Nationals get a needed change of scenery, blast the Mets to end three-game skid

So now, in the middle of a pitching change he triggered, Soto ambled with his helmet beneath his left arm. He smiled and shrugged at his teammates. He crossed the foul line and took a plastic water bottle from third base coach Chip Hale. And before he drank, the 21-year-old raised it above his right shoulder, grinning some more, for a small toast to the Nationals’ bench.

It was warranted. In the fifth inning alone, the Nationals scored seven runs on eight hits. All nine batters in the order reached base. Shortstop Trea Turner did so twice. The effort was complemented by Patrick Corbin, who yielded two runs (one earned) in six solid innings. But the offense, having struggled for much of this season, was the show.

Asdrúbal Cabrera finished 4 for 4 with two homers, two doubles, a walk and five RBI. Soto notched a single, a double and a homer and drove in three runs. Turner shook a weeks-long lull with two singles and a two-run shot. That’s how the Nationals snapped a three-game losing streak and improved to 5-7.

“It was fun to see the boys break out of it,” Manager Dave Martinez said before reaching for an understatement. “They came out and swung the bats well today.”

For more than five weeks, from July 3 to Aug. 9, the Nationals sheltered in Washington and played a dozen games at home. They slept in their own beds. They sunk into a rhythm of arriving in the afternoon, training or playing, then slipping out with a boxed dinner. If there was a way to be comfortable during the novel coronavirus pandemic, that was it.

Then, in a sharp change of routine, they boarded a charter train to New York on Sunday evening. It’s simple logic that, in 2020, moving is more dangerous than staying put. Travel has already been a component for coronavirus outbreaks with the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals. That’s why Martinez sanitized the areas where he, bench coach Tim Bogar, hitting coach Kevin Long and General Manager Mike Rizzo sat.

“We’d been in D.C. for so long, it just kind of seemed like maybe a continuation of spring training,” Corbin said. “So this was a way to kind of mix things up. I think it was a good time to get on the road.”

Martinez, like Corbin, felt the shift in scenery could have jolted the Nationals. They had lost three consecutive games going back to Wednesday. They were nearly swept by the Baltimore Orioles this past weekend before their tarp got stuck during a passing storm, forcing Sunday’s game to be suspended. Their bullpen, meanwhile, is trying to stay afloat until Sean Doolittle solves his mechanics and lagging velocity.

Doolittle took mop-up duty in the ninth inning Monday, allowed a homer to Brandon Nimmo on his second pitch, then continued to get hit hard while recording three lineouts. His fastball topped out at 90 mph. When he finished the game, he looked around and shot his arms in the air, an act of self-deprecation in an empty park.

But an extremely low-leverage situation was the logical next step. It existed, in part, because of how well the Nationals fare against Matz. In two starts against Washington this season, Matz has allowed 13 runs and 15 hits in 17⅓ innings. Eight of those runs came on eight hits Monday. It started when Cabrera pulled a hanging slider out to left in the second.

After Cabrera homered off reliever Chasen Shreve in the seventh, the switch hitter was 8 for 10 with five extra-base hits against left-handers this season. His four extra-base hits Monday marked a career high.

“I like to hit in this ballpark,” said Cabrera, who played for the Mets from 2016 to 2018. “I feel really good at the plate when I play here.”

Cabrera was quickly joined by the rest of the lineup. Turner’s third-inning homer, his second of the year, came two games after he broke an 0-for-18 slump. Then Soto’s kissed the sky.

When it landed, well beyond the mechanical apple in center field, there was a small thud against the black batter’s eye. Ron Darling, a member of the Mets’ broadcast crew, told viewers he had never seen a ball hit there. Soto began dancing before he even reached the dugout steps. He couldn’t have known yet that it was the farthest blast of his young career.

“I followed the ball all the way. I wanted to see if I could hit it in the apple,” Soto said with a laugh. “Yeah, I see it, and it was way far.”

The offense took the fourth inning off. Call it storing energy. Because soon 12 batters faced a mix of Matz and reliever Paul Sewald, who was tagged for six runs on six hits in two-thirds of the fifth. Turner, Josh Harrison, Howie Kendrick, Carter Kieboom and Yan Gomes collected singles. Soto whacked his ground-rule double, his third double of the year, and Cabrera also doubled from the left side of the plate. Harrison punctuated the outburst with a sacrifice fly.

From there, the end was slow and quiet. Soto poked a single before he was lifted for Michael A. Taylor. Corbin battled to finish the sixth and spent his night succeeding without his best stuff. His fastball velocity wavered between 88 and 91 mph. His command slipped in a handful of at-bats. The Mets’ first run scored when he sailed a throw into center field.

But he still helped shepherd a few crooked numbers into the win column. It had been six days since the Nationals last wound up there.

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