Diamondbacks keep Juan Soto at bay and take care of the Nationals again

The Washington Nationals didn’t lose, 7-2, to the Arizona Diamondbacks because of those at-bats. The rest of the lineup didn’t hit, either. While keeping the Nationals (31-65) in it, Aníbal Sánchez yielded three runs in five innings. Behind him, Andrés Machado entered and was tagged for four runs in the sixth. Josh Bell and Nelson Cruz finished a combined 0 for 7. Victor Robles’s third homer, a solo shot off Bumgarner in the eighth, only trimmed the deficit to five runs.

But those lefty-lefty matchups with Bumgarner were another odd blip of Soto’s season. The 23-year-old saw 10 pitches in three plate appearances. Every one of them was a four-seam fastball in the low 90s. Of Bumgarner’s seven strikes against him, not counting the ball in play in the first, just two were in the zone.

“I don’t know what I was doing,” Soto said, smiling and shaking his head. “At the end of the day, I was just trying to hit the ball to the other way, but I was just swinging too hard and getting out of my stance and stuff like that. For me, it was just one of those days.”

Typically, if a pitcher wants to bait Soto with balls that are high, low, inside or outside, the result is a walk or late-count contact, once the guy on the mound gives in. This game brought the opposite, inverting Soto’s well-documented approach. Bumgarner lasted eight innings, holding the Nationals to two runs, walking none and striking out eight. During his second meeting with Soto, a fan chanted “440! 440!” in the lower bowl, nodding to the record contract offer Soto recently turned down.

Those numbers will trail him wherever Washington travels — or wherever Soto plays with his next club, should he be traded ahead of the Aug. 2 deadline. By going 0 for 4 with three strikeouts Saturday, Soto snapped a career-best 27-game on-base streak. The Nationals, meanwhile, have dropped 17 of their last 19 contests. They have been outscored by the Diamondbacks, another last-place team, 17-3 in the series.

“His fastball was actually really good. He was throwing it both inside and outside,” Nationals Manager Dave Martinez said of Bumgarner. “It’s kind of uncharacteristic to see Juan off balance the way he was.”

“Stubborn, I guess. I don’t know why I kept throwing him fastballs. But I did,” Bumgarner explained of how he attacked Soto. “After the first at-bat, when he pulled the first one foul, my thought was, it’s a strike, but if you hit another one, then I’ll say that’s pretty good and I’ll change it up. But we just went at him, and then I just got stupid with it and kept on till it didn’t work. But it worked tonight. I know that’s obviously not the approach to have against a player like that, but tonight it was.”

Why did Keibert Ruiz and Luis García both sit Saturday? Martinez wanted to stack his order with righties against the 32-year-old Bumgarner. So with Ruiz, a switch hitter, that meant swapping in the right-handed Tres Barrera ahead of Ruiz playing in Sunday’s finale. With García, a left-handed hitter, Martinez replaced him with switch-hitting utility man Ehire Adrianza. The decisions did not jolt the offense.

Why did the Nationals option Josh Rogers to the minors? “Before he left, he was working on different pitches,” Martinez said of the move that corresponded with Rogers, a left-handed pitcher, being reinstated off the injured list Friday. “I know we want to develop a change-up, he’s working on a different breaking ball. But more than anything, it’s to keep him stretched out. … The more starters we can have down in the minor leagues, the better we’re going to be here in the long run.”

Had Sánchez and Bumgarner ever faced each other? Once on July 29, 2010, when Sánchez, then 26, threw a complete-game shutout for the Florida Marlins. Bumgarner, 20 and pitching for the San Francisco Giants, went six innings in a 5-0 loss. They have now combined for 696 career appearances.