Behind gem from Hellickson, Nats win for ninth time in 10 games

SAN DIEGO - It's easy to gloss over Jeremy Hellickson in a star-studded Nationals rotation. He doesn't have the stuff to match Max Scherzer or Stephen Strasburg. He doesn't have the wipeout curveball of Gio Gonzalez. He doesn't have the bulldog reputation of Tanner Roark.

Here's what Hellickson does have: motivation. After sitting around all winter and the majority of the spring looking for work on the heels of a frustrating 2017 campaign in Philadelphia and Baltimore, the 31-year-old right-hander was left to accept a minor league contract offer from the Nationals in late March, one that guaranteed him only $2 million if he reached the majors, with the possibility of $4 million more in incentives.

Hellickson had to swallow his pride a bit to take that deal. Five starts later, he can puff out his chest a bit more, and the Nationals can brag about the exceptional performances they've received at bargain basement prices from the most surprising pitcher in the league.

Never was that more evident than it was tonight at Petco Park, when Hellickson improbably took a perfect game into the seventh inning before finally allowing two hits and departing in favor of the Nationals bullpen, which finished off a 4-0 victory over the Padres.

"Everybody says they don't think about it," Hellickson said of his potential run at history. "But once you get to the fifth, sixth inning, you can't help but think about it."

On a crisp, 63-degree Tuesday evening in San Diego, Hellickson barely broke a sweat in shutting down a Padres team that had just been no-hit by four Dodgers pitchers only four nights earlier in Monterrey, Mexico. He cruised through the first inning on 14 pitches. He retired the side in the second inning on 18 pitches. He set down the bottom of the order in the third inning on 14 pitches. And when he got through the fourth inning on only 12 pitches, leaving his total count at 58, a buzz began to build in the park.

"You know, he got great stuff today," catcher Pedro Severino said. "He just executes every pitch down in the zone. I think: 'We're going to throw a no-hitter today.' "

The Padres put a little bit of a scare into Hellickson in the fifth when Franchy Cordero and Jose Pirela drove balls to the warning track in successive at-bats, but each was caught with relative ease. Hellickson then got back down to business in the sixth, inducing a ground ball and striking out a pair to send him back to the dugout having retired all 18 batters he had faced on a mere 79 pitches.

Now, though, came the critical seventh inning. Or, more specifically, the critical third time through the order. Manager Davey Martinez has made no bones about the club's plan for Hellickson: History says he struggles mightily when he has to face a hitter for the third time in a game. Obviously, with a perfect game at stake, the manager wasn't about to make a pitching change. But neither was he going to leave Hellickson with unlimited rope.

"You just let it ride," Martinez said. "I told (pitching coach Derek Lilliquist): 'Hey, we're not going to do anything. Don't get nobody up. Let him keep on going, and see what happens.' "

But when Travis Jankowski opened the bottom of the seventh with a groundball single up the middle, Martinez had Ryan Madson start to warm up in the bullpen. And when (after recording two outs) Hellickson surrendered a line drive to Cordero into the left field corner, the manager made the walk to the mound, asked for the ball and patted his starter on the rear end after a job well done.

"Our conversations are good," Hellickson said. "I'm never going to be happy coming out of a game. It doesn't matter if I'm at 60 or 100 (pitches). But we've talked. As long as we're winning, that's all that matters."

Up 3-0 at that point thanks to fifth-inning RBI hits from Matt Adams and Severino, then a seventh-inning RBI double from none other than Hellickson himself, the Nationals turned to Madson to pitch out of a jam one inning earlier than the norm. The veteran setup man induced a ground ball out of Pirela, quashing that jam - "Getting that one out," Martinez said. "That's what I wanted him to do." - and then Brandon Kintzler and Wander Suero (who had the luxury of another insurance run scored in the top of the ninth) finished off the Nationals' ninth win in 10 games.

Hellickson now sports a 2.28 ERA, trailing only Scherzer in the Nats rotation, but he finally owns his first win as a National. It took seven starts, and a bit more rope from his manager, but the journeyman who was out of work in March finally feels like a full member of this roster.

"Wins really don't matter, but they're nice when you throw well," he said. "It was just a fun game all around."