Nats bounce back with blowout win over Cards (updated)

ST. LOUIS – When a familiar situation presented itself this afternoon at Busch Stadium, his team holding a late lead against the Cardinals, Davey Martinez opted to once again entrust that lead to Kyle Finnegan.

The only difference: This time, Finnegan got the ball for the bottom of the eighth, not the bottom of the ninth.

Actually, there was another difference: This time, Finnegan retired the side, then watched as his teammates blew the game wide open in the top of the ninth en route to a most impressive 11-6 victory for the Nationals less than 24 hours removed from a heart-wrenching loss in which Finnegan blew a four-run lead in the ninth.

There was no drama this time. (Well, the Cardinals did score two runs in the bottom of the ninth off Jake McGee and threaten to make this interesting before Carl Edwards Jr. cleaned up the mess.) Instead, there was a clean inning of setup work for Finnegan, and a whole lot of offense from the Nationals, who left town with heads held high after earning a four-game series split against the NL Central-leading Cardinals.

"I can't say enough about how these guys are playing," Martinez said. "I said these guys play hard for 27 outs. Today's the perfect example of them getting after it again, scoring a bunch of runs and playing good baseball."

This came after they won two of three against the NL East-leading Mets at Citi Field. Thus did they embark for Philadelphia with a 4-3 record on this daunting September road trip, no small achievement for a club boasting a 49-89 record overall.

"Honestly, today was amazing," starter Josiah Gray said. "Just to see the guys rally, especially because their starter didn't do his job. Yesterday, I was watching from the hotel. And for us to go up big was awesome. The Cardinals have a playoff-caliber team. It was a lot of fun watching us play this road trip. We're going to go to Philly and whip some butt, hopefully."

There was plenty of offense in this one, the Nats churning out 18 hits against Adam Wainwright and four relievers. That made up for Gray’s latest ragged start, in which the young right-hander lasted only 3 1/3 innings.

They did all this despite a rare 0-fer from rookie sensation Joey Meneses, not to mention the loss of Keibert Ruiz, who took a foul ball off his groin area in the bottom of the second and threw his facemask to the ground in disgust.

Ruiz would remain in the game until the sixth, at which point he was replaced by Riley Adams. He was sent to a local hospital for precautionary reasons, with the team waiting for him to return postgame so he could still fly on the charter to Philadelphia.

"Honestly, his testicles were swollen," Martinez said. "And we wanted to make sure he got it checked out."

The season’s final month has long loomed as a significant test for Gray, both because of the quality of opposition he’s facing and the accumulation of the heaviest workload of his brief pitching career. The Nationals have been well aware of this and have been looking for ways to space out his starts, skipping his turn in the rotation twice already in an attempt to get him to the finish line without shutting him down altogether.

It remains to be seen how they handle the right-hander following this start, but his struggles today combined with two scheduled off-days for the team next week suggest it may be a while before he pitches again.

"We'll see what happens over the next week or so," Martinez said. "For me, it's going to be hard to completely shut him down. We could do some other things, maybe skip a start or something like that. I'm going to talk to Josiah. I'm going to talk to (pitching coach Jim) Hickey, get on board with (general manager Mike Rizzo). We know where he's at, but the other thing is to continue to build him up. ... If we can build him up this year, it helps for next year."

Gray labored from the outset against a deep and talented Cardinals lineup. He needed 25 pitches to get through the first inning, allowing a quick run on Paul Goldschmidt’s RBI single. He then got into more trouble in the second via the two results that have caused him the most trouble this year: walks and homers.

Alec Burleson got on base with a one-out walk in the bottom of the second, the second of three issued by Gray today to leave him with a National League-high 60 on the season. Moments later, Yadier Molina launched a ball into the second deck at Busch Stadium, delighting the crowd, which induced a curtain call out of the veteran catcher.

"I've given up home runs. I've given up walks," he said. "It's a matter of bearing down when those things happen. When I give up walks, trying to get a ground ball, a popup, something like that. Try to get the team back in the dugout."

Molina, and the crowd, weren’t done. When he homered again in the fourth, he was coaxed out of the dugout for his second curtain call of the day, having doubled his season home run total from two to four.

Those were the 35th and 36th homers surrendered by Gray this season, now just one shy of the club record Patrick Corbin established last year. With his innings total up to 131 2/3 innings, he may or may not be given many more opportunities to add to the total.

"I'm going through a little rut right now, the past two outings," he said. "It's up to me, and only me, to rebound for the next outing and try not to let that stuff bog me down. Try to go out there and give the team a better outing next time."

Gray departed in the fifth in what was still a tie game, thanks to some offensive support from his teammates against Wainwright. Taking the mound for the 324th time with Molina as his catcher – tied with the Tigers’ Mickey Lolich and Bill Freehan for most in major league history by batterymates – the wily right-hander wound up pitching only one clean inning, allowing four runs on nine hits over five frames.

The contributions came, interestingly enough, from the bottom of the Nationals lineup. César Hernández, who homered Sunday in New York and tripled here Wednesday night, added an RBI double to get the Nats on the board in the top of the second, plus a single and a run in the fourth and later a sacrifice fly in the seventh.

Nelson Cruz, bumped down to the sixth spot in Martinez’s lineup, had three hits and scored all the way from first on CJ Abrams’ seventh-inning RBI double.

And Alex Call, a late insertion into the No. 9 spot in the lineup after Victor Robles was scratched with a stiff neck, had the biggest game of all: four hits, including two singles, a clutch two-run double off Wainwright and then a three-run homer off Tyler Naile to put a final stamp on the best afternoon of his brief major league career.

"Today was a fun one, no doubt about it," the 27-year-old outfielder said. "Davey tapped me on the shoulder and said: 'Hey, you're going to play left today.' Obviously, I wasn't in the lineup, but I was prepared and ready to go so that when my name gets called, you try to just do what you've always done and be ready."