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MIAMI – MacKenzie Gore did his part in his return from the 15-day injured list. His teammates didn’t exactly do their part to help give their ace a chance to win in his return to the mound.
Despite getting five solid innings of two-run ball from Gore in his first start back from a mild case of shoulder inflammation, the Nationals again didn’t play clean baseball in the field and did precious little of consequence at the plate during a 5-0 loss to the Marlins.
And what a few days ago looked like a rousing road trip to begin September finished as something far less. With back-to-back losses to close out this four-game series at loanDepot Park, the Nats now head home having gone a respectable-but-not-dominant 4-3 on this trip to Chicago and Miami.
"We had a good road trip, a winning road trip," interim manager Miguel Cairo said. "The guys are playing hard. They keep fighting. But it was a good road trip in general."
Tonight’s finale, played before an announced crowd of 10,110 that brought the total paid attendance for the four-game series up to 35,774, saw the Nationals get shut out for the 12th time this season. It saw Cairo’s lineup manage seven hits, all of them singles, while drawing zero walks.
It shouldn’t have come as much surprise this all coincided with one of Gore’s starts. The Nationals now have scored zero or one run in 10 of the left-hander’s 28 outings this season, leaving the National League All-Star with a 5-14 record that doesn’t match up with his actual pitching performance.
"It's tough," he admitted. "We also faced a lot of good arms, the way it was lined up early. It's just kind of the way this game goes sometimes. There's other things you look at if you're performing well. There's also times where I didn't perform well and didn't give us a chance."
There was at least some mild risk to putting Gore on the mound tonight, only 15 days after he last pitched, without having created an opportunity for him to face live hitters first. But both the Nationals and the left-hander insisted he was good to go, and that the short IL stint made it possible to return without any other tune-up against real batters.
Based on the performance tonight, they appear to have been right. Gore wasn’t necessarily in peak form, but he looked perfectly normal out there, and the end results were solid.
The results might have even looked better if not for CJ Abrams’ inability to cleanly field Xavier Edwards’ leadoff grounder to short. Ruled a single by the official scorer, it certainly was a play Abrams could have made, merely the latest example of a less-than-clean moment in the field for the 24-year-old shortstop.
"Slow roller, it was the (artificial) turf, it kind of bounces a little bit more than I thought," he said. "I tried to come get it, because X can run a little bit. I was trying to go get the ball, get a good hop, and it bounced off my glove."
That would prove costly as the rest of the bottom of the first played out. A groundball single by Agustín Ramírez put two on with nobody out, but Gore got a grounder to first for the first out, with Edwards advancing to third on the play. Which allowed him to score on Heriberto Hernández’s sacrifice fly (only the second out of the inning). One more single by Eric Wagaman brought home a second run and gave the Marlins a 2-0 lead that wasn’t entirely Gore’s fault.
The lefty settled in nicely after that, pitching his way out of a couple of jams but mostly taking control of the outing with quick outs and a lot of strikes. He wound up throwing 50 of his 78 pitches for strikes, scattering a pair of walks while striking out four. And he finished his night retiring five consecutive batters, heading back to the dugout to handshakes and high-fives from teammates and coaches.
"I thought we were fine," Gore said. "Able to get through five. We knew we were going to stay around 75 (pitches). Just move forward from this. I felt much better than the last time out."
It was a performance worthy of being attached to a win. But like so many of Gore’s 28 starts this season, he didn’t get enough run support to depart with a lead.
After enjoying success against each of the Marlins’ first three starting pitchers in this series, the Nationals managed nothing against Ryan Weathers. The left-hander, returning from a lengthy stint on the 60-day IL, looked sharp as ever while tossing five scoreless innings that including five hits (all singles) and zero walks.
The Nats gave themselves a couple of scoring opportunities against Weathers. Abrams led off the game with a first-pitch single, then swiped second for his 30th stolen base of the year. But his teammates stranded him there, with both Riley Adams and Daylen Lile striking out swinging to end the inning.
"Being leadoff, you're trying to get things started, things going for the team," Abrams said. "Tried to do that in the first inning. It didn't end as we wanted."
They got back-to-back singles from Lile (who extended his hit streak to 11 games) and Andrês Chaparro to open the fourth, yet did nothing with it. Brady House grounded into a first-pitch double play, and Paul DeJong followed with a grounder to short to end that potential rally.
And though the bullpen attempted to keep the deficit at 2-0 all night and at least give the lineup one last chance to rally, Konnor Pilkington surrendered three runs in the bottom of the eighth on two doubles, a walk and a wild pitch, with Abrams also charged with an error on an offline relay throw to the plate.
"He's been playing well. He's been playing really good defense," Cairo said of Abrams' recent play at shortstop. "You can tell that he's moving his feet way better, making good throws to first. Nothing you can do about it. He's been working really hard. We've been giving him a lot of ground balls. It's something he can build off of."
