Late rally not enough for Nats, who drop sixth straight (updated)

If this wasn’t rock bottom for the Nationals, it sure felt like it. Mitchell Parker already had dug his team into a six-run hole with an abbreviated start that left many in the crowd booing with disapproval. Then came the 2-hour, 14-minute rain delay. Then once play resumed and the prospect of post-midnight baseball loomed, Jackson Rutledge gave up two more runs to a Marlins team that was piling on a Nats club stuck in a downward spiral with little hope of escape.

And then as Friday night was turning into Saturday morning, the home team decided to finally get its act together. If only it had been enough.

Despite a spirited rally that included seven runs scored between the seventh and eighth innings, the Nationals still ultimately fell short during an 11-9 loss to Miami, their sixth straight.

Unable to overcome Parker’s early struggles on the mound and then some shaky bullpen work later, the Nats fell to the Marlins for the third time in four head-to-head matchups this season, kicking off a critical homestand against two of the National League’s bottom-feeders with the kind of loss that will only leave all affected parties feeling worse than they already did.

"We're a good team. I think there's just a lot of ups and downs in baseball," said James Wood, who did his part tonight with three hits and four RBIs. "We know we're a good team. We know we're capable of being an elite offense. When stretches like that happen, you can't really panic over them."

There were some late moments of promise at the plate, albeit too little and too late.

Trailing 8-2 after six innings, leaving the fans who remained counting down the outs before the very delayed Nelly concert could begin, the Nationals at long last flipped the switch and produced the kind of sustained rally that felt commonplace two weeks ago but felt like a distant memory since.

In sending 10 batters to the plate during the bottom of the seventh, the Nats plated five runs thanks to RBI hits by Wood, Nathaniel Lowe, Alex Call and Keibert Ruiz. They hadn’t scored five total runs in any of their previous 10 games. Now they had scored five runs in a matter of minutes, turning a six-run deficit into an 8-7 nailbiter.

"We started getting the ball up a little bit," manager Davey Martinez said. "We started chasing less. And really using the middle of the field. I talk about it almost every day, but we're really good when we do that. You can see the at-bats got better because we didn't try to do a lot."

But just as it appeared the Nationals had seized all positive momentum away from the Marlins, Jose A. Ferrer handed it all back during a torturous top of the eighth that included three runs on four hits and a hit-by-pitch. That 8-7 nailbiter was now an 11-7 deficit, with the clock ticking away.

"Today was just a matter of he got really quick," Martinez said of Ferrer. "He couldn't slow himself down. ... We've got to keep him grounded."

And yet they responded with another long-sought rally, this time scoring two in the bottom of the eighth thanks to hits by CJ Abrams, Wood and Luis García Jr., putting the game back within reach.

That’s as close as they would get, unable to push across the final two runs needed to make up the early hole despite bringing the tying run to the plate in the bottom of the ninth.

"We were scratching and clawing there, trying to get back in the game," Martinez said. "We got back in the game. We just couldn't throw strikes. But we hit the ball today. I liked the at-bats late in the game. It took us a minute to start swinging the bats like that."

Coming in, the focus was on getting Parker through the first inning, which has caused the left-hander all kinds of problems this season. The good news: He retired three of the first four batters he faced, two by strikeout. The bad news: The one batter who reached, Agustín Ramírez, did so circling the bases after his home run to left for a quick 1-0 lead.

Annoying as that was, the Nationals still could’ve lived with it had Parker settled into a groove once he reached the top of the second, another recurring pattern for him this season. Except he never came close to finding any groove.

The Marlins were all over Parker throughout, plating another run in the second on back-to-back singles, a four-pitch walk and a sacrifice fly. And then he came unglued in the top of the third, failing to retire the inning’s first five batters.

"I've not been doing my job," the lefty said. "I need to take a deep look at it."

Ramírez launched his second homer in as many at-bats, this one a 447-foot moonshot to left to lead off the inning. Eric Wagaman drove in another run with a double off the wall in center that nearly left the park itself. And Dane Myers put a stamp on the rally with a two-run double to left-center, making it 6-0 and leaving many in the crowd booing as Parker stood on the mound with no answers.

Considering the approaching rain and the fact the Nats are on day four of a stretch of 16 consecutive scheduled game days, Martinez felt he had no choice but to leave his starter out there as long as possible, saving his bullpen. But when Parker opened the top of the fourth with a leadoff walk and a one-out single, that’s all she wrote.

He departed the game having allowed six runs on eight hits and three walks, having thrown 87 pitches in only 3 1/3 innings. His ERA and WHIP through his first five starts of the season were 1.39 and 0.938. His ERA and WHIP through his last nine starts are 7.71 and 1.405.

"I know when everything's there, when we're doing everything right, it's awesome," he said. "We give them the best chance to win. And when it's not there, it's really not there."

If the pitching performance wasn’t tough enough to stomach, the Nationals simultaneously were up to their usual tricks at the plate, which is to say they swung at a lot of pitches and didn’t make much hard contact. Edward Cabrera struck out the side in the bottom of the first on 11 pitches, then worked around a one-out walk of Josh Bell and a pitch that struck Call on the left hand to get through the bottom of the second unscathed.

They broke through in the bottom of the third, though, thanks to a long-awaited big blast from their biggest bat. Moments after Abrams was awarded an infield single after Wagaman and Cabrera collided near first base, with the pitcher landing awkwardly on his right ankle, Wood destroyed a pitch from Cabrera and sent it soaring to center field. The ball finally came back to earth 451 feet away, nearly striking the back wall that resides well behind where the Nats store their bullpen cart during games, one of only a handful of home runs hit to that vicinity of the ballpark since it opened in 2008.

It was Wood’s first homer since May 30 in Arizona, the biggest highlight on a night the young slugger finished a triple shy of the cycle.

"Obviously that's a lot better for the team than hitting it at people," he said. "It was just good to put some runs on the board."

Cabrera managed to complete the inning, but he didn’t return for the top of the fourth, ultimately ruled out by the Marlins with a right ankle contusion. Reliever Tyler Phillips took over, but he lasted only two batters before the heavens opened up and crew chief Ron Kulpa called for the grounds crew to unfurl the tarp, putting this game into delay.

There was still plenty of baseball left, some of it encouraging for the home team, but not enough.

"I think it was good to get some runs going," Wood said. "I think that's part of the team aspect of baseball. When some guys aren't having their best days, we've got to be able to pick them up. We just weren't able to do that today."