After two straight games of dominant offense and pitching, both sides regressed in a 5-1 loss Sunday.
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When the Washington Nationals departed for Arizona on Wednesday, their season was at an inflection point. They had just been swept by the Miami Marlins at home as the bullpen faltered and the offense failed to come through with runners in scoring position.
Would Washington learn from that series and continue to grow? Or, would the team allow one bad series to spiral into another, turning a promising start into a distant memory?
While the Nationals dropped Sunday’s series finale against the Arizona Diamondbacks, 5-1, the series was still a step in the right direction. They won the first two games in decisive fashion, outscoring the Diamondbacks 20-2.
The series win was the Nationals’ fifth in a row on the road, their longest active streak since 2018. They’re also at 21 road wins, the second most in MLB behind only the Atlanta Braves.
A key part of the Nationals’ unexpected success this season has been the pitching, which performed better than projected during May. To get the staff back on track after the Marlins scored 18 runs in three games, Manager Blake Butera and his coaching staff planned to instill that confidence in them again.
His players weren’t worried. As righty Clayton Beeter said Wednesday, they were in a far worse spot last year.
“We’ve been playing some good ball,” Beeter said. “We put ourselves in a position where we can afford a three-game skid.”
He may have been right. In the first two games of the season, the bullpen allowed no runs over eight innings. The starters put up strong outings as well, Foster Griffin allowing just one run in five innings Friday and Zack Littell doing the same Saturday.
Sunday was a different story. Cade Cavalli needed 88 pitches to make it through five innings, allowing four earned runs to tie a season high. Cavalli’s two strikeouts were also tied for his fewest in a start this year.
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The Diamondbacks struck early, with Corbin Carroll hitting a solo home run in the first inning. CJ Abrams answered by going deep in the second, but that would be the only run the Nationals scored as Michael Soroka, who spent the first half of last season in Washington, kept them in check for seven innings.
The Diamondbacks’ offense, meanwhile, had more in it. In the fourth inning, Nolan Arenado hit a leadoff single, then made it to third on a blooper to left from Pavin Smith because the Nationals had no one covering the bag.
Arenado scored on a slow groundball that was originally called a double play but overturned to a force out as José Tena didn’t make the throw to first in time. Tena made up for it two batters later, getting Cavalli out of the inning with a double play without allowing any additional damage.
Cavalli wasn’t as lucky in the fifth. After Tommy Troy walked, Gabriel Moreno lined a hanging changeup into the Arizona bullpen to make it 4-1.
Riley Cornelio took over in the sixth, his second big league appearance. The right-hander, who has one of the highest strikeout rates (34 percent) in Class AAA this season, struggled in his debut April 24, allowing two earned runs on four walks in two innings before immediately being optioned back to Rochester.
Cornelio’s second go-around, the day after his 26th birthday, got off to a rough start, with a walk to Smith and a double to Ryan Waldschmidt creating a jam. But he pitched out of it with two groundouts and a popup to catcher Keibert Ruiz.
Cornelio ran into trouble again in the seventh inning, loading the bases with one out on a single and two more walks. This time, he couldn’t keep the ball in the infield, as a sacrifice fly from Smith drove in a run.
The Nationals’ offense stayed flat, getting on base just twice after the third inning as the Diamondbacks closed out the win. That was a far cry from the first two games, in which Washington scored 11 runs in the sixth inning or later.
It wasn’t a sweep. But the Nationals showed in this desert series that they are capable of bouncing back from a poor performance. They’ll try to show that again Monday, when they begin a three-game series in San Francisco against the Giants.
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