On Harvey's struggles, questionable at-bats and the decision to pull Gore

James Wood was the center of attention Monday night, and he may remain so for the foreseeable future. But a whole lot of other stuff happened during the course of the Nationals’ wild, frustrating, 9-7, 10-inning loss to the Mets.

And it’s worth revisiting some of those other key developments through the course of the game …

* Another rough night for Harvey
There haven’t been many players on the roster this season more consistently reliable than Hunter Harvey, but the right-hander is in a legitimate pitching slump right now. And it’s costing his team games.

Harvey entered Monday’s affair having been scored upon in two of his three previous appearances, not to mention four of his last nine. He endured through an awful 10th-inning meltdown in San Diego last week. And then he basically re-lived it Monday night against the Mets.

Harvey faced six batters and retired only two. The three hits he surrendered were a three-run homer, a two-out double and an RBI triple. He got only two swings and misses out of his 24 pitches. And of the five balls that were put into play against him, four featured exit velocities of at least 101.5 mph, while the fifth still clocked in at 98.6 mph.

All of a sudden, Harvey’s ERA has skyrocketed from 2.08 on June 2 to 4.24 on July 2.

“The last few weeks have been super frustrating,” he said. “But it comes with playing this game. We have stuff to figure out.”

* Poor, sometimes questionable, execution at the plate in big moments
This game never needed to reach extra innings. The Nationals had two golden opportunities to drive in the go-ahead run, in both the bottom of the eighth and ninth. And in each case, they put forth some head-scratching at-bats that didn’t come close to delivering the desired results.

After Joey Meneses’ double scooted past Mets right fielder Tyrone Taylor with two outs in the eighth, the Nats had the go-ahead run in scoring position. Ildemaro Vargas came up to bat with a chance to drive Meneses in, and then proceeded to … bunt.

Yes, a bunt with two outs and a runner on second. Making matters worse, Vargas slid headfirst into first base in a failed attempt to beat the throw, potentially slowing himself down in the process. Even if he had been safe, Meneses would only have been able to advance to third, leaving the game in the hands of the next batter: Wood.

The bunt wasn’t called from the dugout, according to a source. Vargas did that on his own, perhaps believing it was his best chance of extending the inning. Strangely enough, he came up to bat with two outs in the 10th, swung away and delivered a two-run double.

The bottom of the ninth saw Wood reach second base on a leadoff dribbler that turned into a two-base error by pitcher Jake Diekman. With the game tied, the Nationals simply needed to get Wood home. But Keibert Ruiz swung at a first-pitch sweeper and grounded out to third, preventing Wood from even having a chance of advancing. Luis Garcia Jr. did advance him to third, but that came on a grounder to first for the second out of the inning. Jacob Young then drove a ball to right, but Taylor made a running grab of it just before the ball cleared his head for what could have been a game-winning hit.

“One, we’ve got to try to get that guy over,” manager Davey Martinez said of the ninth inning. “And we’ve got to try to get the ball in the air. We had three shots to drive him in; we just couldn’t do it.”

* Gore’s departure in the sixth
Given the final score, it’s easy to forget the Nationals actually were pitching a shutout into the sixth inning, thanks to MacKenzie Gore’s excellent start. But Gore’s pitch count kept climbing, and by the time he recorded the second out of the sixth, that count was up to 104.

Martinez walked to the mound, and for a moment it appeared Gore might have been able to say something to convince his manager to leave him in. But then Martinez signaled to the bullpen, and Gore didn’t put up much fight, walking back to the dugout to a big ovation from the crowd.

“I felt good, but it was the right thing to do,” Gore said of Martinez’s decision to pull him. “That’s a lot (of pitches). And 5 2/3 … as much as I wanted to stay in, it was the right thing to do.”

Derek Law proceeded to give up another inherited runner (that’s now 19 of 27 he has allowed to score) plus two more runs after CJ Abrams committed an error and Francisco Alvarez doubled to left-center, turning a 2-0 lead into a 3-2 deficit.

“I stretched him to try to get one more hitter,” Martinez said. “At (104) pitches, I’m not going to push him anymore. And he got a big hitter out. We had it mapped out where we thought Law could get these other guys out. Honestly, he got the ball on the ground. And then all of a sudden, he gave up a double.”