WASHINGTON – When the sixth straight Boston Red Sox hit flew out through the haze, slicing through the heaviest District of Columbia air and out to center field, the man with mutton chops and a mustache in the center of the pitcher’s mound tossed his head back and looked skyward, chewing his gum violently, for what else was there to do?
That man, Tanner Roark, had surrendered nine runs in five innings to one of the best teams in baseball. His Washington Nationals struggle to erase one-run deficits these days. What chance did they have to make a seven-run climb?
That baseball, hit by Xander Bogaerts, confirmed to the Nationals that they would fall back to .500, at 42-42, with an 11-4 loss. It’s the latest in a season this team has been so utterly unconvincing since the 2013 campaign. The Nationals did not make the playoffs that year. They have never made the playoffs after falling seven games behind in their division. They trailed first-place Atlanta by 7 ½ games in the National League East pending the Braves’ late result at the New York Yankees on Tuesday night.
That baseball, then, did something neither Roark nor his teammates could do Tuesday, something they have not been able to do for weeks – something this organization has never proven itself capable of doing since it established itself as an annual contender. This team is blundering around in a haze of its own creation, unable to slice through it to the safety its talent says should await it on the other side of the wall.
The Nationals can look to the sky, they can look down, but they have no choice but to look forward and hope they can find their way through some oppressive air and catch their breath on the other side. They have never done so before – though, as the Red Sox could tell them, that does not mean they never will.
The Nationals have lost four straight, 19 of their last 28 games, 14 of their last 18 – too many games to responsibly blame one thing or person for the trouble.
If, under duress, one had to point to one reason why the Nationals are not winning, one answer would be that their stars are not playing like stars. Whatever the numbers say, whatever agent Scott Boras argues about Bryce Harper’s hard-hit balls, however legitimate Daniel Murphy’s struggles are with his balky knee, neither man is producing the way he is capable of producing – the way the Nationals counted on them to produce.
Anthony Rendon is a legitimate All-Star candidate, one of the steadiest presences in this lineup since he returned from injury a couple months ago. But when Trea Turner singled and Juan Soto bunted around the shift to start the first inning, Rendon swung at the first pitch left-hander Brian Johnson threw him. He popped it up. No one moved.
Then Harper struck out, something he is doing more often this season than in any year since 2014. No one moved up. Then Murphy popped out to third base. No one moved up. Given a situation in which the Nationals did not need a hit to score a run, the heart of the team’s order could not move up a runner.
In the top of the second inning, the Red Sox got two quick hits against Roark, creating an identical two-on, no-out situation. Rafael Devers grounded back to Roark, which moved a runner to third. Eduardo Nunez then hit a three-run homer. Even that ball had fallen short of the left field wall, which it cleared by feet, a run would have scored. Putting the ball in play with runners on yields runs.
Roark didn’t pitch well Tuesday. For a time, it looked as if he would. For a time, it looked as if he would have his most efficient outing of the season against the best lineup he had faced all year, holding the Red Sox to that three-run shot. Then came the fifth inning and six straight hits, capped by Bogaerts’s shot to center. Nationals manager Dave Martinez let him finish the inning, then let him pitch the sixth and hit for himself in a six-run game in the bottom of the sixth.
At that point, one could argue that the difference between one more inning of Roark and an inning of someone in the bullpen is not significant enough to merit letting Roark hit when a pinch hitter would provide a better chance of some offense – any offense. Instead, Martinez seemed to prioritize taking weight off the bullpen moving forward instead of trying to win the game he was playing. Perhaps a shift in mentality is required. He and his players are beginning to show signs of making that shift.
Ultimately, who knows whether the decision mattered. That Harper trotted to first thinking he had a homer in the fourth and had to settle for scurrying to second with a double probably didn’t matter in the end, either, but for a team preaching urgency, the optics were not good.
That Roark gave up nine runs – he has given up at least four runs in three of his last four starts – is a bigger problem. That the Nationals’ offense manufactured a couple of runs in the fourth inning, then got a solo homer in the sixth from Pedro Severino – but nothing more – epitomizes the problem that has doomed them repeatedly. The Nationals’ stars didn’t lift them when they needed them. Their rotation hasn’t been the same. Their rookie manager is caught in the middle of it all, trying to find a way through the mud as he and his team can’t stop digging deeper.