Fedde in complete control in 4-0 win over Giants

SAN FRANCISCO - The memory of a nine-run pounding at the hands of the Braves last week perhaps was fresher on everyone's minds, but Erick Fedde also knew how well he had pitched in his two starts prior to that disaster against one of baseball's toughest lineups.

Fedde, you may recall, had limited the Orioles and Rockies to two runs in 10 innings. Sure, those aren't two of the most imposing lineups in the sport. But neither is the lineup Bruce Bochy fielded tonight at Oracle Park.

So maybe it shouldn't have come as a huge surprise when Fedde mowed down the Giants tonight over six sparkling innings, leading the Nationals to a 4-0 victory in the process.

"I needed a bounceback," he said. "Just to mentally be there."

Fedde was everything manager Davey Martinez has been asking him to be. The right-hander was aggressive, getting ahead in the count. He didn't mess around once he got ahead, issuing zero walks. And he got quick outs, needing only 75 pitches to complete his six scoreless innings.

"He came in and he was focused today," Martinez said. "He had good stuff today. I told him: 'Let's build off of that, and in five days be ready to go again.'"

It was exactly what the Nationals needed on a night when they made the Giants pitching staff work a ton but only squeezed out four runs, leaving less margin for error for their own arms.

Nothing to worry about. Fedde did his part to keep San Francisco off the board, using the five days he had off since his last start not to rehash what went wrong but to figure out how to be better, with some help from the staff ace.

"I was just cleaning up some stuff," he said. "I talked with Max (Scherzer) a lot about my cutter, because I haven't been throwing it for strikes. I thought it was something that was just getting me into bad counts, and today it was really good."

Though Fedde's low pitch count suggested he might be capable of pitching into the seventh inning for the first time in his career, Martinez knew he had plenty of viable options waiting in his bullpen and didn't hesitate to use them.

Daniel Hudson pitched a 1-2-3 seventh, the right-hander's third consecutive perfect appearance since joining the Nationals last week. Fernando Rodney gave up a broken-bat single in the eighth but nothing else. And Sean Doolittle closed it out in the ninth, a late insurance run via a Little League-style double steal extending the lead to four runs and negating the save situation.

The Nationals, who have lost three straight series, got this one off on the right foot and picked up a game on the Braves, who have lost three of four. They now sit six games back in the National League East, tied with the Phillies and only 2 1/2 games ahead of the suddenly resurgent Mets.

The way they made Jeff Samardzija work, you'd have thought the Nationals were clobbering the veteran right-hander. Not so much. Even though Samardzija needed a whopping 98 pitches simply to complete four innings, he allowed only one run on three hits.

"Make him work," Martinez said. "They did a great job with that. We wanted to get him in the strike zone."

The Nationals worked quality at-bats against the Giants starter. They just couldn't make enough of them pay off. It took Adam Eaton running from first base on a 3-2, two-out pitch in the top of the third, then an Anthony Rendon single to right-center to produce their only run off Samardzija.

Kevin Pillar did help make that possible, though, with a jaw-dropping, diving catch of Kurt Suzuki's line drive to left-center in the top of the second. What looked like at least an RBI double and perhaps even a two-run triple turned into nothing more than a loud out for Suzuki, who later in the evening would miss a three-run homer by a few feet to the wrong side of the foul pole.

If nothing else, the Nationals at least got to the Giants bullpen early. And even though that group is one of the league's best, it still was being asked to give five innings in the series opener, no small task.

Sam Coonrod was first up, and though the Nats did little to earn it beyond showing nice patience at the plate, they still came away with two more runs in the top of the fifth. Coonrod walked the bases loaded, then balked in a run. And then Pillar gave back what he took away three innings prior when he lost Matt Adams' routine fly ball in the twilight, allowing another run to score on a gift double.

It wasn't exactly a display of offensive fireworks, but it was enough to give the Nationals a 3-0 lead on a night when they accomplished more when they didn't swing the bat than when they did.

"Just stay patient at the plate," said Juan Soto, who drew three of the Nationals' eight walks. "Try to look for one pitch, one spot. If they don't throw it in that spot, just take it. For me, I was taking the whole day. They were trying to make me chase all day. I just took my walks."