Resilient Nats fight back to take opener in 3-2 walk-off over Mets

When the ball hit off his bat, Ryan Raburn was hoping for the best. But he honestly wasn't sure whether he'd won the game for the Nationals or come up short with a flyout to left that would take the contest to the 10th inning.

"I was watching the umpire," Raburn said of his walk-off single off Fernando Salas in the ninth inning that provided the Nationals a 3-2 victory over the Mets on Monday night. "I seen him (signal) safe. I was hoping it stayed that way, then I seen them talking, so I was like, 'Oh no.' Luckily it fell in."

But like everything else in this pitchers' duel-turned-excruciating test of mettle, it took a few more seconds to determine what actually happened. Mets manager Terry Collins wanted to make sure that left fielder Yoenis Céspedes hadn't made a sliding catch and asked for a umpire video review, which confirmed that Céspedes trapped a one-hopper as Matt Wieters crossed the plate with the decisive run.

"I was hollerin' at it," Raburn said. "In my mind, I was yelling at that thing. Fortunately, it was able to come down and get us the win."

On a night where a lot went right for the Nats - Stephen Strasburg threw seven scoreless innings, Michael A. Taylor hit a two-run homer to break a scoreless tie in the eighth after left fielder Brian Goodwin had gunned out the go-ahead run at the plate in the top of the frame and the Nats bullpen wiggled out of an eighth-inning jam - the home team still had to overcome itself to take the opening game of a seven-game homestand that will end the first half.

Matt Albers had pinch-hitter Curtis Granderson down to his last strike in the top of the ninth before Granderson lofted a two-out two-run homer to right-center to tie it and extend the Nats' bullpen misery.

"The biggest downer in baseball is a blown save late," manager Dusty Baker acknowledged. "You don't want to beleaguer the fact, but the opposition knows, as well. And so that just goes to show you that our guys keep fighting and keep playing. We know that we're going to get our bullpen fixed."

The best way to quickly erase the bad aftertaste of a blown save? Put it behind you with a walk-off that turned Albers into a winner and put 10 1/2 games between the first-place Nats and the third-place Mets in the National League East.

"We are resilient and think we believed the whole time that we had the game," Taylor said.

The winning rally started off innocently enough, with Wieters drawing a leadoff walk off Paul Sewald. Wilmer Difo tried to get a sacrifice bunt down, but popped out foul to third base. Baker sent two consecutive pinch-hitters to the plate, with Stephen Drew walking and Adam Lind driving a ball to the warning track in center field, where an out ended up making a huge difference.

Seeing center fielder Brandon Nimmo drift closer and closer to the warning track, Wieters thought he had a good chance to tag up and get to third. No one will ever mistake the slow-footed backstop for a speed merchant, but he did everything fundamentally right and ambled safely to third base, leaving the winning run 90 feet away with Raburn coming to the plate.

"Normally with one out, you make sure that you can score if it drops, but I thought that one was high enough to where I could read it and still get back and see that it looked like he was under it, so I would be able to tag," he said. "It was big to be able to get that 90 feet. If we had the ball that Raburn hit or a hard single, it would have been tougher to score from second."

Wieters didn't exactly surprise the Mets, but he did figure that it would have taken an extraordinary throw to get him at third because of how deep the ball was.

"It would have been a tough throw from that far back," he said. "I don't take the risk if I think there's any chance of me getting thrown out there. It would have taken quite a throw to make a play, so I felt pretty comfortable tagging there."

The Nats thought they had the game in hand after Taylor's 12th homer, a shot to right-center off Jerry Blevins in the eighth. Then Granderson came off the bench to tie it, which meant that the Nats had to readjust to start thinking about scratching out a run. All the while, a sellout crowd of 41,681 waiting for a pre-July 4 fireworks display was getting more than a little restless.

"We had (Granderson) 0-2 and that kind of deflated the crowd and us for a little bit," Baker said. "But then you got to get over that and try to figure out how to win the game, which we did. It was a big walk to Wieters. Another big walk to Drew. We still got to get our fundamentals down much better, especially when you're playing low-run ballgames."

Neither team could do much offensively with Strasburg and Steven Matz matching zeros for seven innings. Strasburg gave up only two hits - and one of them was Céspedes' swinging bunt that rolled 25 feet up the third base line in the first - while walking three (all in the fourth) and fanning six.

"He an outstanding breaking ball, and with the left-handed hitters out there, he threw them some great breaking balls," Baker said of his starting pitcher. "He kept us in the game. In a low-scoring game, 0-0, every run is so important. You're not winning 0-0, but you're certainly not losing, so that's what impressed me about him tonight."

Strasburg couldn't explain why he lost his control in the fourth, walking the bases loaded before getting Travis d'Arnaud looking at a called third strike.

"It happens." Strasburg said. "I can't really say what was going on. I just wasn't throwing strikes. You can't really let that snowball. You just gotta, if you throw a ball, whatever, next pitch. I kept telling myself that, and luckily I was able to make the pitch."

The Mets almost scored in the top of the eighth to take a 1-0 lead, but Goodwin came up throwing in left field on José Reyes' groundball single and made a perfect peg to Wieters, whose sweep tag nailed Nimmo at the plate. Of course, it took a video replay review to confirm the out.

"I think the most challenging part is just fielding it clean," Goodwin said. "You want to make a play, you want to get to it as fast as possible, but you have to be under control. I'm pretty much just charging it as hard as possible off the bat. Like I said, just trying to pick it up cleanly and put an accurate throw."

Baker was certainly impressed by the play from Goodwin, a guy who has played a lot more center field and right field than left.

"So left is kind of new to him," Baker said. "He takes instruction well. He learns quickly, which you want as a manager or a coach. You don't want to have to tell guys the same thing over and over, especially in a short period of time. So that says a lot for his baseball instinct and his overall intelligence that he takes instruction and then he can apply it upon command during the action. Because you don't have a whole bunch of time to think about it."