-1745819772711.png){kind=logo}
ST. LOUIS – Wednesday night’s offensive explosion may have created an uplifting moment for a Nationals club reeling from a week of turmoil. But anyone who predicted that lopsided win over the Cardinals would serve as a springboard for bigger and better things to come hasn’t been watching this team enough all year long.
The 2025 Nats can be defined by many things, but high on the list is inconsistency. The results of one game rarely have any carryover effect into the next one. And boy was that on display tonight during an 8-1 lambasting at the hands of the Cardinals.
Overwhelmed yet again by Miles Mikolas, the otherwise struggling St. Louis right-hander who somehow has owned this particular opinion for some time now, the Nationals put forth one of their weakest offensive showing of the season. They finally scored their lone run in the top of the eighth, finishing with four hits, three walks and five total bases.
As such, they trailed from the get-go and never seriously threatened to come back, certainly not after the Cardinals torched the bullpen for six late tack-on runs to finish off the series victory and send the Nats (38-55) off to Milwaukee to close out the first half of a season that few will want to remember.
"Take a deep breath and understand the talent in this room is able to win baseball games on a daily basis," right-hander Michael Soroka said. "That's what we get to: Looking back on the good things we did in this first half. And I think there is a good amount. It's just a matter of being consistent with it."
Mikolas entered this game on the heels of the worst start of his career, arguably one of the worst starts you’ll ever see. The Cubs clobbered six homers off the right-hander, who tied a modern major league record no pitcher would ever want to tie. There were rumblings in St. Louis all week he had been tipping his pitches, leaving everyone on edge entering this outing.
Thing is, there’s no greater cure for Mikolas than a date with the Nationals. For three years now, he’s struggled against pretty much any lineup that has faced him … except for this one. This one has consistently proven to be no match for the soft-tossing veteran.
Here are the down-and-dirty numbers: In six starts against the Nats since 2023, Mikolas is now 3-1 with a 1.62 ERA and 0.930 WHIP. In 79 starts against everybody else during that span, he’s 21-29 with a 5.28 ERA and 1.324 WHIP.
"He mixes up the ball very well," interim manager Miguel Cairo said. "He keeps the ball down, too. Good sinker, good slider, a really slow curveball. And he really kept us out off-balance today. He made some pitches we couldn't handle, and you've just got to tip your hat to him. He pitched well. It goes like that sometimes."
Mikolas may or may not have been tipping in the past, but the way the Nationals approached him tonight, they looked like they had no idea what was coming out of his hand. Hitters took fastballs over the plate, swung meekly at breaking balls and changeups and made precious little solid contact.
"I felt like he had a good curveball going today," shortstop CJ Abrams said. "We chased a lot today. We didn't get our pitches to hit, and it kind of showed."
Abrams actually led off the game with a ground-rule double to the gap in right-center, an encouraging sign if ever there was one. But his teammates couldn’t advance him even 90 feet, and thus began a sustained, troubling run of weak at-bats.
By the time he departed with two outs in the sixth, Mikolas had allowed only one other hit and one walk (to the final batter he faced, James Wood). More staggering than that, during one fruitless stretch of offense, 13 of 15 Nationals batters either struck out, grounded out to first or grounded out to the pitcher.
"He mixes his pitches good," Cairo said. "He gives you a different look of his pitches. The first time around, he threw a lot of fastballs. The second time, he started using his curveball more. We've just got to stay a little more patient, looking for your pitch to hit. But nothing you can do. It's in the past. We've got to move on."
So it really didn’t matter how Soroka or anyone from the Nats bullpen fared tonight, because it still wouldn’t have been enough. And yet, Soroka did his team no favors with a laborious start that lasted only four innings even though only two runs crossed the plate against him.
Unable to record quick outs, with the Cardinals racking up 22 foul balls, Soroka needed 91 pitches to complete his four frames (more than twice as many as Mikolas threw during the same period). There were only four hits (three singles, one double) and two walks in there, but it was enough to take a 2-0 lead and drive up the right-hander’s pitch count so much that Cairo (who before the game said he hoped his starter would go six innings) had no choice but to pull him after four.
"I felt like there was no in-between tonight. It was either things were thrown really well and they missed it or fouled it off, or is was just bad, uncompetitive pitches," said Soroka, who ends his first half 3-7 with a 5.35 ERA despite a 1.158 WHIP. "I think I shot myself in the foot a little bit."
In spite of all that, the game was still technically within reach, the Nationals trailing 2-0 in the bottom of the sixth and perhaps feeling better about their chances against the St. Louis bullpen than its starter. But then Mason Thompson made a mess of his one-third of an inning of relief, with some notable help from his infield defense.
Making his third appearance following his second Tommy John surgery, Thompson let the first five batters he faced reach base. Officially, he allowed three singles, a double and a walk. Unofficially, he was done in by two plays not made in the field – one by Nathaniel Lowe, one by Abrams – that weren’t ruled errors by the official scorer but easily could have been judged in that manner.
By the time it was all over, five runs had crossed the plate, all of them charged to Thompson. Jackson Rutledge would give up another in the seventh on Willson Contreras’ solo homer. And at that point, a once-close game was well into rout territory.
The final insult: Moments after they scored their first run in the top of the eighth thanks to an overturned call, Abrams didn't fully run out his grounder to third, not realizing the Cardinals still needed to turn the double play to end the inning.
"After the play got overturned, I thought there were two outs still," he said. "I've got to be more aware than that."
"He apologized," said Cairo, who also approached Abrams for a brief conversation at his locker after his postgame press conference. "At least he knew what he did. I respect that. We're on the same page here. They're playing hard. I'm always going to respect that. They've been battling every day. The good thing is, he came to me and he told me what he did. We learn from our mistakes, and it's good he recognized that."
