Corbin digs early hole, Nats can't claw back late vs. Giants (updated)

Twelve seconds. It took all of one dozen seconds for the air to be sucked out of Nationals Park this muggy Monday evening, the time between Patrick Corbin’s first pitch to Tyler Fitzgerald and his second pitch to the Giants leadoff man.

The first one was innocuous enough, a 91 mph sinker that caught the outer edge of the strike zone to give Corbin the early advantage. Then came the second one, another 91 mph sinker, this one over the plate and at the knees.

Fitzgerald took a mighty whack at it, the crack of the bat echoing throughout the ballpark, the ball soaring 416 feet to left field for a game-opening homer that set the tone for what would end up a 4-1 loss by the Nationals that felt like it was decided 12 seconds in.

What already loomed as a tough matchup on paper – Logan Webb vs. a groundball-hitting Nats lineup, Corbin on the heels of a disastrous start in Arizona, with a depleted bullpen behind him – only grew more daunting when the Nationals’ beleaguered left-hander dug his team into an immediate 1-0 hole.

"First batter of the game, if that happens, there's a lot of game left," Corbin said of Fitzgerald, who has 11 homers in his last 17 games. "Sometimes it takes you a pitch or two to locate your fastball. It's just unfortunate that he hit that one out of the ballpark."

Two innings later, the hole had grown to 4-0 via a towering home run by Matt Chapman. The crowd groaned as Corbin’s ERA climbed over the 6.00 mark for the season, anticipating yet another disastrous outing.

"It just stinks when you give up the three-run homer there on a mistake," the lefty said. "But I think there were some positives today to move forward with."

Indeed, this did somehow turn into something of a positive start for Corbin, who put the clamps on and stopped the bleeding long enough to give his team a chance. He posted zeros in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings, ultimately lasting 90 pitches and coming one run shy of an unlikely quality start.

"He was good the rest of the way," manager Davey Martinez said. "He pounded the strike zone, kept the ball down. He limited the damage. Just that one mistake got us."

It wasn’t enough to lift the Nationals to victory. But in the end, that had more to do with their offensive woes than their pitching woes.

It also had a little to do with Webb, perhaps the National League’s best workhorse, coming off a 106-pitch shutout of the Athletics his last time out. The sinker-changeup specialist had everybody eating out of his hand, chasing pitches down and out of the zone, occasionally making only enough contact to chop the ball into the ground for easy outs.

"Don't swing," Martinez said of all the pitches thrown down to his hitters tonight. "When we didn't swing at them ... he wants you to chase the ball down. He'll have to get the ball up, when he's behind. And we've got to be ready for the ball up."

Then the Nats finally started making Webb work a little bit in the middle innings, nobody more so than Keibert Ruiz. The free-swinging catcher offered at just about everything he saw in both the fourth and sixth innings, but he kept managing to just get the bat on the ball and fight it off. He saw eight pitches in the fourth before striking out. Then he saw 13 pitches in the sixth, finally showing enough patience to draw a two-out walk that prolonged the inning and ultimately may have prevented Webb from thinking about going the distance again.

"I chase a lot, you know," Ruiz said. "And with a guy like that, I had a good at-bat. I've got to be happy with myself."

Webb would be called for a balk moments later, moving Ruiz into scoring position. And when James Wood followed with an RBI single to right, the Nationals were finally on the board, and Webb was nearing the finish line, pulled one batter later with his pitch count up to 95.

"I threw him everything – four-seams, cutters, sliders, changeups, two-seams – and he just kept fouling it off," Webb said of the extended Ruiz at-bat that spoiled his night. "It's kind of annoying, to be honest."

There was an attempted late rally against the San Francisco bullpen, though it came up woefully short. Despite putting two runners in scoring position with nobody out and the tying run at the plate in the eighth, the Nats never so much as advanced anyone. Wood struck out on three pitches against Taylor Rogers. Travis Blankenhorn, facing the tough lefty while obvious pinch-hit candidate Harold Ramírez watched from the bench, also struck out on three pitches. And after Bob Melvin summoned right-hander Tyler Rogers to replace his brother, Alex Call lofted a fly ball to right to end the inning.

"(Tyler Rogers) is way better against righties. (Taylor Rogers) has struggled against lefties," Martinez said when asked why Ramírez didn't pinch-hit for Blankenhorn, believing Melvin would've immediately changed pitchers there. "We just chased. If we get the ball up and get him behind, he's been getting hit pretty good against lefties."

Thus did the Nationals snap their brief two-game winning streak and send Corbin to his 12th loss. The lefty has led the league in losses each of the last three seasons. He’s now tied with the Rockies’ Dakota Hudson for most in the NL this season, with little reason to believe he won’t continue to get a chance to pitch every fifth day the rest of the way.

His last loss was an all-timer, the first pitcher in club history to give up 11 runs in one game. The way this one started, some may have feared he was about to duplicate the feat. He did not, and by night’s end he actually had given the Nationals a chance.

These days, that’s about the best they can hope for.

"Before (the 11-run start), I felt like I was throwing the ball pretty good," Corbin said. "Sometimes those happen. Everything I threw up there felt like it was getting hit. So you try to just move on from that as quick as you can, focus on the good things you've been doing."