Abrams homers, Nats win completion of suspended game (updated)

With only seven innings of baseball to play in the opener of today’s pseudo-doubleheader at Nationals Park, every moment of consequence was magnified just a bit more. Big outs, even early in the game, were a little bit bigger. Big hits, whether early or late, carried a little bit of extra significance.

And CJ Abrams found himself delivering the two biggest hits of all, propelling the Nationals to victory long after the game technically began.

Abrams twice drove in the go-ahead run, producing a two-out RBI single in the fourth, then blasting a leadoff homer in the seventh for the decisive run in a 3-2 win over the Mets.

"When it's time, I can step up," said Abrams, who entered the day batting .343 with an .852 OPS in "high-leverage" situations, according to Baseball-Reference. "I've got confidence in myself and in my team. We're doing good."

In the completion of Saturday night’s controversial suspended game, the Nats got 6 2/3 innings of one-run ball from five members of their bullpen, with Hunter Harvey churning out five big outs in the seventh and eighth, and Kyle Finnegan pitching the ninth to seal the narrow victory in his first appearance since a blown save in Arizona eight days ago.

Abrams’ offensive heroics, most notably his homer, made it possible. The 22-year-old shortstop led off the bottom of the seventh with a 411-foot blast just to the right of center field, hammering Dominic Leone’s cutter for his third homer of the season, and first-ever at Nationals Park.

Two of Abrams’ three home runs this year have come at the Mets’ expense, his grand slam at Citi Field last month also giving the Nats a late lead.

"Just keeping it simple," Abrams said of his burgeoning power. "Hitting my pitch, not getting myself out is probably the biggest thing. Just swinging at strikes."

"He's been working hard to get his swing flatter, through the zone more," manager Davey Martinez said. "And laying off pitches, swinging at strikes. When he does that, he can hit the ball hard. We've seen it."

Under a beautiful blue sky, this game officially resumed at 12:37 p.m., some 19 hours and 54 minutes after play was halted Saturday night. A decent number of fans who suffered through the interminable wait returned for the conclusion, the crowd slowly growing as the game proceeded.

It’s not often a manager has so much time to ponder a pitching change, he can even afford to sleep on it. But knowing this game would be resuming with runners on second and third and one out in the top of the third, Martinez had all of Saturday night and most of Sunday morning to consider his options. Would he try one of his top late-inning arms in an attempt to pitch out of the early jam? Would he just go with one of his multi-inning guys and leave him out as long as possible?

In the end, Martinez decided to just put Erasmo Ramírez on the mound, hope he could get out of the third inning with minimal damage and then continue. Which is precisely what happened. Though he allowed an inherited runner to score on Brandon Nimmo’s sacrifice fly, Ramírez otherwise kept the Mets from crossing the plate during the 2 2/3 innings he pitched.

"One of the most important things as a reliever is, every time you show up with runners on, besides getting outs, try to avoid every run scoring. It will happen eventually, sometimes. But most of the time, just lower the damage, keep your team in the game. I was able to do it today, and I'm really happy about that," Ramírez said. 

By the time Ramírez departed, the Nationals had given him a 2-1 lead. Abrams’ two-out RBI single in the fourth made that possible, and now allowed Martinez to manage the rest of the game with his best relievers in search of the win.

"This first game was big for us," Martinez said. "We'll have to figure out what we're going to do the second game. But to get a victory in the first game feels good."

That meant Andrés Machado for the sixth, then Carl Edwards Jr. for the seventh. Machado did his job, but two days after blowing a lead in the series opener, Edwards once again could not do his. The veteran right-hander faced three batters, retiring only one, and was quickly hooked in favor of Harvey, tasked with pitching out of a second-and-third, one-out jam.

Harvey got what he needed: a shallow fly ball to center off Jeff McNeil’s bat. But Alex Call’s throw to the plate was way offline, allowing the tying run to score and leaving Edwards with his second blown save in 72 hours.

Fortunately for Edwards’ sake, Abrams was ready to immediately give his team the lead back a few minutes later. And fortunately for Martinez’s sake, Harvey was primed to come back to retire the side in the eighth before giving way to Finnegan, who gave up back-to-back two-out singles in the ninth but escaped to record the save thanks in no small part to a pair of nice plays by Call in center field, including the game-ending catch on McNeil's drive to deep left-center.

"This was a gritty win for us," Finnegan said. "And I think that's kind of been our identity so far this year. You're not going to put us away. We're going to stick around, even if takes 20 hours to get that win."