Offense finally goes quiet in road trip finale (updated)

PHOENIX – A wildly successful road trip for the Nationals ended as it began: With a dud.

They may have won four straight thanks to some unprecedented offensive fireworks in every game, but sandwiched around those wins were a pair of losses featuring very little in the way of offense, including today’s 3-1 defeat at the hands of the Diamondbacks.

Less than 24 hours after producing the first 10-run first inning in club history to clinch the first four-game streak with at least nine runs scored in club history, the Nats were shut down by ace Corbin Burnes (before he departed with an elbow injury) and Arizona’s bullpen.

It was a tough way to wrap up an otherwise excellent week on the West Coast, but it shouldn’t overshadow what did take place in both Seattle and Phoenix, where this lineup finally showed off the best version of itself and offered hope for what may still be to come the rest of this season.

The Nationals still head home having won 10 of their last 14, creeping ever so close to the elusive .500 mark.

"We're playing well," manager Davey Martinez said. "We had a good road trip. A very good road trip."

If Saturday night’s first inning represented the best-case scenario the Nationals could ever conjure up, today’s first inning represented pretty close to the worst-case scenario. At the plate, the exact same lineup that knocked out Brandon Pfaadt before he could record an out went down in order against Burnes, who struck out the side on 13 pitches.

More concerning than that was what took place on the mound in the bottom of the frame. Mitchell Parker entered this start with a well-established penchant for first-inning woes, something the left-hander vowed to correct after he gave up three quick runs to the Mariners on Tuesday to open this road trip. He certainly didn’t fix anything today in the road trip finale.

Four batters in, Parker had surrendered a single to Ketel Marte, a deep fly out to the warning track to Geraldo Perdomo, an RBI double to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and a 466-foot moonshot to Eugenio Suárez that may have landed somewhere inside the Grand Canyon.

By the time he walked off the mound, Parker not only trailed 3-0, he found himself the not-so-proud owner of a 10.50 ERA in 12 first innings so far this season.

"I was throwing strikes; they were just getting good swings on them," he said. "Better execution would probably be a better move. Just try to limit the hard contact as much as possible."

The only saving grace? Parker has been pretty effective once he gets out of the first, and he once again proved that today. After following the Suárez homer with a walk of Josh Naylor, he proceeded to retire 14 batters in a row, completing the fifth on a mere 62 pitches. That lowered his ERA (post-first inning) to a very respectable 3.40.

"I've definitely got to take the good things out of it," he said. "After the first inning, I felt like everything settled in and we were getting back on track to where we want to be. Kept us in the game as much as possible. That's the whole goal, just to try to keep us in the game."

Parker got the chance to start the bottom of the sixth, but a four-pitch walk of Perdomo brought Davey Martinez out of the dugout and signaling for Eduardo Salazar. The recently recalled reliever found himself in a jam after an ill-advised (and wild) throw to second by José Tena, but Tena immediately redeemed himself with a nice throw to the plate moments later. Salazar then escaped a bases-loaded situation with a three-pitch strikeout of old pal Ildemaro Vargas (making his Diamondbacks debut).

The Nationals trailed 3-1 at the time, the pitching staff having given their hitters a chance to rally after a rough first inning. But they certainly weren’t going to do it against Arizona’s starter, one of the best in the game.

Burnes did what neither of his rotation mates could do this weekend and completely shut down the hottest-hitting lineup in baseball. The 2021 NL Cy Young Award winner did it by utterly exploiting the Nats’ well-established habit of chasing non-fastballs out of the zone, especially down.

Burnes threw 19 curveballs today, only two of them landing in the strike zone. The Nationals still swung at 13 of them, whiffing at eight of those. Thus did they go 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position through the game’s first three innings.

"It's hard, especially with the fastball he's got," said catcher Keibert Ruiz, who struck out with runners on second and third in the second. "You just want to stay on the fastball and react to the breaking ball. But he was making good pitches. Sometimes it's going to be like that. You have to keep your head up and don't try to chase those breaking balls."

Burnes looked well on his way to a gem, but with two outs in the fifth he surrendered a line drive single to CJ Abrams, immediately signaled to the home dugout and cursed. The subsequent conversation with Arizona’s trainer didn’t last long, and Burnes walked off the mound after 4 2/3 scoreless innings with what the Diamondbacks later revealed was elbow tightness that will require an MRI on Monday.

The Nationals took advantage of an unfortunate situation and plated their first run of the game when Nathaniel Lowe took an 0-2 pitch from lefty Jalen Beeks the other way for an RBI single. But they couldn’t push across anything more, leaving themselves still in search of a late rally in search of a weekend sweep.

"You've got to give credit to Corbin," second baseman Luis García Jr. said, via interpreter Mauricio Ortiz. "He pitched really well. He was executing his pitches. Both the cutter and the curveball in the zone, they kind of looked like the same pitches."