Nats hit, hustle, bullpen their way to victory over Angels (updated)

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Eleven games into the season, we have a pretty good idea what the 2023 Nationals are and what they are not.

They are not going to beat you with home runs. They are not going to trot out a dominant starting pitcher on most nights.

They are, however, going to put the ball in play and probably rack up a good number of singles and the occasional double. They are going to try to manufacture runs in any way possible. And they are going to hope their bullpen can hang on to finish things off.

It may be a narrow path to victory, but it is possible. And when it comes together like it did tonight in a 6-4 victory over the Angels, it actually makes for quite entertaining baseball.

"It's so much fun," first baseman Dominic Smith said. "I feel like that's how we can build a winning culture. That's something that's going to be our team identity. We'll probably have a couple guys in this lineup who will hit 20 home runs, but for the most part, we're going to have to manufacture runs. And this is the way we're going to have to do it."

On a night in which Tim Bogar called the shots while Davey Martinez was watching from his office, receiving multiple IVs to combat an illness, the Nationals weathered another shaky start from Patrick Corbin, manufactured and hustled their way to as many runs as they could score and then closed out the win with some aggressive bullpen management by their fill-in manager.

Pulling Corbin after five innings and 86 pitches, Bogar asked four relievers to record the final 12 outs. That included Hunter Harvey entering to face Mike Trout in the bottom of the sixth, striking the star slugger out, then returning in the bottom of the seventh to face Shohei Ohtani and promptly striking out the world’s most famous baseball player.

"Coming into that situation and facing those guys," Harvey said, "that's what you dream of."

Carl Edwards Jr. and Kyle Finnegan took over from there, with Finnegan retiring the side and striking out Trout for the final out and his first save since a ninth-inning meltdown against the Rays last week.

"I'd be lying if I said I didn't need that right there a little bit," Finnegan said. "It's a great confidence boost."

If the fear coming in was how Corbin would handle the Angels’ otherworldly 2-3 hitters, that was unfounded. The lefty had no trouble at all with Trout and Ohtani, who were a combined 0-for-5 with one walk and two strikeouts against him.

The rest of the Angels lineup? That was a different story. Corbin labored mightily through his first three innings, allowing nine batters to reach, seven via a hit. There was a two-run, two-out single by Luis Rengifo in the bottom of the first. There was Hunter Renfroe’s leadoff homer to center in the bottom of the third. And there was Gio Urshela’s RBI double to left later that inning, all of which gave the home team a 4-1 lead.

"Early on, I was just missing with some offspeed, got into some bad counts," Corbin said. "There's some good hitters over there, and I threw some fastballs in those counts that they got some hits on."

At that moment, Corbin’s season ERA was an unwieldy 9.00, his WHIP an unfathomable 2.417. But to his credit, the lefty managed to finish strong. He retired eight of the last nine batters he faced. And though his pitch count was only 86, he was pulled after the fifth inning, Bogar opting to take what he got from his starter and entrust the rest of the game to his bullpen.

"(Pitching coach) Jim Hickey and I talked about sending him back out there," Bogar said. "But if I was going to run him back out there and take him out after one guy got on, then you're bringing in a reliever without a clean inning. I just didn't think it was the right thing to do."

Corbin departed in line for his first win of the year, thanks to his teammates’ sustained offensive attack against Angels starter Jose Suarez. The Nationals, as we’ve learned by now, just aren’t going to hit for much power. But they will hit singles. Lots of them.

They racked up 10 of them tonight, in the game’s first five innings. Add a couple of doubles to the mix, and you’ve got the recipe for five hard-earned runs.

Clutch hits were abundant. CJ Abrams delivered a two-out RBI single in the second. Lane Thomas delivered a two-out RBI infield single in the fourth. Jeimer Candelario followed with a two-run single to tie the game. And then after Keibert Ruiz doubled and Victor Robles produced his second two-strike hit of the night to raise his batting average to .424, Abrams beat out a potential inning-ending double play to allow the go-ahead run to score in the fifth.

"That's how we play: We play hard. We have to," Bogar said. "The guys know it, and they have each other's back when they do that kind of stuff."

Sprinkled in among all that were sacrifice bunts, stolen bases, a two-out squeeze bunt that didn’t actually score the runner from third, and a whole lot of contact and hustle, the peak example of which came in the top of the seventh.

With one out and runners on first and second, Robles hit a grounder to second. If the Angels successfully turned the 4-6-3 double play, it would’ve ended the inning. But Robles busted down the line to beat the throw, and then Smith kept running around third and came in to score a big insurance run without drawing a throw.

"I've seen it happen on the defensive side, happen to me personally," Smith said. "So I knew that it was going to be a tough play. But Robles is so fast getting down the line. I was just doing everything I can to create extra runs. They're so focused on turning the double play, you kind of sneak in and get a run. I felt like it was a momentum-changing play. It fired the boys up, and it's kind of contagious in my opinion.

Hey, it may not look like most of baseball looks in 2023. But it’s how these Nationals are built. And if it works on certain nights, might as well embrace it.

"That's Nats offense right there," Bogar said. "We paper-cut you to death a little bit, you know? But the bottom line was every guy battled tonight."