Wood walks off Mets in wild, back-and-forth affair

The Nationals’ home schedule has been difficult on paper to date. All five opponents who have come to D.C., including the Mets for this weekend’s wraparound series, entered the year with high aspirations of playing in October. And all five, with the exception of the Orioles, started today above .500.

The combined record of the Phillies, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Orioles and Mets entering today was 71-53, good for a .573 winning percentage. The Nats’ record against those first four daunting opponents: 7-5, good for a .583 winning percentage.

This young Nationals squad has done what they said they would do from the start of spring training: Show their stuff against the top dogs in the league.

And just when they thought their eighth victory against a tough opponent was snatched away from them, this young Nationals group put together a ninth-inning rally to walk off the Mets 5-4 in a truly wild game in the District.

“A little tick for tack,” said manager Davey Martinez after one of the craziest wins in his career. “I'm proud of the boys. They fought. We talk about that all the time. We played hard for 27 outs and we fought. Man, I'll tell you right now, CJ (Abrams, who scored the winning run) was hauling ass. He really was. I don't know how else to explain it, but that was awesome to see.”

After seeing their 3-0 lead disappear into a 4-3 deficit in the eighth inning, the Nats’ young stars took matters into their own hands to get their team back in the win column.

Facing Ryne Stanek in the ninth, Dylan Crews hit a leadoff triple to deep right field, where old friend Juan Soto couldn’t make the catch at the wall. This came just moments after the current Nationals right fielder made an incredible effort sprinting and diving for a blooper by Mark Vientos in no-man’s land down the line, but just missed as the ball bounced past him, resulting in the go-ahead, bases-clearing triple for the visitors.

José Tena then drove Crews in with his third hit and second RBI of the night to tie the game 4-4, setting up more dramatics to come.

“Nothing happy after I came up short on that ball,” Crews said after the game of his mindset during those two plays. “It's something that we work on in those situations. But I'm gonna live and die by my decision to go out there and try and make a play. … But the beauty of this game is it's not over until it's over. There's still opportunities on the board, and we were able to do that in the end. My job as a leadoff guy in that upcoming half inning is to get on base. And I was fortunate enough to get a good pitch to hit and get a triple. And then Tena did a great job of driving me in. So it was a great team win.”

Jacob Young and Abrams followed with back-to-back force outs at second, leaving only the speedy shortstop at first.

Up stepped the bat the Nationals probably wanted most at the plate in this spot: James Wood. The towering 22-year-old had struck out his previous two at-bats and fell behind 0-2 in this one, making extra innings seem likely.

But the budding superstar wasn’t fazed as he smacked a low-and-outside cutter back up the middle past the diving second baseman into shallow center field. And with the Mets outfield playing super deep, no-doubles defense, Abrams’ speed was enough to get him from first to home in time to send the crowd of 30,277 into an absolute frenzy.

“I was just looking for something over the plate,” Wood said after his first career walk-off hit. “And I was really in that situation because Dylan had a great at-bat, Tena drives him in and CJ going first-to-home on the play like that. So I was just trying to get a pitch to hit and just kind of do anything with it.”

Third base coach Ricky Gutierrez waved Abrams home from the start and never stopped. With that green light on everyone’s eyes turned to the plate to watch the winning run be scored.

“Great at-bat. He didn't chase,” Abrams said of Wood. “At 3-2, I was running. I just wanted to keep running as long as I could. And Ricky sent me and we scored.”

“That's all Ricky. Ricky was on top of it,” Martinez said. “Man, he had him going the whole time. It was awesome. And credit to CJ. As soon as the ball was hit, he was gone. But that's how you play the game.”

“I saw it go through, and I was just happy to get the next guy up,” said Wood. “And then I see Ricky waving him home. And I was like, ‘Oh, it's on.’”

The celebration on the field may have been even crazier, as the Nats mobbed their 6-foot-7 outfielder, with Crews eventually ripping Woods’ shirt off as the Mets called for a desperate and fruitless challenge on the call at the plate.

“Jump as high as you can,” Crews said of his strategy to rip off Wood’s jersey.

