Nats stay patient against Burnes to win first series of season (updated)

The Nationals entered Saturday losers of four straight, needing to win two straight games to secure their first series victory of the young season. They got the win yesterday by a score of 4-3. The task to win Sunday would be difficult against Corbin Burnes.

But the Nats bats may have found their stride this week, scoring four or more runs in all three games against the Diamondbacks. Their most impressive outing may have been this afternoon, staying patient against and peppering Burnes early on their way to a 5-4 victory in front of 14,528 fans at Nationals Park.

For the third consecutive game, the top of the Nats' order jumped out to an early lead in the first. CJ Abrams drew a leadoff walk against Burnes, then moved to third on Luis García Jr.’s single to right field. Nathaniel Lowe drove in the first run and Alex Call drove in the second a few batters later to give the Nats a 2-1 lead after the first.

After the D-backs tied the game in the top of the second, Paul DeJong led off the bottom frame with a double to left, moved to third on a flyout to right and scored on Abrams’ sacrifice fly to make it 3-2.

Burnes hit Josh Bell with a pitch and walked Call with two outs in the third to set up DeJong’s RBI double to left to make it a 4-2 game. Call tried to make it a two-run hit, but was thrown out at the plate, the second time a Nats player was called out at the dish.

“It was good,” manager Davey Martinez said of his team’s approach against Burnes. “We stayed on the ball. We were trying to get the ball up. We know he throws a lot of cutters. We were trying to get the ball away from us a little bit, the lefties. But our approach was to swing at strikes. And we did a good job today.”

In the end, the Nats got to Burnes for seven hits, four runs, four walks and only three strikeouts over the right-hander’s five innings. An impressive outing against an American League Cy Young Award runner-up from last year.

“I thought it was pretty good,” Dylan Crews said. “We kind of all had the same approach. Just be ready for the fastball. He's got a good fastball that cuts, and you just got to be ready for it. He's a Cy Young winner for a reason. We just got to be able to hammer the mistakes. And we did a good job of that. That's a good team over there, a great pitcher and it was our day today.”

Trevor Williams opposed Burnes on the hill for the home team. The Nats right-hander was peppered by the Blue Jays himself in his season debut for 10 hits – all singles – in his five innings at Rogers Centre on Tuesday.

Williams started the day by giving up his first extra-base hit of the season, a leadoff triple to Corbin Carroll, who scored in the very next at-bat on a sac fly by Geraldo Perdomo. But aside from Jose Herrera’s solo home run in the second, Williams was able to miss bats and induce weak contact.

Using his five-pitch arsenal – but mainly his sweeper, fastball and changeup – Williams got 10 swings and misses against Arizona en route to a season-high six strikeouts. The Diamondbacks tacked on another run in fifth with a single, sac bunt, walk and single, but that was it over Williams’ five frames.

“We had an effective game plan going into it,” Williams said. “Pitching the third day of a series, you kind of get a better feel for, especially a team you only see once or twice a year, whatever they're doing as of late. You get a good look and going into that last game of the series, we were able to have a good Plan A going into the game, and really stuck with it. That's really what we chalk it up to.”

Williams finished the afternoon with five hits, three runs and two walks on 96 pitches, 57 strikes.

However, that run in the fifth cut the Nats’ lead to 4-3, so the offense had more work to do against the D-backs' bullpen.

Enter Crews, who has been off to a slow start at the plate this season. After singling up the middle on a 93 mph cutter from Burnes for his second hit of the year in the fourth, he singled again, this time to left field, for his first multi-hit game of the year.

“His swing was a little bit shorter, which is awesome,” Martinez said of the rookie outfielder. “Remember I said before, he's gonna be OK. He's young. And I know it's the beginning of the year. They're all trying to get off to a good start. You just got to be grounded and be where your feet are. But he's working every day to get better. Today, it was a good day. He stayed in the middle of the field. He didn't try to do a whole lot. He just tried to move the baseball.”

Crews then swiped second base while making a nifty move to evade the tag, tagged up on a fly out and scored on Keibert Ruiz’s shallow single to left to put the Nats back up by two, 5-3.

“It means a lot for sure,” Crews said of his performance. “Good momentum going forward. Got to give thanks to my hitting coaches, for sure. They've been working hard with me every day. We're staying positive through this, and use this as momentum and fuel going forward.”

That proved to be the game-winning run because Arizona again bounced back in the eighth. After Josh Naylor’s leadoff single, Alek Thomas hit a Jorge López offering into the left field corner. The ball took a weird bounce off the wall against James Wood, allowing Naylor to score from first and Thomas to reach third with a triple.

But the one run was all Kyle Finnegan needed to record his second save in less than 24 hours and the Nats’ first series win of the season.

“Today was a good day,” Martinez said. “We came out and scored some runs against a good pitcher. He's really good. So proud of the guys. We tried to win a series today. We got it accomplished and it was a good day.”

Now the Nats get to try to do it all over it again, this time against the defending World Series champion Dodgers.

“We've been pretty much in every game all season,” Williams said. “We didn't really have the record to show for it, but we've been playing good baseball, we've taken good at-bats, and our pitching has been incredible. So for us to get the series win today against a good club in the NL West, it's going to be big for us, especially going into this next series against the defending champs.”