It was an emotional night for Patrick Corbin who lost his good friend Tyler Skaggs and wore his former teammates’ jersey number 45 tonight. Through a rain delay that went over an hour and a quarter, Corbin came back out to pitch and went seven strong innings and departed with a 2-1 lead. Unfortunately, Wander Suero blew the save in the 8th inning, and the game went tied to the bottom of the 8th inning when the Nationals loaded the bases, but Ryan Zimmerman grounded out pushing the game to the 9th inning tied. The right guy at the right time came up to the plate in Trea Turner who knocked in Yan Gomes via a walk-off double. This was the third walk-off of this season for Turner which includes two walk-off home runs.
“Straight luck,” Trea Turner said about finding himself in these situations. “I got one I could get a barrel on and square ’em up.”
Turner is correct that their is a luck element to find yourself in a situation to walk-off, and he has only had four possible walk-off opportunities this season and Turner has a 75% WOOSR (walk-off opportunity success rate) with the only failure on June 23rd.
The Nationals have seemed quiet with the bats in the past few days, but jumped out to a quick 2-1 lead in the first inning after Juan Soto homered off of starter Zac Gallen who only went two innings and exited after the rain delay. Part of the issue was the Nationals did not score again until the walk-off in the ninth inning. The Nats only accumulated seven hits in the game and two of those belonged to Turner and two more for Soto.
After game, Corbin was naturally emotional. How long he wears jersey number 45 is anyone’s guess. This first inning did not start off well, but Corbin made some big pitches when he had to plus Juan Soto was perfectly positioned to catch the third out on the warning track on a line drive with two runners on-base.
“I looked at our roster first to see if anyone had [number 45],” Corbin said. “I didn’t see anybody, so I just thought it’d be a good idea.”
With this win, the Nationals moved to two games above .500, and they picked up a full game on the Braves who lost tonight while also climbing to just one game of a Wild Card spot. This team is 24-10 since May 24th which is the best in all of baseball.
