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PHOENIX – At the end of a long Saturday night, at the end of a stretch of five straight late-night games on the West Coast, the last four of them Nationals victories, Davey Martinez was asked who had been available out of his bullpen to close out this one.
“Um, you saw the availability,” the manager said with a laugh. “That’s what we had.”
With Kyle Finnegan needing a night off, and with Jorge López designated for assignment earlier in the day, what they had was Jackson Rutledge, Jose A. Ferrer and Cole Henry. And after five runs crossed the plate with Rutledge on the mound in the sixth, and after Ferrer tossed a scoreless seventh in his third appearance in four nights, that left Henry to finish out an 11-7 win over the Diamondbacks.
It got a little dicey in the bottom of the eighth, with Henry allowing three straight batters to reach base. But the rookie escaped the jam unscathed, thanks in part to a fantastic defensive play by James Wood and Keibert Ruiz, and then he closed out the ninth with no drama in arguably the biggest relief appearance of his young career.
“It’s definitely been pretty fast. I feel like just yesterday I was throwing in blowouts,” he said. “It’s been cool to get in there in close games, the adrenaline pumping, everything’s on the line.”
Henry’s ascension from oft-injured starting prospect to late-inning relief mainstay indeed has been quick. But his performance has warranted the fast climb up the bullpen depth chart.
Henry opened his big league career with five straight scoreless appearances, albeit all of them in low-leverage spots. He then endured a nightmare, five-run inning during a blowout loss to the Mets to close out April. Since then, he was tossed 14 scoreless innings, completing a perfect May and lowering his ERA to 2.14.
Included during this run: a stretch of nine hitless relief innings spanning 11 appearances.
The extended no-hitter came to an end in the eighth inning Saturday night, though, when after two straight walks Henry served up a base hit to left by Arizona’s Randal Grichuk. Then, Wood came to the rescue, firing a two-hop strike to the plate, with Ruiz applying the tag on Pavin Smith for the critical second out of the inning.
“It was awesome to see. That was obviously a very pivotal moment,” Henry said. “Now, I’ve got runners on first and second. I have (Alek) Thomas up, and I don’t have to face Corbin Carroll possibly with the bases loaded. That’s a big advantage. Huge out.”
Henry responded by striking out Thomas to end the inning with the 11-7 lead intact. He then got Carroll to fly out to open a 1-2-3 ninth. It wasn’t officially his first career save, because the Nationals won by four runs. But it felt like it to Henry, who is growing more and more comfortable in these kinds of moments.
“You just take a deep breath and try to focus on each pitch and not try to make too much of the moment,” he said. “Obviously, the crowd can make it a little bit more than it would be. But I just tried to go after the hitters. Hitting’s hard, so throw the ball in the zone and see what happens.”
