Early, late blasts power Nationals to 9-6 win over Giants

Davey Martinez spent most of the evening sweating in the dugout, this despite the heavy coat he was wearing on a deceptively chilly mid-April evening on South Capitol Street. His Nationals had opened up an early lead on the Giants but couldn't add on, and so now the second-year manager had to figure out how he was going to get the requisite outs necessary from his beleaguered bullpen while protecting only a two-run lead.

Then Matt Adams and Kurt Suzuki made life a whole lot easier on Martinez and his bullpen. Two big blasts during a five-run bottom of the seventh turned a slim lead into a rout and allowed the Nationals relief corps to breathe easy while coasting to victory over San Francisco.

Sort of.

Refusing to make life easy on the manager, the Nats bullpen made Martinez sweat again in the ninth. Austen Williams, handed a seven-run lead, quickly gave four runs back via two home runs, reducing the lead to three, forcing Kyle Barraclough into the game and Sean Doolittle to furiously warm up, just in case.

In the end, Doolittle was needed to record the final two outs of a 9-6 victory. Yet again, what should have been a simple and uplifting win instead turned into a salvage job, much to everyone's chagrin.

First-inning homers by Juan Soto and Howie Kendrick set the tone, and an effective start by Jeremy Hellickson ensured the Nationals would enter the latter innings holding a lead. But it was those two late blasts that gave the team enough cushion to withstand the frightening ninth.

Martinez trotted out a bit of a new-look lineup, bumping Anthony Rendon and Soto up to the second and third spot in the order, respectively, while starting both Adams and Kendrick in hopes of getting some extra production via the two recently hot hitters.

And early on, it worked out quite well for Martinez. The Nationals jumped out to a 4-0 lead after two innings thanks to no-doubt homers from Soto and Kendrick, plus a two-out RBI single from Adam Eaton, off Giants starter Jeff Samardzija.

But just when you figured the Nats were going to take it to Samardzija, they went ice-cold at the plate. They didn't put another man into scoring position until the sixth, and they squandered that opportunity against former teammate Trevor Gott, who got Wilmer Difo to pop out and Ryan Zimmerman to ground out in a rare pinch-hitting appearance by the veteran first baseman.

And so the onus was on the Nationals pitching staff to make those four early runs hold up for most of the night.

Hellickson did his part, navigating his way through 5 2/3 innings of two-run ball while inducing lots of weak contact and very few swings and misses. The right-hander didn't record any strikeouts, an odd feat that hadn't been achieved by a Nats starter who went at least 5 2/3 innings since Chien-Ming Wang on Sept. 1, 2011.

Hellickson also got quick outs, keeping his pitch count low throughout. That allowed him to face the top half of the San Francisco lineup three times, and he emerged unscathed. He thought he had made it through the bottom half as well when Gerardo Parra grounded into a double play to end the sixth, but the Giants challenged the call at first base and got it overturned on review, keeping the inning alive.

Hellickson had thrown only 79 pitches, but with the switch-hitting Pablo Sandoval up to bat, Martinez pulled his starter and summoned Matt Grace from the bullpen to turn Sandoval around to his weaker side of the plate. Grace got the job done, getting Sandoval to loft a deep fly ball to center - but not deep enough - on his one and only pitch to end the inning.

Wander Suero also did his part with a 1-2-3 top of the seventh, and was in position to return for the top of the eighth until his teammates completely changed the complexion of this game. A five-run rally in the bottom of the seventh that included a rare Adams homer off a lefty and then an extra insurance blast by Suzuki turned a 4-2 nailbiter into a seemingly comfortable 9-2 lead and seemingly took the pressure off the Nationals pen for a change.

Except there's never a night these days in which the Nationals 'pen faces no pressure.