeter, one of two new relievers added to the major league roster this afternoon. It did not go well for the 26-year-old right-hander acquired from the Yankees in the Amed Rosario trade.
Beeter immediately surrendered a two-run homer to JJ Bleday, making it 9-0, with the first eight runs all charged to Gore. He proceeded to finish out the inning without another ball being put into play, walking two and striking out three.
"I love the stuff that Beeter has," Cairo said. "That was a really good fastball, a good breaking pitch."
The onslaught continued, no matter who emerged from the bullpen gate. Orlando Ribalta also gave up a homer to the first batter he faced (Langeliers again) in the fifth. PJ Poulin did post a zero in his major league debut in the sixth. But Andry Lara also gave up a homer to the first batter he faced (Langeliers again) in the seventh, then gave up five more runs before his night was done. (He was optioned to Triple-A Rochester after the game.)
All told, the Nationals pitching staff gave up 24 hits, one shy of the club record they established only four days ago. And that group has now allowed 101 opposing batters to reach base over the last four games, the first pitching staff to do that since the 1993 Phillies. That team actually went to the World Series. This one probably will not.
"I've got to tell you, we're going to be just fine," Cairo said. "I know we're going to come out. I know I believe in that team. We beat Minnesota. We played good against Houston. We played good against San Diego. We took two out of three against Cincinnati. I believe in that team we have in there."
They'll try to shrug it all off and get back on track Wednesday. They'll do so with a pitcher on the mound making his long-awaited return to the major leagues: Cade Cavalli. Cairo confirmed after tonight's game the team's 2020 first-round pick (whose lone big league start came Aug. 26, 2022, seven months before he had Tommy John surgery) will be promoted from Rochester to face the A's.
