MINNEAPOLIS – If the Nationals believed a day off in the Land of 10,000 Lakes would do them good and allow them to return to action tonight with no residual effects of their shutout loss Wednesday in D.C., they were greatly mistaken.
The Nats batters who dug in tonight against the Twins’ Zebby Matthews looked no better than the guys who dug in Wednesday afternoon against the Reds’ Nick Lodolo. They made quick outs. They drew zero walks. They scored zero runs.
And when it was all over, they had once again wasted MacKenzie Gore’s pitching efforts, trudging out of Target Field on the wrong end of a 1-0 ballgame, their second straight shutout loss.
The Nationals haven’t scored a run in 21 innings now, their last runners to cross the plate coming way back in the sixth inning Tuesday night via Riley Adams’ two-run single. They’ve barely even given themselves a chance to score again since.
"We didn't hit," interim manager Miguel Cairo said. "We got three hits, I think. Sometimes it goes like that. They got three hits, too. They just got one more run than us."
Tonight’s opposing starter didn’t look all that fearsome on paper. Despite good strikeouts numbers, Matthews was the owner of a 6.53 ERA and 1.632 WHIP in 14 career starts entering this game. Opponents were batting .406 off his fastball this season. Then the Nationals made him look invincible.
Matthews retired the first 11 batters he faced, none of them managing so much as to get the ball out of the infield. Luis García Jr. finally connected for the team’s first hit with a double off the wall in right-center, a 406-foot shot that would’ve been a homer in 23 of 30 major league parks but not this one. He was stranded at second base when Josh Bell immediately popped up on the next pitch.
"I think that's a homer, man," García said with a sly grin. "I don't know, I hit it good, but at the last moment I see the ball hitting the wall, so I said: 'Oh, my god.'"
Daylen Lile had a two-out single in the fifth, but he went nowhere, as well. And that’s all the Nats managed in six innings against Matthews: two hits, zero walks, one at-bat with a runner in scoring position.
Lile tried to ignite a rally in the eighth against reliever Griffin Jax, ripping a double down the right field line and then stealing third. Jacob Young drew the team’s first walk in 20 innings, putting runners on the corners with two outs for CJ Abrams. But the leadoff man sent a routine fly ball to right, and that was that.
"He came today and hit early," Cairo said of Lile who notched two of the Nationals' three hits. "He did his job early and had good at-bats and gave us a chance running the bases, too."
On the heels of arguably his worst start in two years – he was charged with eight runs in 2 1/3 innings – Gore entered this one needing a significant bounce back performance. But while the bottom line – one run allowed over five innings – may have looked good, the process to get there was anything but.
Gore found himself facing an uphill climb all night, forced to pitch his way out of jams in both the first and second innings. He walked three of the first seven batters he faced, and by the time he departed he had matched his career high with six free passes.
"I thought the stuff was good. But the walks ... I just didn't throw the ball very well," he said. "I felt good, and I felt the stuff was good going in. It's just when you get into long counts, long innings, that's when the stuff probably looks like it's down."
Somehow, the left-hander avoided damage. He induced a double play grounder to short with two on and one out in the second. He got a picture-perfect throw from batterymate Adams to nail Harrison Bader to end the fourth, Adams’ eighth caught stealing in his last 15 attempts.
Gore couldn’t fully escape a fifth inning jam, though, one that included two more walks (of the Twins’ No. 8 and No. 9 batters) and two wild pitches that allowed Matt Wallner to reach third with one out. That proved critical when Byron Buxton sent a hard fly ball to left, caught by James Wood but plenty deep to score Wallner and give Minnesota a 1-0 lead.
Gore would buckle down and strike out Ryan Jeffers with a 95 mph fastball on his 101st and final pitch of the night, salvaging a strong bottom line but surely feeling like he could have been much better and pitched deeper into this game.
"Look, at the end of the day, it's about runs," he said. "But we've got to look at how we're getting there. We're better than that. I feel good. I shouldn't be walking that many people. It's not like I feel off or anything. I'm just not ending at-bats, and they're kind of long at-bats. Clean that up and get ready for the next one."
It was up to the Nationals bullpen to keep this a 1-0 game, and that group walked the tightrope as well to do so. Cole Henry loaded the bases with two outs in the sixth, so Cairo summoned Konnor Pilkington for the third time in four days and watched the lefty get Wallner on a fly ball to right to end the inning.
Luis García (the reliever, not the second baseman) had trouble cruising through the bottom of the seventh, his final fastball to Jeffers clocking it at an eye-opening 100.6 mph.
Of course, it all meant nothing if the Nats lineup couldn’t push across at least one run and avoid a second straight shutout loss.