Punchless Nats swept by Cardinals (updated)

The Nationals spent the season’s first six weeks playing well enough to claim a winning record but doomed to a sub-.500 mark almost exclusively because of the majors’ worst bullpen. They spent the seventh week playing like a team that has no business believing it should have more wins than losses.

Today’s 6-1 loss to the Cardinals was the final blow to a miserable homestand that saw a major regression in offense, some regression in starting pitching and not much opportunity for the bullpen to make any difference, positive or negative.

The Nationals won the opener of Tuesday’s doubleheader against the Guardians in wild fashion, then dropped five in a row to fall to a season-worst seven games under .500. They were swept by the Cards this weekend, scoring a meager three runs during 27 innings of tortured baseball.

"We're frustrated," starter MacKenzie Gore said. "This was a tough homestand down here. We've got to be a little better as a group. We're doing a lot of good things. We're just not doing quite enough to win right now."

Though seven of his team’s 17 wins entering the day were comeback wins, Davey Martinez knows the importance of taking an early lead and not relying on the lineup to rally late. He often brings this up on his own, without prompting.

"For us to score first, you see the difference in the dugout: 'OK, everything's going to be OK,'" the manager said this morning. "The constant fighting back, we've been really good at it. But to score first and say: 'OK, now we just go out and play baseball,' it gives our pitcher a little bit of relief."

Roughly two hours later, Lars Nootbaar belted Gore’s second pitch of the game into the second deck down the right field line for a 1-0 lead. And for the 12th time in their last 15 games, the Nationals surrendered the first run.

"It can swirl on you in a hurry, definitely, especially when we haven't been scoring, really," first baseman Nathaniel Lowe said. "We just need to do a better job of simplifying and winning one pitch at a time, whether the deficit's big, or it's a close game or we're up big. I think this weekend's a good show that we need to go out and do the little things right."

Gore would serve up another leadoff homer in the second, this one by Willson Contreras on a curveball down in the zone, eliciting some murmurs among the crowd from some who must’ve been worried this game was about to get ugly.

"You want to keep the ball in the ballpark," he said. "You've got no chance on homers. But I thought we threw the ball well."

Gore did, and he deserves credit for that. He brushed off those two early blasts and allowed only two of the Cardinals’ next 17 batters to reach base against him. And the first of those (Nootbaar) was erased via the latest pinpoint throw by Riley Adams. The Nats’ backup catcher has now thrown out three of the last five would-be basestealers against him.

Gore, who entered the day with a major-league-leading 68 strikeouts, started getting swings and misses as his afternoon progressed. That included a pair of strikeouts in the third, one in the fourth and two more in the fifth.

His pitch count at 80, the left-hander was given the opportunity to retake the mound for the seventh, at which point he may have hit a wall. Nolan Arenado led off with a double, then after a one-out walk of Ivan Herrera, backup catcher Yohel Pozo reached up to send a high 0-2 fastball back up the middle for an RBI single that made it 3-1.

Curiously enough, Gore would get Jordan Walker to fly out to center for the inning’s second out. But then with his pitch count at 101, he appeared to motion to the dugout – first with his glove, then with a nod of the head – to come get him. Martinez complied, taking the ball from his ace even though the left-handed-hitting, No. 9-batting Victor Scott II was due up.

"Y'all know I want to have the ball and be out there as long as I can," Gore said. "But understand where I was at physically. It's just communicating. It's early, and understand where I was at physically. It was a close game, and honestly I thought that was everything I had. That's why we did it."

"Look, I had a guy here for years (Max Scherzer) that would tell me when to go get him," Martinez said. "Sometimes I went out there to get him, and he'd scream at me. But I knew he had enough. When (Gore)'s like that, and he's motioning like that, knowing we had a couple guys up (in the bullpen) already, I'm good with it. Would I have liked him to get one more hitter? Absolutely, because he was that good."

Andrew Chafin entered from the bullpen and got out of the inning only after surrendering an RBI single to Scott, leaving Gore charged with four earned runs over 6 2/3 innings and leaving the Nats trailing 4-1. Brad Lord, in his return to the bullpen, would surrender a two-run homer to Arenado in the eighth to extend that deficit to 6-1.

Though they’ve shown a penchant from making up lost ground with some regularity this season, the Nationals haven’t been doing it recently. Already stymied at the plate through the first two games of the weekend, they continued the trend in today’s finale.

Lowe delivered the lone run off Miles Mikolas, driving a slider the other way for his seventh homer of the year in the bottom of the fourth. Otherwise, the Nats offense remained stuck in the mud, squandering a couple of opportunities with runners in scoring position in the second and sixth innings.

"He mixes and matches pretty well," Lowe said of Mikolas, who owns a 5.02 ERA over the last three seasons but is now 3-1 with a 2.06 ERA in five starts against the Nationals in that same time. "He stayed on the corner for the most part. I really got only one mistake to hit, and thankfully I hit it today."

One day after their manager pleaded for more patience at the plate, the Nats drew two walks in the series finale, both by third baseman José Tena. They finished the weekend with only five free passes drawn to go along with three runs and 18 hits across 27 innings.

"Mikolas, he didn't throw us very many balls down the middle. He was in and out," Martinez said. "But then again, as I look, we had a couple pitches to hit. We just missed them."