May 21, 2023 – Nats 6, Tigers 4

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/WAS/WAS202305210.shtml

 

Time: 2:49

Attendance: 20,580

 

Washington’s offense has relied much more on base hits than power to score runs in 2023, and they carried this approach to perfection in the bottom of Sunday’s first inning. Lane Thomas, Jeimer Candelario, Joey Meneses, and Stone Garrett led things off with four consecutive singles to bring in two runs, and a later groundout by Dominic Smith plated a third. The team wound up with a robust 18 hits for the game. They changed the script on a leadoff homer by Riley Adams to start the 2nd and a two-run shot by the normally power-challenged Ildemaro Vargas an inning later. They continued to get men on base over the final five frames but weren’t able to bring any of them home, going 2-for-18 for the game with runners in scoring position.

 

Josiah Gray, who’s currently among the league leaders in ERA, was on the mound for the Nats, but he had to weave his way in and out of trouble, due primarily to walking an uncharacteristic 6 Detroit batters in his 5 innings of work. With some help from his defense, however, he was able to limit the damage to a single run. The Tigers narrowed the gap against Washington’s bullpen, as Andrés Machado gave up a pair of runs in the 6th, retiring only one of the five batters he faced. Kyle Finnegan put out that fire but allowed an unearned run the following inning, cutting the home team’s lead to two. Carl Edwards Jr. and Hunter Harvey restored order to close things out, each pitching a 1-2-3 inning to cement the victory.

 

The weather was perfect – 10 out of 10 according to the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang. Our early arrival at Nando’s for lunch seemed to catch the staff a bit by surprise. Metro was fine both ways. With low expectations, we were not at all surprised to find that the escalator behind section 301 was, once again, not operating after the game. The attendance was quite a drop from Saturday, which drew over 30,000, fewer than a third of whom received one of the promotional Star Wars shirts.