The idea is to play a more fundamental brand of baseball the rest of the season, Miguel Cairo explained this afternoon. The Nationals’ interim manager then watched as the Padres showed them the proper way to do that while watching his own team come up woefully short on multiple occasions.
Despite getting a jolt from CJ Abrams’ game-tying homer in the bottom of the eighth, the Nats still lost 7-2 when San Diego scored five runs off Kyle Finnegan in the top of the ninth, an inning that featured a successful hit-and-run, the game’s second successful safety squeeze, good baserunning and then a grand slam for the final dagger.
The Nationals? They ran themselves into more outs (Josh Bell accounting for two critical outs), stumbled in the field and watched another winnable game not only slip from their fingers but turn into a rout.
In short, the second half of a season gone awry opened in much the same manner the first half closed.
The Nats came up to bat in the bottom of the eighth having once again been shut out by Dylan Cease, the same Dylan Cease who no-hit them here last summer. They fared no better against Adrian Morejon or Jeremiah Estrada, who continued the Padres’ shutout bid.
But with All-Star righty Jason Adam now on the mound, the Nationals finally came to life. Jacob Young lined a one-out single to left. And just as Finnegan was starting to move around in the bullpen just in case, Abrams blasted Adam’s 2-2 changeup to right-center for his 13th homer of the season, this one tying the game and giving Finnegan reason to speed up his warmup routine.
The Nats kept the pressure on and gave themselves a golden opportunity to take the lead with runners on the corners and two out. And then proceeded to make one of the worst of a litany of bad baserunning blunders during this trying season. With lefty Wandy Peralta paying no attention to him, Bell took off from first base. Peralta finally stepped off the rubber and looked at Bell, who probably could’ve beaten the throw to second had he kept running. Instead, he pulled up and got into a rundown, hoping to buy enough time for James Wood to score from third. He didn’t come close to buying enough time before getting tagged, ending the inning in atrocious fashion.
Finnegan now entered for the top of the ninth hoping to keep the game tied. It took three batters for the Padres to untie it. Jake Cronenworth singled. Jose Iglesias executed a perfect hit-and-run with a little bloop single to the vacant right side of the infield. To that point, all three of San Diego’s runs had scored via sacrifices (two bunts, one fly).
That changed in a hurry, though, because after loading the bases with only one out, Finnegan left a 96 mph fastball up to Manny Machado and watched it soar into the left field bullpen for the grand slam that turned this game into a blowout and left the Nationals’ closer with a 4.37 ERA, not to mention zero saves since June 6.
With MacKenzie Gore getting a few extra days off following his All-Star Game appearance and Jake Irvin pushed back to Monday after he pitched the first half finale, Michael Soroka got the ball first coming out of the break. The right-hander proceeded to do pretty much what he did throughout the first half: Pitch well twice through the order, then start to fade as his workload increased.
Soroka gave up one early run, but it’s not like the Padres beat him around. They scored that run via a pair of singles and a sacrifice fly. And he allowed only one other baserunner through the fourth, that one erased on a caught stealing attempt thanks to a perfect throw from catcher Riley Adams.
The key sequence, as has often been the case for the right-hander, came in the top of the fifth. Soroka got two outs, one of them on a diving catch down the left field line by Wood, but then walked San Diego’s No. 8 and No. 9 batters in succession, bringing pitching coach Jim Hickey to the mound for a chat.
With Mason Thompson warming in the bullpen and the threat of a good start collapsing on him near the finish line once again, Soroka calmly got Fernando Tatis Jr. to pop up on his next pitch, ending the inning and ending his night with only one run on his ledger.
Alas, one run allowed over five innings still wasn’t good enough to put Soroka in line for the win, because his counterpart once again held the Nationals to zero. Cease wasn’t as sharp as he was last July 25 when he made history in this same ballpark, but he was ultimately just as effective at run prevention.
The Nats did finally get a hit off Cease when Bell lined a single to right-center in the bottom of the second. That was, remarkably, only the second hit Cease had ever allowed against this opponent. (The previous one, also a single, came off the bat of none other than Nick Senzel June 26, 2024, at Petco Park.)
They wound up with four hits off Cease altogether, though every one of them was a single. Only one runner reached scoring position against him. Nobody drew a walk. Ten batters struck out in 5 2/3 innings. By the time he departed, Cease now had 21 1/3 scoreless innings on his career record against the Nationals, with only 10 batters reaching against him while 28 struck out.
And when they gave themselves their best opportunity of the night to get on the board – two on, nobody out in the seventh – they gave it all away in a matter of seconds. Brady House lined out to right on the first pitch he saw from reliever Jeremiah Estrada, and a late-breaking Bell tagged up from second and was predictably thrown out by Tatis. Daylen Lile followed with a strikeout, and that was that.
Little did anyone realize Bell would run himself into a far more significant out one inning later.