I figure our chances are good to take two out of three from the Washington Nationals in the nation’s capital this weekend, but as I thought when I read over the series preview for this one, I figured this was the one we were most likely to drop. It was a matchup of soft-tossing lefties, with Mitch Bratt going for us in only his fourth Major League start, while Foster Griffin, who has clearly emerged as the ace of the Nationals’ staff this season and who pitched a scoreless inning for the National League in the All-Star
Game the other week, was going for them. Sad to say, it went pretty much as I expected.
Bratt, who hadn’t gotten through five innings in his first three starts, was looking good early for us, even as the team around him wasn’t helping him out so much. He pitched around a one-out walk in the first to put up a zero in a 13 pitch inning, and then he put up another zero in the second despite having two strikes called as balls (and not challenged by James McCann, who was behind the dish for us this afternoon) to put the leadoff man on base with a “walk”, followed by Ketel Marte botching an easy double-play grounder with one out that would have ended the inning but instead went for an error. At that point, Bratt should have been out of the inning, but instead, he had runners on first and second with only one out. Much to the young man’s credit, he didn’t get visibly upset or rattled, but instead got back to work and recorded the last two outs efficiently enough that, despite the mishaps around him, he only needed 17 pitches total to close out the inning. This put him at 30 pitches through two, with no runs allowed, which was a very good sign.
Meanwhile, our newly reshuffled top of the lineup—Corbin Carroll batting first, Gabriel Moreno in the three spot, Ketel Marte batting cleanup for the first time in his career—couldn’t do anything against Griffin in their first time through. Our first baserunner was Nolan Arenado, who drew a four pitch walk with two outs in the second, and who was advanced to second by our first hit, a Tim Tawa ground ball single to left. James McCann, batting eighth, couldn’t do anything with it, though, so the game remained scoreless through two.
We finally drew first blood in the top of the third. Paul Waldschmidt beat out an infield single on the ninth pitch of a very good and patient at bat. Griffin then hit Carroll in the ribs with a pitch to put runners on first and second. Perdomo laid down a perfect bunt to advance the runners into scoring position with one out, and then Moreno blooped a single into center that drove in both Waldschmidt and Carroll:
Sadly, as you can see at the end of the clip above, Gabi tried to stretch his single into a double as the throw from center game to the plate, but Nationals catcher Keibert Ruiz immediately threw to second and Gabi was out by a mile. Ketel Marte then flew out to right to end things there, but what the heck, we had a lead! 2-0 D-BACKS
The lead was very short-lived, though, as it turned out, as Mitch Bratt came out for the bottom of the third to start his second time through the Nationals’ batting order, and it…. didn’t go great. He struck out James Wood on four pitches to start things off, but then surrendered either walks or base hits to the next seven batters in the Nationals’ lineup. The exact sequence was walk-double-double-walk-single-triple-walk, with four Nationals crossing the plate. Bratt did pick off CJ Abrams as he tried to steal third, thanks in large measure to a great play by Nolan Arenado on the back end, which was nifty, but he wound up getting through the entire Nationals lineup a second time in that inning, finally getting Kelbert Ruiz to pop out to shallow center for the final out. 4-2 Washington
Bratt then surrendered a leadoff single to James Wood to lead off the bottom of the fourth, but that was promptly erased by a quick double play, and a pop-up on the infield for the third out in a good 10-pitch inning for the kid. He did surrender a leadoff home run to CJ Abrams to start the bottom of the fifth, and then gave up a one-out single to Washington center fielder Jacob Young that led to Young then stealing both second and third before young Mitch managed to record the final out and, for the first time in his major league career, completing five innings of work. 5-2 Washington
Meanwhile, after those two runs we’d scored in the third, we didn’t even have another baserunner off Griffin until Ildemaro Vargas led off the top of the seventh with a line single to left. He was promptly erased by a Nolan Arenado one-pitch double play groundout, but Tim Tawa followed that dismal performance with a double to left, and then James McCann singled to right to drive him in. That finally chased Griffin from the game—he had thrown 108 pitches at that point—and it was bullpens all the way home.
Happily, our bullpen put up zeros, with two innings of scoreless ball byu bullpen newcomer and guy I’d honestly never heard of Gerardo Carrillo, and one perfectly clean inning from Taylor Clarke. Sadly, their much-maligned bullpen did the same, retiring the last seven Diamondbacks hitters in order to secure the win for the Nationals.
Loss Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs
Heroes: none
Sinister Sidekick: Nolan Arenado (3 AB, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, -10% WPA)
Villain of the Piece: Mitch Bratt (5 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 5 BB, 3 K, 1 HR, -32% WPA)
In Bratt’s Defense
To be fair, I thought that Bratt actually showed a lot of fortitude, and despite the fact that, yeah, his starting performance lost the game for us, there were some good things:
- The innings he pitched well, he was very efficient (13 pitches in the first, 17 pitches in the second despite the foolery behind him, 10 pitches in the fourth);
- The way he didn’t let Marte’s error behind him mess him up or melt him down, unlike how we’ve seen certain former aces and protein drink spokespeople become unglued;
- The way that he kept grinding through that interminable bottom of the third, despite getting apparently no support from his catcher or his pitching couch (there were no mound visits recorded in that half inning, even though this 23-year-old kid was getting lit up by the best offense in baseball and allowed seven Nationals hitters in a row to reach base).
And that leads in nicely to the Gameday Thread stuff, and the Comment of the Game. It was a reasonably well-attended thread, with 231 comments at time of writing and a number that went Sedona Red. Most of the top rec-getters were various people’s hello posts, so I had to dig into the response comments to find today’s CotG, which goes to VWBeetle, with an assist from kilnborn:
I agree with this wholeheartedly—both comments, in fact. Well said.
So once more we head on into Sunday with the rubber match of a series awaiting us. Kohl Drake takes the mound for us in only his second major league start, while Veteran Presnce (TM) and innings absorber Miles Mikolas goes for Washington. Make sure you have some coffee and/or mimosas ready, as this one is full-on morning baseball, with first pitch scheduled for 10:35am AZ time. TheReal Ramona will have the recap, making this an all-Tucson recap weekend….I hope you can join us!
As always, thanks for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks!
