With Wood still at Triple-A, Nats lose Winker and game (updated)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Help is on the way for the Nationals’ power-starved lineup. But it’s not scheduled to arrive until Monday, leaving the current group to have to try to get the job done this weekend against the Rays.

And if tonight’s series opener was any indication, it’s going to continue to be tough sledding until James Wood joins the bunch. Especially if Jesse Winker has now been lost to injury.

Hours after news broke they intend to promote one of baseball’s top prospects Monday for the start of an eight-game homestand, the Nats slogged their way through a 3-1 loss to Tampa Bay that was made worse by Winker’s right knee injury in the bottom of the first.

Already reeling from a three-game sweep in San Diego, the Nationals were held to one run on five hits by the Rays’ pitching staff, leaving them with a 38-43 record at the official halfway point of the season.

"We were one game under .500 before we got to San Diego," center fielder Jacob Young said. "So I think we're right there. We've played a lot of teams tough. We've had a pretty tough schedule. I think we've played well. We just need to keep going one game at a time and try to get some victories and get off this little four-game slide we're on."

The breaking of the pending Wood news earlier in the day – club officials wouldn’t confirm it on the record, but neither would they deny it – did create something of an awkward situation. The entire clubhouse knows somebody is being called up Monday, which means somebody else is losing his job after Sunday’s game.

The safest choice entering the day was probably Eddie Rosario, owner of a .556 OPS and minimal defensive value. But with three games still to be played before a move is to be made, who knows what else might transpire to change the team’s perceived plan?

Sure enough, something else happened in the bottom of the first, when Isaac Paredes lofted a high and deep drive to left field. Winker, tracking back to the wall, got his right spike caught in the artificial turf and tweaked his knee in the process. He still managed to make a circus catch against the wall, but he immediately fell to the artificial turf and grabbed his right leg.

"I feel like it's similar to what I did a couple weeks ago in D.C. coming around second (base)," he said. "I think I literally did the exact same thing, just kind of reaggravated that same area. ... Any time you, as a professional athlete, go down without running into anything, it's kind of a scary feeling."

Though he eventually got up and walked off the field under his own power, Winker did so with a noticeable limp and at an extremely slow pace. So when the bottom of the second arrived and Ildemaro Vargas took over in left field, it came as little surprise.

Though he said he'll need to wait to see how he feels Saturday, Winker was hopeful the injury wasn't significant and won't require him to miss time. 

"It's obviously really scary in the moment," he said. "But (executive director of medical services Harvey Sharman) checked me out, and structurally everything's checked out. So I'm happy with that."

Winker may not be part of the Nationals’ long-term plans, but he has been one of their few consistent offensive producers this season. And his absence from the lineup tonight was noticeable, the rest of the bunch struggling to string together any rallies against Tampa Bay starter Zach Eflin.

Their best chance to score came in the third, which began with a double by Young, who immediately took third on CJ Abrams’ groundout. But Lane Thomas followed with a sharp grounder to the worst possible location – third base – and Young couldn’t avoid getting caught in a rundown that all but quashed the rally.

"He was close to the bag, so by the time he fielded it, there was nowhere to get back," Young said. "At that point, we were just trying to get Lane as far around the bases as possible before I got tagged out."

The Nats had a few other chances against Eflin, but they went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position, unable to produce as well as they did through most of the first two legs of this three-time-zone road trip.

In spite of their struggles at the plate, the Nationals were still in this game, thanks to more yeoman’s work from Mitchell Parker, who has developed a knack for minimizing damage. The rookie left-hander again wasn’t in peak form, and endured through a stretch where six of the Rays’ 11 batters reached base against him. But he allowed only two runs through all that, and one arguably wasn’t his fault.

Jose Siri’s second-inning homer came on a splitter down and in, a pitch Parker liked, but Tampa Bay’s second run came when Young misplayed Paredes’ single to center off the spongy turf, allowing Randy Arozarena to score from second without a throw that would’ve made for a close play at the plate.

Parker faced a bases-loaded jam later that inning, and that’s when he made his biggest pitch of the night: a beautiful splitter to strike out José Caballero and keep the deficit at 2-0. And that’s where it stayed, with Parker retiring the final seven batters he faced before departing.

"Like I've said since the first start here, I'm just trying to keep us in the game, the best chance to win," the rookie said. "I'll keep saying it. That's really the end goal: Win as many games as possible, keep us in it, save some arms."

Siri wasn’t done terrorizing Nationals pitchers, though. He greeted reliever Jacob Barnes with a leadoff homer in the sixth, extending the Rays’ lead to 3-0. And though Young single-handedly got that run back for the Nats in the seventh – he hit a two-out double, then stole third on an 0-2 pitch to Abrams and scored when the throw got away – his teammates couldn’t get anything else going to make up the rest of the deficit.

"We tried to work counts, but he was throwing strikes after strikes," manager Davey Martinez said of Eflin. "After a while, I said: Just get a good pitch to hit, because he's going to be around the zone. We knew that coming in. We just couldn't get anything going."