Soroka's strong spring ends on a sour note

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Everything was going swimmingly for Michael Soroka. He had bounced back from his first rough start of the spring, completing the first four innings of tonight’s start against the Marlins on a mere 48 pitches.

And then came the top of the fifth, at which point the narrative took a sharp turn in the opposite direction.

Unable to get out of that frame, Soroka threw a whopping 43 pitches to eight batters, ultimately charged with six runs to turn what should’ve been an encouraging finale to his spring schedule into a discouraging evening.

“It was clicking really, really well for four innings. And then guys get on, and I want to kind of try to be the hero, and again just do too much,” the right-hander said following a 6-0 loss to the Marlins in which the Nationals managed only two hits themselves. “I just lose track of it for a second, then you fight back, and hits fall and things happen. You’ve got to get out of those innings and not let it snowball like that.”

This was the second straight start Soroka allowed six runs, this after back-to-back scoreless outings. There are no more exhibitions for him to pitch; his next start will count.

The Nationals have been high on Soroka throughout camp. They’ve seen him consistently pitch in the mid-90s, bearing little resemblance to the guy whose career fell apart because of injuries in recent seasons. They have been every bit satisfied with the $9 million they gave him this winter, essentially making him their No. 3 starter (though he’s actually lined up to debut in the season’s fourth game against the Blue Jays).

But they need to see him sustain what he did for four innings tonight and avoid what happened to him in the fifth.

“I think he feels like he can get a little more out of what he’s doing. But sometimes less is more,” manager Davey Martinez said. “He’s very fluid in everything, and then you saw as things started unraveling, it was more (trying to throw harder) instead of just letting it happen. At the end of the day, he was trying to overcompensate, overthrow more than anything.”

Soroka also dealt with an unexpected twist during this start: He broke a shoelace in top of the third, leading to a lengthy delay while someone in the dugout relaced his cleat as he stood at the top step, his sock exposed.

“It popped, and my shoe was just kind of dangling on my foot,” he said. “There was no way I was throwing or running with an open shoe. So we needed to get a separate lace, because the clubhouse here is all the way on the other side of the complex. They did a good job of getting a new shoelace in there, and it held up for the remainder of the outing.”

All this on a night when the Nationals failed to even reach base until CJ Abrams’ leadoff single in the seventh. Suffice it to say, this was a weird one to open the final weekend of spring training.

Frustrating as his final inning was, Soroka was able to take several positives out of the situation. He felt great physically even at the end of a 43-pitch inning, noting he threw his best breaking ball of the game to one of the final batters he faced. And in the bigger picture, this spring was a success for the veteran, who now gets a chance to resurrect his career as a member of the Nats’ Opening Day rotation.

“Look, there’s a lot of meaningful baseball to be played. All of it,” he said. “Understanding that at the end of the day, I was throwing as hard as I ever have for as many pitches as I ever have. Obviously, being out there for (43) pitches at the end of the day and still having gas in the tank, that’s a great feeling. I need to trust that moving forward and understand I just need to clean up the delivery. I think we take the positives and move on, and go dominate in the regular season.”