Nightmare sequence with two outs ruins Roark's outing

In some respects, Tanner Roark was thrilled with the way he pitched Sunday night. Why wouldn't the right-hander be happy with nine strikeouts in five innings?

And yet, there was that fateful stretch of four batters in the top of the third that ultimately defined his start and made everything else secondary.

Roark had recorded two quick outs to begin the inning. Then came the nitpicking. He walked Jay Bruce. He walked Todd Frazier. He walked Asdrúbal Cabrera.

"They were close," Roark said of several of his pitches during that sequence. "Going back and looking at them, I know they were in just a little bit on Cabrera and Bruce. Just an inch more to the right and they were strikes. You're going to have those, not worried about it. I was hitting my spot."

It wouldn't have been a problem except for what happened next. Pitching coach Derek Lilliquist came to the mound and had a simple message before Adrián González stepped to the plate.

"He said he's going to come up swinging," Roark recalled. "I definitely knew that."

Trouble is, he gave Gonzalez a pitch worthy of a big swing: an 89-mph fastball in the zone. It wound up in the right field bullpen, a grand slam that altered the course of the game.

"Just a poor execution of a pitch," Roark said. "And I knew he was going to be hacking right there. It just caught too much of the plate."

That inning epitomized Roark's strange outing. He had no trouble recording the first two outs of each inning; the Mets were 0-for-10 with six strikeouts with zero or one out. But he couldn't finish off innings; the Mets were 5-for-10 with four walks and two homers when batting with two outs.

"I think he just started cutting corners a little bit," Nationals manager Davey Martinez said. "When that happens, you get to two outs, last thing you want to do is walk somebody. Uncharacteristic with Tanner that he walked three guys. He put himself in a little jam. He settled back down, and other than that inning, he pitched well."