Another rough start by Gray sends Nats to another series loss (updated)

The Nationals know what Josiah Gray looks like at his best, slinging up any of seven different pitches to keep hitters off-balance and induce a host of swings and misses while escaping the occasional jam.

The Nationals also know what Gray looks like at his worst, unable to locate his fastball, unable to put away hitters, unable to extend outings due to high pitch counts.

And two starts into his 2024 campaign, the 26-year-old right-hander has resembled only the latter version of himself, not the former.

Hoping to bounce back from a disappointing Opening Day outing in Cincinnati last week, Gray instead regressed in some ways, getting roughed up by the Pirates early and often and failing to make it out of the fifth inning during what wound up a 7-4 loss in a rain-delayed series finale at Nationals Park.

One week after allowing seven runs on eight hits and two walks in four innings against the Reds, Gray was charged with six runs on seven hits and three walks in 4 1/3 innings today, digging his teammates into a big hole early that made the rest of the affair mostly moot.

"Honestly, I'm embarrassed to come out here and do that for the guys," he said. "It doesn't feel good. It doesn't sit right with me. I know that I deserve better. They deserve better."

Unable to mount much offense themselves against Pittsburgh lefty Martin Pérez, the Nats missed a second straight opportunity to win the rubber game of a series and thus close out the first week of the season with a 2-4 record and a daunting schedule coming up (Phillies at home this weekend, followed by a nine-game road trip to San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles).

They trailed by a hefty margin throughout, so the task was already daunting. But the Nationals lineup didn’t help itself much, making quick and usually weak contact against Pérez, who needed only 85 pitches to complete 6 2/3 strong innings.

"He has good stuff that moves and is in the strike zone a lot," Lane Thomas, now 2-for-24 on the season, said of Pérez. "So I think on days like that when a guy is good, he's probably getting a lot of quick outs. And I also think later in that game, we were probably a little too aggressive."

They tried to get something going late, plating two runs in the eighth off reliever Luis Ortiz via back-to-back, two-out RBI singles from Trey Lipscomb and Luis García Jr. But Jacob Young, just called up from Triple-A Rochester after Victor Robles went on the 10-day injured list with a strained left hamstring, whiffed at a high, 3-2 slider from Aroldis Chapman to strand a pair on base.

In spite of heavy precipitation up and down the East Coast all week, the Nationals had somehow managed to avoid any disruptions through the first two games of the series. That good luck ended today when the start of the finale was delayed 1 hour, 10 minutes by a brief-but-strong round of late-afternoon showers.

That turned this into a twilight game, not that Gray was helped at all by the shadows. The Pirates were all over him from the get go.

Gray loaded the bases before recording an out. Five of the first seven batters reached against him, and the two that didn’t (Jack Suwinski, Henry Davis) drove in runs with sacrifice flies. All told, four runs crossed the plate during a 33-pitch top of the first.

It wasn’t much better in the second, which began with a Michael A. Taylor double and later included a Bryan Reynolds RBI single to make it 5-0 and drive Gray’s pitch count up to 49.

"When you're down five runs in the first two innings, and you're playing comeback, it's tough," manager Davey Martinez said. "I'm not going to make any excuses, because it's part of the game. But if that game stays close, I think you see a different outcome."

The right-hander’s issues were twofold. His misses were nowhere near the strike zone, especially his sinker, which kept tailing up and away in a fashion all too reminiscent of the last two seasons. And when he did get ahead in the count, he couldn’t finish anyone off: Pittsburgh’s first four hits all came with two strikes.

"For me, it's the 0-2's to the 3-2's," Martinez said. "If he wants to pitch deep into games, we've got to get him to finish (batters in) three or four pitches or less. That's the key."

Gray did manage to settle down somewhat, retiring six in a row during one stretch that saw him start to rely much more on his slider than anything else. But his pitch count remained sky-high, and that left Martinez with little choice but to pull his starter after 96 pitches in only 4 1/3 innings.

Gray’s totals through two starts: 13 earned runs, 15 hits, five walks and 176 pitches in only 8 1/3 innings, equating to a gaudy 14.04 ERA and 2.400 WHIP. Not the kind of numbers they expected from a reigning All-Star, the man they chose to give the ball to on Opening Day.

"I don't want to go too far down that line of just trying to reinvent the wheel," he said. "I've got to come back tomorrow. Obviously, this one is going to suck for tonight. But come back tomorrow, look at the good things, look at the positives and see what we can do."