The homestand finished with a frustrating loss at the hands of the Braves with a final score of 13-2. This game did not go by the script as Tanner Roark showed he didn’t have his “A” game today as he missed spots badly and his pitches were flat. Before his day was up, Roark gave up 7 earned runs in just 5 innings while the Nats bullpen got worked hard again while covering 4 innings of relief.
Trevor Gott pitched a scoreless, but long 6th inning, and what we found was Trevor Gott had only pitched once this year in back-to-back games. Gott appeared yesterday and again today but then came out to pitch the 7th inning in his 2nd inning of work. Gott struggled with his command in the 7th inning and faced the most batters he has all season. Gott pitched 2.0 inning appearances 4 times this season but never after he pitched the game before and any comparison to Triple-A is not apples to apples to the Major Leagues where you are pitching max effort with every pitch. The 7-2 game ballooned to 13-2 after Gott was relieved by Blake Treinen who had very little in his tank from yesterday where Treinen warmed for 3 straight innings and was not used.
For the bright spots, they were few. A 2-run home run by Brian Goodwin got the Nationals to within a 3-2 deficit, and Joe Blanton looked good in relief. Adam Lind had 2 hits on the day as did Stephen Drew.
Roark did not pitch to his defensive alignments and the groundballs were all hit hard indicating that they weren’t sinking enough to induce weak contact and those balls found holes in the porous Nats infield the entire game.
Jose Lobaton had another game to forget as he had a throwing error and allowed 3 wild pitches to elude him and one of them early in the game was a pitch he should have gloved with sounder mechanics that led to a run. Lobaton was 0-3 on the day with a doubleplay grounder. His batting average dropped to .127. Lobaton’s record when he starts is now an abysmal 13 loss record in 18 games.
This homestand finished with a 2-5 record, and there has been the growing frustration that general manager Mike Rizzo and Dusty Baker addressed before the game. The Rizzo comments can be read here.
“This organization is constructed by me,” Mike Rizzo said shouldering the blame for some of the issues.“Everything lays at my front door and we’re working on it. It’s a difficult thing to do is to improve yourself during the season, especially when you’re one of the lead dogs. When you’re leading, nobody wants to help you. Everybody wants to hurt you and take from you..”
Here was some of Dusty Baker’s points on the state of the team.
“They’ve all struggled, which one would you pick out to replace?” Dusty Baker said pre-game. “Because I hear people in the stands, ‘Hey Dusty, take him out of there.’ Okay, who would you want me to put in? Because everybody, at some point in time, has struggled… I told you back in March that the save by committee don’t really work.”