“Run. Just run and score,” Abrams said of his thought process. “I wanted to score, so we can win. And then go tackle James.”

Earlier in the night, the Nats were hoping Jake Irvin would pitch a similar outing to the one he tossed on the Fourth of July last year, when he shut out the Mets over eight innings of one-hit ball. But while the big right-hander did have another strong outing, he perhaps went one inning too far in an attempt to match those eight scoreless.

With a 3-0 lead, Irvin went back to the mound in the eighth having already thrown 94 pitches. But after a leadoff single and a failed double play, manager Davey Martinez finally went to his bullpen and brought in Jose A. Ferrer.

Ferrer got Francisco Lindor to pop out for the second out. But a single by Soto and a walk to Pete Alonso loaded the bases. Brandon Nimmo drove in the Mets’ first run, at the time seemingly harmless, so Martinez went to Kyle Finnegan for the four-out save.

The Nats closer was one strike away from getting out of the jam before Vientos hit that blooper down the right field line. The end result: a bases-clearing triple to give the Mets a 4-3 lead.

That ended an otherwise positive night for Irvin on a very sour note. Especially since he benefited from a nifty and unique defensive play from his teammates.

The Nationals turned a rare triple play in the fourth inning, only the third in club history and first at home (also July 29, 2016 at San Francisco and May 20, 2022 at Milwaukee).

Protecting a 2-0 lead, Irvin gave up back-to-back singles to the middle of the Mets order. Up stepped old friend Jesse Winker (who coincidentally hit a solo home run to provide the only offense in the Nats’ 1-0 win in that July 4 matchup) to hit a low line drive at Nathaniel Lowe at first base.

It was so low, in fact, both runners took off from their respective bases. Little were they aware that first base umpire and crew chief Alfonso Marquez ruled the play a clean catch for an out. With that being the case, Lowe alertly threw to Abrams, who tagged second base and the runner from first to pick off the baserunners who didn’t tag up.

“I treated it like I caught it,” Lowe said. “So I figured that everybody was moving and we had a better play at second base than first, because we had all day to get back to first. So that's three outs.”

After a lot of confusion on the part of the Mets (and some on the Nats' part) and an animated protest by New York manager Carlos Mendoza (fly balls and line drives in the infield are not reviewable), the umpires confirmed a triple play.

“I stuck the ball right there,” Lowe said. “I thought my thumb was underneath it. They (the Mets) didn't think so. So I went to second first and got the ball back. And it held.”

Not only was that triple play a special experience, it helped out Irvin a lot from an efficiency standpoint. He was already at 54 pitches after three innings, thanks to a 25-pitch first frame. But from that point on, he cruised, at one point retiring nine in a row leading up to the eighth.

“Just throwing strikes, trying to keep guys off-balance and get as deep as possible,” he said. “Keibert (Ruiz) called a great game. We had a good game plan going into it and I thought we executed well.”

Irvin finished 7 ⅓ innings with five hits, one run, one walk and four strikeouts (all on curveballs). He ended the night with 98 pitches, 69 strikes.

“They're a division rival,” Irvin said. “These are games that we have to win. Maybe it's just digging a little bit deeper. But these are games you really, really want. Just tried to give us a chance.”

The Nats offense manufactured runs the old-fashioned way earlier in the game. And as we would see in the ninth, it came mostly from the bottom of the lineup.

Crews basically scored the first run in the second on his hustle alone. With two outs, he singled to left off Kodai Senga to extend his hitting streak to nine games. He then caught Nimmo not paying attention and sprinted to second and came around to score on Tena's single.

Young then led off the third with a single and came all the way around to score on Abrams’ triple to left-center.

And then two singles, a sacrifice bunt and infield single pushed the Nats’ third run across the plate in the seventh.

While effective and important, none of those first three runs were as exhilarating as the last two that gave this young Nationals team an 8-5 record at home, all against quality opponents.

“They want to win,” Martinez said. “The only way to explain it is they're playing each game to win. And every time we win, they feel it, and it's a great feeling and they celebrate. So it's been great. Like I said today, we face a tough opponent. We got down and we come back and win like that, it's amazing.”