Early homers, late escape act give Nats series win

No team in the National League has hit fewer home runs than the Nationals, who entered today’s series finale with only 30 of them through the season’s first 48 games and lengthy individual power droughts by some of their biggest power hitters.

Through it all, manager Davey Martinez has been positive the homers will come, as hitters get their timing down, elevate the ball and take advantage of warmer summer weather.

And then on this warm, 80-degree Memorial Day Sunday afternoon on South Capitol Street, Martinez and the Nats began to see signs of it finally happening, most importantly from their most important hitter.

Juan Soto’s first homer since May 12, a span of 16 games, put the Nationals up early. And then Lane Thomas’ homer in the sixth provided some insurance they wound up needing to secure a 6-5 victory over the Rockies and a rare series win.

It got a bit hairy late, with Andres Machado allowing two runs in the seventh and Kyle Finnegan allowing two runs in the eighth before Tanner Rainey locked things down. But at the end of the day, the Nats took three of four from Colorado and four of five overall to end this homestand with their first series victory since late April in San Francisco, their first home series victory of the year.

They’re now 18-31 as they embark on a 10-game road trip, and if they win Monday night in New York … well, no respectable fan needs to be told the significance of that potential record through the season’s first 50 games.

"For us right now, we're on a winning streak," Soto said with a laugh. "I don't know if people see it like that, but we've been winning the past four, five days, and it feels great. Everybody knows when we win, it feels great. And we're going to try to keep doing it."

Soto’s first-inning homer set the tone for this one. It was a vintage blast by the young slugger, a 399-foot opposite-field drive into the red seats in deep left-center for his ninth home run of the season but first in 2 1/2 weeks.

He would almost hit another later in the game, just missing a homer to right in the bottom of the sixth and settling for a double off the top of the wall.

"I've been swinging the bat pretty well the last couple days," Soto said. "I've been doing my homework, working on my swing, working on my stance, everything. I just feel great. ... I've been trying my stuff, and it's been working. I've been taking more pitches and seeing the ball better. And you can see, my swing has been way better."

"Hopefully this will kick-start him to continue to do what he does," Martinez said. "I'm not concerned about him hitting. He's going to hit, and he's going to drive the ball. Today was a good day, and hopefully he continues to do that." 

That double came moments after Thomas went deep to cap off an unconventional at-bat that began with Rockies lefty Kyle Freeland on the mound but ended with righty Robert Stephenson serving up the homer after Freeland injured his left ankle throwing his 107th pitch of the afternoon. (X-rays later came back negative.) It also snapped Thomas’ 0-for-18 slump on the homestand following a big series in Milwaukee last weekend in which he also homered.

"Big home run by Lane Thomas," Martinez said. "Let's talk about it, because he's been struggling. And in the middle of the at-bat, they switch pitchers. He gets a ball up in the zone and hammers it, which is awesome."

The run support was much appreciated by Josiah Gray, who actually dug his team into a very early 1-0 hole but put a stop to that right after.

Though he managed to do a much better job keeping the ball in the yard in April, Gray has fallen back into some familiar troubles of old this month. He entered this outing having served up nine homers in his last four starts, and he wasted no time adding to that number today when he served up a leadoff homer to Charlie Blackmon on his second pitch of the game.

"As you saw today, it could be easy to have that first inning snowball, and I'm out of there after the third, just like my last outing against the Dodgers," he said. "But you have to just bear down, breathe through it and trust your stuff. And that's what I did today."

Gray indeed resolved that issue in a hurry and ensured every other pitch he threw stayed in the park. He did throw a lot of pitches, though, even though he didn’t face that many batters in the grand scheme of things.

Over the course of five innings of one-run ball, Gray saw 21 Rockies hitters, six beyond the minimum. He still saw his pitch count reach 93, the product of several long at-bats and four walks he wound up issuing. There was also an unfortunate sequence in the top of the fourth in which Josh Bell lost a routine foul popup in the sun that would’ve ended the inning but instead forced Gray to throw 14 more pitches.

But more important than anything else, Gray limited the damage to only that leadoff Blackmon homer. He departed with four zeros on the board after the first inning, having done his job to put his team in position to win.

"After that sun ball, which should've been an out, it was 14 extra pitches," Martinez said. "So that cost him. We thought maybe he could go six-plus for us. But because of those 14 pitches, it was tough. ... But he's getting better. He's starting to figure things out. He's making adjustments on the mound."

Gray’s offensive teammates also did their part, staking him to a 4-1 lead after two and then extending the lead in the sixth.

The Nationals bullpen then finished things off, though not without some drama. Carl Edwards Jr. retired the side on nine pitches in the sixth, giving the lanky right-hander 11 scoreless innings of relief since giving up three runs in his club debut May 10 and vowing that wouldn’t happen again. Machado did surrender a couple of runs in the seventh, and Finnegan then gave up two more in the eighth and departed with the tying runner on third and only one out.

Rainey, though, quashed the fire. He struck out Elias Díaz and Charlie Blackmon to end the eighth, then pitched a scoreless ninth for his first multi-inning appearance since 2020 and the first multi-inning save of his career.

"I don't usually have a problem with it, because I try not to get too emotional, too hyped up about it," Rainey said. "When I get out of (the eighth), it's usually like: Alright, did my job. Get back to the dugout, sit down. If they tell me I'm still in the game, I'm still in the game. Just stay locked in and focused, go back out and one pitch at a time."