Aníbal Sánchez and a taut bullpen lift Nationals over Phillies
By Jesse Dougherty,
A 95-mph fastball showed what the Washington Nationals still have to lose in this lost season. Once the pitch found Carter Kieboom’s left hand, with two outs in the sixth inning Monday night at Nationals Park, the rookie infielder crouched to the dirt and cradled his arm. He was in serious pain, enough to know that he would leave the field with an athletic trainer instead of walking to first base.
The Nationals later beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-1. Aníbal Sánchez yielded a run, four hits and four walks in five innings. The offense eked three across against Zack Wheeler, then notched two more against the Phillies’ shoddy bullpen. And Washington’s relievers were sharp from the sixth to the ninth, with Wander Suero, Kyle Finnegan, Will Harris and Daniel Hudson finishing with four scoreless innings to seal the Nationals’ first win over their NL East rivals in seven games this season.
But that moment with Kieboom was the head-shaking takeaway — at least until X-rays were negative and the club exhaled. Kieboom has a bone contusion and is considered day-to-day. The Nationals started the week by placing two more relievers on the injured list, giving them 13 players out with everything from carpal tunnel neuritis to a left hamstring strain. Manager Dave Martinez has already begun staying away from pitchers he doesn’t want to tax any further.
[Kyle Finnegan and his family dreamed of this moment. The pandemic changed it.]
It would almost be better if this club, with no shot at the playoffs, could wrap its players in bubble wrap and ship them to winter.
“Hey, we’re doing our best,” Martinez said with a sigh, right after considering Kieboom’s diagnosis a dodged bullet given the sound of ball hitting bone.
The season’s last homestand began on the final day of a bumpy summer. In five of the past eight years, the Nationals (21-32) used this fourth week of September to fine-tune. Hoodies came out as they set up their postseason rotation. Crowds grew in a blink. Pressure heightened once the weather turned.
But Monday brought no added anticipation. There was just another game, one of eight to cap the schedule, while the air cooled to 60 degrees by nightfall. Bench players stuffed cold hands into sweatshirt pockets. It felt like the start of a slow and quiet finish.
Those in baseball rarely acknowledge the standings. It can feel as if they don’t exist, as if each game happens in a vacuum, as if the players, the coaches — the security guards, even — are convinced nothing matters beyond the straight-ahead task. But that’s not quite reality. The Nationals faced the Phillies with next to no chance of advancing to the playoffs, a fact not lost on Martinez.
[Sean Doolittle is done for the season, but he wants a different D.C. ending]
He cracked while talking about reliever Tanner Rainey, who’s on the IL with a right forearm strain. Discussing Rainey’s immediate future and whether he’ll pitch again soon, Martinez hinted at the hole they’re in.
“I want to be more cautious and say that he’s probably done for the year,” Martinez admitted Monday afternoon. “Unless we win all our games and the other teams lose their games and we somehow get in this thing.”
If that’s not a mathematical impossibility, it’s very close. Had the Nationals lost this series opener, a Cincinnati Reds win would have officially eliminated them from the postseason. Martinez could have shut down Rainey with certainty. But instead, in a solid outing for Sánchez, the Nationals took a game the Phillies needed.
After Sánchez worked a scoreless first (including a strikeout of Bryce Harper with a change-up), the offense gave him a lead. Andrew Stevenson led off by tagging Wheeler for a double. He wheeled home on Asdrúbal Cabrera’s single, and Juan Soto scored on a throwing error by catcher Andrew Knapp. Then Sánchez went to working through the Phillies’ lineup. He was helped by a statistical oddity.
[Nats will hold off on assessing a lost season. But they know what went wrong.]
Coming into the game, base stealers were 25 for 25 against Sánchez since he joined Washington before last season. This summer alone, they were 10 for 10 against the battery of Sánchez and catcher Kurt Suzuki, who also caught him for most of 2019.
The combination of Sánchez’s time to the plate, his slower pitches and Suzuki’s arm can lead to a track meet on the base paths. But Monday, in a twist, Suzuki threw out runners in the first and second.
“I just tried to hold the ball,” Sánchez said of controlling the runners. “I know the scouting report, everything they know about me with a guy running on first, but today I tried to hold the ball more when I can.”
That’s how Sánchez was able to make it through five innings. With so many foul balls and patches of lapsed command, his pitch count spiked to 77 after four innings. It reached 105, the final tally, when he struck out Harper with another low change-up to escape the fifth. But he couldn’t exit before the start went sideways.
He had recorded two outs before walking rookie Mickey Moniak. Adam Haseley followed with a single, Moniak chugged to third, and Suero warmed in the bullpen. It seemed like the right matchup for Martinez, who often lauds Suero’s ability to run his cutter at lefties like Harper. Yet the manager stuck with Sánchez and, in turn, the righty committed his third balk in two appearances.
Sánchez spun to pick off Haseley at first, Cabrera wasn’t covering, and, when Sánchez never threw, the Phillies screamed “Balk!” from their dugout. It brought in a run ahead of Harper’s swinging strikeout. Sánchez shouted a bad word, his voice reaching the 400 level of an empty stadium.
But the bats and bullpen still ran with the cushion. It grew to 3-1 with a manufactured run in the sixth, just before Kieboom was hit by Wheeler and made his slow exit down the tunnel.
That became the defining sequence of Washington’s night.
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