Weather: 82 degrees, Partly Cloudy.
Wind: 14 mph, Out To CF.
Umpires: HP--Rackley, 1B--Barber, 2B--Marquez, 3B--Bellino.
Time: 3:30
Attendance: 38,044
Section 116, Row SS, Seats 5-6 – 3 rows below the main concourse, about
2/3 of the way down the 3rd base line
The weather was perfect. The game was not. Even The Force couldn’t save
the good guys this afternoon.
Arizona’s Ketel Marte set the tone by homering on Strasburg’s very
first pitch. Adam Jones knocked another one out later in the inning to give the
visitors a quick 2-0 lead.
The Nats did respond impressively in the bottom of the frame. Turner
tripled to start things off, and quickly scored on Eaton’s sac fly. Soto and Adams
hit back-to-back shots with two out to give Washington a 3-2 lead.
Unfortunately, the Diamondbacks continued their assault on Stras as
soon as he got back on the mound. They once again led off with a home run
(Christian Walker this time), and regained the lead on a Nick Ahmed triple and
a Carson Kelly single.
At this point, with 5 dingers in the first inning and a half, we
thought the teams might break the all-time major league record of 13 in a game,
set the previous Monday when Arizona visited Philadelphia. Unfortunately, only
one team continued to hit, and it wasn’t the hometown favorites. Strasburg
retired the first two D-backs in the 3rd, but two singles and a
double produced one more run, and Marte struck for Arizona’s 3rd
leadoff homer in 4 innings (and his second of the game) an inning later.
Strasburg finally kept them off the board in the 5th, before
yielding to the Washington bullpen.
After the first inning, the Nats kept putting runners on base against
rookie starter Taylor Clarke, but failed to score any. Approaching 100 pitches,
he was removed from the game with 2 down in the 5th, just one out
away from getting credit for the victory. Andrew Chafin came in to fan Soto on
3 pitches, and Washington didn’t fare much better against the other 3 relievers
they faced.
Meanwhile, Javy Guerra blanked Arizona for the next two innings, but
Kyle Barraclough could only retire one of the five batters he faced in the 8th.
With 3 more runs on the board and the game out of reach, Davey turned to Trevor
Rosenthal, who had actually turned in two shutout innings in his first
post-rehab appearances. After he appeared to be reverting to his early-season
self by walking the first two batters and allowing a single to load the bases,
I decided to head for the exits.
Since there were only 10,000 Obi-Sean-Kenobi bobbleheads to be had, I
arrived around 1:20 for the 4:05 start. Although I certainly wasn’t the first
in line – it took 15 minutes once the gates opened for me to get in and get mine
– I was probably excessively cautious; an hour later would have worked fine.
Also have to mention the fine early-inning bare-handed catch by a young fan
(maybe 13?) who was sitting just one row in front of us, 6 seats away.
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