Photo by Marlene Koenig for TalkNats
Finally, the Nats notched two wins in a row with a solid 5.0 pitching performance from Erick Fedde who had 9 strikeouts to tie his career high. He could have gone longer in this game but his defense made some mistakes behind him that prolonged some innings and ran his pitch count up. The offense came through for 6 runs but not from the usual hitters. Juan Soto and Josh Bell were a combined 0-9 although Soto had a sacrifice fly.
“He’s got really good stuff. He’s got major league stuff,” manager Davey Martinez said of Fedde. “The question we always run into is whether he can throw enough strikes or not. When he does, he can get outs — and he can get to those five or six innings, maybe seven innings. Like I said, he’s done well these last couple outings. We need to keep him there. The biggest thing is consistency.”
The rest of the position players combined for some good days from Yan Gomes to Trea Turner to Kyle Schwarber who combined for 3-hits each plus Ryan Zimmerman had a pinch-hit home run.
The only downer on the day was “every day” Wander Suero who left the game with an apparent injury to his oblique area. The Diamondbacks had a key injury to Tim Locastro when he was caught stealing for the first time in his career in 30 attempts. He jammed his finger on the slide and was removed with a dislocation of the finger and will be placed on the IL.
The ninth inning was some Keystone Cops action from the Nats which included a Turner error on a tailor-made doubleplay ball plus a dropped popup by Starlin Castro that fortunately still resulted in a heads-up out 5-7-6 forceout, and fortunately Kyle McGowin closed out the win but was not credit with a save.
