For Nats, it’s Friday night frights in an 11-0 loss to Orioles

Milone, a journeyman who made pit stops in D.C. in 2011 and 2018, tossed six scoreless. The Nationals dropped to 4-6, which, in another year, would be a sliver of a 162-game marathon. But with only 60 games on the schedule and a postseason race in full swing, an uneven start gets magnified.

Baltimore, supposed to be a bottom-feeding team, is floating at 6-7. The Miami Marlins, supposed to be the worst club in the National League East, are 7-1 after defeating the New York Mets, 4-3, on Friday night. Somehow, these records all matter as much as baseball can in 2020. Early is the new late. But when shortstop Trea Turner was asked whether he views it that way, he swiftly offered a flat “nope.”

“If we do, it’s just going to snowball on us,” Turner explained. “There’s no point to. I think it’s more perspective. More teams are in the playoffs this year, so you’ve got more room for error, more opportunities to make up ground. That being said, it is a shorter season, and you need to take advantage of every game.”

The Nationals already had entered the weekend with a few pitching questions. The scheduled starters were Sánchez, Austin Voth and to be determined for the series finale. Now Stephen Strasburg, sidelined since late July with nerve irritation in his right hand, is expected to make his season debut in that spot. Max Scherzer is dealing with a tweaked right hamstring, played catch Friday and is hoping to return by early next week. And reliever Sean Doolittle is still sifting through lowered velocity and mechanical tweaks.

Sánchez was some sort of a constant, even if his first outing was up-and-down. But the Orioles left no gray area. They were all over him from the start. Nine of their first 10 swings connected. Sánchez got just two swinging strikes in his first 40 pitches. Back-to-back doubles put the Orioles up 1-0 after three batters. Three hits and two walks put them up 3-0 by the end of the second. A double and single put them up 4-0 by the end of the third.

After walking Renato Núñez in the second, Sánchez shouted at himself and into the empty ballpark. Pitching coach Paul Menhart jogged out to settle him down. There was light activity in the bullpen, with Kyle Finnegan throwing against a wall. Sánchez settled down a bit, stranded the bases loaded, then wobbled through the rest of his night.

He finished at 91 pitches and yielded 10 hits. His last runner scored on a three-run homer allowed by Harper. Against Harper, who had been solid in middle relief, the Orioles hit a single, a homer and two doubles to plate four runs in the sixth.

“Without a routine, it’s really hard to see what’s going on,” said Sánchez, who had 11 days between his previous start and this one because of postponements. “Right now, I can see something between the games with fans and no fans and the things in your mind. But at the end, the result is there. I need to figure out how to control my game in all those situations.”

The offense, meanwhile, could do nothing to solve Milone. The 33-year-old lefty cruised through three innings on 39 pitches. Pedro Severino, a former Nationals catcher, called each from behind the plate.

Second baseman Starlin Castro stayed hot, collecting a double and single in his first two at-bats. Howie Kendrick ripped a hit up the middle in the fourth to keep his usual rhythm.

But the bats were otherwise quiet. The Orioles stretched their lead to double digits in a messy seventh inning for reliever Wander Suero. In the bottom half, Manager Dave Martinez lifted Kendrick to give utility man Wilmer Difo his first at-bat of the year.

“This game was about as lopsided as I’ve seen in a long time,” Martinez said. “They swung the bats well; we didn’t swing the bats well.”

This was and always will be a single game in a larger season. Suero, knocked around in his second appearance, is still shaping up after isolating for 14 days in July because of potential exposure to the novel coronavirus. Sánchez, at 36, has had starts in which he was all too hittable. A mercurial offense — scorching one night, dormant the next — is expected in a sport predicated on hitting a round, leather ball with a round, wooden bat.

It’s just that each result is warped by the truncated schedule. Set aside questions of whether wins and losses matter while a pandemic still rages around the country. Those are prudent and should be examined more thoroughly than the latest bullpen move. But the standings are about to get very odd, very quickly, and the Nationals hardly competed against a team they should always have a reasonable chance to beat.

They will have another shot Saturday. That’s one element of baseball that hasn’t changed.

Read more on the Nationals:

Source:WP