Gore's gutsy start wasted as Nats swept by Dodgers (updated)

It wasn’t his best, nor his most overpowering performance. Most of the afternoon, to be honest, felt like an uphill climb for MacKenzie Gore, with long at-bats, high pitch counts and traffic on the bases.

This may have been one of the most important starts of the young left-hander’s career, though. Because on a day when he wasn’t at his best, he still found a way to surrender minimal damage to one of the toughest lineups in baseball. And was given the chance to extend himself beyond the limits the Nationals normally impose on him.

That Gore’s gutsy start still came during a loss – 2-1 to the Dodgers – stings in the moment. Unable to mount any kind of sustained offensive attack the last three days, the Nats wound up getting swept by Los Angeles, putting a real damper on the positive momentum they created in winning three of their previous four series.

"We're playing well," manager Davey Martinez said. "We're playing good defense. It's not easy to hold that team over there to just two runs. We've just got to hit."

The Nationals scored a grand total of four runs in these three games, delivering a grand total of only four hits with runners in scoring position the entire series. And because of that, they wasted a really strong outing today by their young lefty.

"We're playing well," Gore said. "It's frustrating when you lose. But we're playing good. Just keep coming in and competing, and we'll be OK."

Gore came away from the day with a loss charged to his name. Anyone attempting to evaluate this performance would be wise not to consider that particular stat.

Facing a relentless Dodgers lineup that made him work like few others have, Gore found a way to make pitches in the most important situations he faced and finished with only one run allowed over six innings, his pitch count climbing to a season-high 102.

"Look, you give up one run against that team," he said, "that's a positive."

A leadoff homer by Teoscar Hernández off a high changeup in the top of the second seemed to portend a bad afternoon for Gore, who followed that up with back-to-back singles to really put himself in a bind. But he escaped that jam, then another in the third after allowing a leadoff double to Mookie Betts. He did so by striking out Shohei Ohtani for the second straight at-bat, then getting Hernández back by inducing a 5-4-3 double play.

Inning-ending twin-killings were plentiful for Gore, who did it again in the fourth and again in the fifth, this time getting Ohtani in perhaps the biggest moment of the game. With runners on the corners and one out, he got the world’s most famous ballplayer to reach at a first-pitch slider and ground to second, where Luis García Jr. started a 4-6-3 double play to end the inning and leave Gore pumping his fist in excitement as he jogged off the field.

"It was a big spot. And also, he can run," Gore said of Ohtani. "When he hit it off the end (of the bat) a little bit, it was going to be close. They made a great turn. I was fired up."

His pitch count at 90, Gore could’ve been pulled and few would’ve battled an eyelash. But Davey Martinez let him retake the mound for the sixth, not only to face the left-handed Freddie Freeman but also the right-handed hitters who followed. Gore responded by striking out Hernández with a curveball, then watched as Jacob Young made a diving catch of Kiké Hernández’s sinking liner in right-center. And with an unsuspecting Freeman all the way at third base with his head down at the time, Young easily tossed the ball back to first base to complete another double play to end both the inning and Gore’s day.

He gave up seven hits. He walked two. He agonized as the Dodgers fouled off 21 of the 55 swings they took against him. But he emerged from all that with only one run on the board, an encouraging sign if ever there was one.

"Today was a growth moment for him," Martinez said. "Going back out there for the sixth inning, knowing he already had 90 pitches. He did really well. I'm very proud of him. He gave us everything he had, and he grinded it out."

If only Gore’s teammates had been able to provide any run support. They could not, at least not off Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who picked up right where his Dodgers pitching mates did Wednesday night. The Japanese sensation retired the first five batters he faced today, extending the team’s streak of consecutive batters retired since the second inning Wednesday to 27 (the equivalent of a perfect game).

The Nationals did finally give themselves a couple of chances. Young hustled his way to a one-out double in the third but was stranded there. Joey Meneses (briefly Yamamoto's teammate with the Orix Buffaloes in 2019) led off the fourth with a double, remarkably his first extra-base hit since March 30 in Cincinnati. He, too, was stranded there.

All told, the Nats went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position through seven innings, a frustrating trend made all the more frustrating when they considered only one clutch hit may have been enough to win this game.

"We had a chance today to score a run, just by moving a guy over (and) the next guy hit a fly ball," Martinez said. "Those are the little things that matter. If we do that, it's a tie game right now. We have to get back to that. And the big boys in the middle of the lineup have to start driving in runs for us."

The challenge became tougher when Jordan Weems surrendered an insurance run in the top of the eighth, a run that proved critical when Meneses finally came through with an RBI single in the bottom of the inning that only cut the deficit to one.

"It's difficult in that situation," Meneses said, via interpreter Octavio Martinez. "But you try to stay positive and just stay united as a team. And then hopefully break out of it. You know, hitting is not easy in general."