Kurt Suzuki being thanked by Trea Turner
Amidst all of the mistakes made by the Nationals, they still found a way to comeback from a 10-4 deficit to walk-off with a 7-run ninth inning and shock the Mets and baseball fans everywhere. You could watch an entire season of all 30-teams and never see a 9th inning comeback from six runs down. At least Juan Soto and Victor Robles were consistent players for the first 8.5 innings as their teammates seemed to all be guilty of different infractions then the bottom of the 9th inning happened as the Nationals were losing 10-4 and to start the bottom of the 9th inning, Robles started it off with a single against reliever Paul Sewald who entered for some mop-up work saving Seth Lugo from a potential 6-out save as he threw a scoreless 8th inning. The Robles single seemed like an innocent single it seemed at the time, and that was followed by a Howie Kendrick lineout which was the only out of the Nats half of the inning. With Robles on first base, Trea Turner laced an RBI double into the gap which he would have legged into a triple if it was a closer game, and he just did his part in that moment and kept the line moving and it did not stop after that as Asdrubal Cabrera singled up the middle, then an Anthony Rendon RBI single made the score 10-6 which brought in the lefty reliever (Luis Avilan) to face Juan Soto who singled on a groundball to load the bases. On another day, maybe that Soto groundball is a game-ending doubleplay ball but at this moment it found a hole.
With the tying run stepping up to the plate, the Mets manager, Mickey Callaway, brought in his ex-closer, Edwin Diaz, to face Ryan Zimmerman who pinch-hit for Matt Adams. Nothing has been automatic or easy this season for Diaz who had 5 blown saves already this season and six losses. Two pitches into his appearance, Diaz missed his spot and Zim punished the fastball and hit a gapper double to make the score 10-8 which brought up Kurt Suzuki who represented the winning run, and he smashed a 99.9 mph fastball for a 3-run walk-off homer that he pulled into Section 105 in leftfield. For the 20,000+ fans who stayed, they saw the greatest 9th inning comeback in Nationals history. The Nats had 7 hits and 7 runs in the 9th inning with only one out to win it by a final score of 11-10.
“Just grinding away. Game’s never over until it’s over,” Suzuki said.
Soto had three of the four runs the Nats got off of Jacob deGrom tonight as the 20-year-old racked up his 98th RBI of the season after a 2-run bomb and an RBI double. The mistakes, the errors, and the poor execution were on full display tonight by the Nationals. If you asked the players to raise their hands if they screwed up, there would be a lot of hands raised.
The Nats got to deGrom early to take a 1-0 lead then in the bottom of the 3rd inning the first two batters reached bringing Anthony Rendon up to the plate with two on and no outs. Rendon swung at a deGrom slider heading outside below the knees, and rolled it over for a 5-4-3 doubleplay that got deGrom out of trouble and changed the momentum. The Mets came out swinging at first pitches from Max Scherzer and before the smoke cleared they scored four runs off of him. Scherzer went six full innings of 90-pitch baseball, and that fourth inning was his undoing. Other than that fourth inning, Scherzer pitched well and went to a finesse approach in his firth and sixth innings of work.
It was the bottom of the sixth inning when deGrom plunked Soto to start the inning followed by a Matt Adams single then Kurt Suzuki hit a blast that missed a home run by a few feet — and it hit off of the wall for what should have been a double — but Matt Adams was not running for some reason and went back to tag-up at first base and when the ball bounced off of the centerfield wall Adams only got to second base which held Suzuki to a single while fortunately Juan Soto scored to make the score 4-2, but the inning should have continued with runners on third and second base. Instead, the Mets still had a chance to get out of it and deGrom got Gerardo Parra to rollover into a tailor-made doubleplay.
In the 8th inning in this 4-2 game, Roenis Elias came in to get lefties out, and he promptly gave up a home run to a lefty that made the score 5-2, and in the bottom of the 8th inning Juan Soto cranked a 2-run home run to send deGrom to the showers to make the score 5-4. Elias stayed in the game to start the 9th inning to face the first two lefties, and he gave up 2 more runs in the 9th inning on a meatball to Nimmo and then Adams and Suzuki bumped into each other to blow a popup for an error which then was compounded when Trea Turner forgot how many outs he had and did not turn a tailor-made doubleplay so instead of a 6-4 game and the end to the top of the ninth inning — it turned to 10-4 quickly after a Jeff McNeil two-run single followed by a Pete Alonso two-run home run. The good news was with the big lead the Mets pulled their closer, Seth Lugo who pitched the 8th inning, and the Nats attacked Paul Sewald, Luis Avilan, and won the game off of the demoted former closer Edwin Diaz in a 7-run 9th inning walk-off. The Nats only made one out in the 9th inning!
“Something special going on man,” Zimmerman said.
@bogcommenter pic.twitter.com/KZm2MwYF01
— Dan Steinberg (@dcsportsbog) September 4, 2019
The radio call with a message at the end:
The radio call of Kurt Suzuki's #WALKOFF home run is the song of the summer.@CharlieSlowes // @DaveJageler pic.twitter.com/bOavak1BxI
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) September 4, 2019
