Soto's splashdown homer not enough in Nats loss (updated)

PITTSBURGH – The Nationals had more than their share of opportunities to deliver hits in big spots tonight during a 6-4 loss to the Pirates. The story of this game can be told in the simple fact they went 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position, and one of the hits came in the top of the ninth while trailing by three runs.

What will be remembered most from this loss, then, is the biggest hit they did get: a Juan Soto home run that did something nobody around here remembers ever seeing at PNC Park.

Soto’s fifth-inning missile to right cleared the 21-foot-high Clemente Wall, landed in one of the tunnels separating seating areas, bounced off the concourse and somehow found its resting place in the Allegheny River down below.

“I didn’t know about it,” he said. “Not at all. I just saw it going through the hallway.”

It was the latest “He Did What?!” moment from Soto in a career filled with plenty of them since the star slugger debuted in 2018. If only it hadn’t come in a loss, not that it was his fault. Soto reached base four times for the second straight night, adding two walks and a ninth-inning double to his earlier homer.

Soto’s teammates couldn’t do enough else to supplement his power display, held in check by Pirates starter Bryse Wilson and three relievers. César Hernández grounded out with the bases loaded in the fourth. Victor Robles struck out with a man on second in the second and lined out to second with a man on third in the sixth, leaving the struggling No. 9 hitter 0-for-18 on the season.

“We lined out a few times, just couldn’t get that big hit with guys on base,” manager Davey Martinez said. “Just a tough night offensively. We tried to scratch and claw there at the end, but couldn’t finish it.”

Josh Rogers, meanwhile, couldn’t quite limit the damage enough while he was on the mound. The left-hander was charged with three runs in 4 1/3 innings, the last of which scored after Steve Cishek replaced him in the bottom of the fifth.

As has been the case too many times through the season’s first 10 games, the Nationals starter labored early, watched his pitch count rise and left himself vulnerable to a quick hook. Rogers needed 45 pitches to complete his first two innings, a pair of runs scoring in the bottom of the second on back-to-back RBI hits from the Pirates’ No. 8 and No. 9 hitters.

“Two walks is terrible for me,” he said. “I can’t give up free bases, and I know that. Giving up those walks are no good. And it seems like every time we scored, it’s like I go out there and give up a run and have traffic. I couldn’t get us back in the dugout today. All in all, I would not say it was a very good outing.”

Fortunately, the lefty bounced back to get through his next two frames on only 19 pitches, giving himself a chance to pitch deeper into the night.

Alas, Rogers made it only three batters into the fifth. Back-to-back one-out singles by Ke’Bryan Hayes and Brian Reynolds put two men on base and brought Martinez out of the dugout to make a change. Rogers handed over the ball, his pitch count only 76, and watched from afar as Cishek tried to get out of the jam.

“Third time through the order is not easy for any starting pitcher,” Rogers said. “I’d had long, stressful innings there early in the game. It kind of taxed me a little bit.”

Cishek didn’t make a bad pitch to Michael Chavis, but the Pittsburgh first baseman managed to fight it off and punch a single to right to bring home the go-ahead run, leaving the Nats in a 3-2 hole.

Kyle Finnegan then surrendered three tack-on runs in the bottom of the eighth, with some notable assistance from his teammates in the field, making a last-ditch rally in the ninth all the more challenging.

“We wanted to keep it at one run with the top of the order coming up,” Martinez said. “We thought we had a great, great chance like that, and it didn’t happen.”

The Nationals got their two runs via a couple of extra-base hits, one of them rather ordinary, the other most definitely not.

Alcides Escobar ripped an RBI double down the left field line to score Maikel Franco in the top of the second, giving the Nationals a brief 1-0 lead. It was Escobar’s first RBI of the season, a much-needed display of production from the bottom of the lineup.

Then came the extraordinary in the top of the fifth. When Soto connected on a 2-2 changeup from Wilson, everyone in the building knew it was gone. What nobody knew was that the missile would land 382 feet from the plate, directly inside one of the tunnels in the right field stands, then bounce onto the concourse and end up floating in the Allegheny River.

The 101st home run of Soto’s career was the 64th to land in the river since PNC Park opened in 2001 – first by a member of the Nationals – and the shortest of any of them by far.

“It went through the thing … oh, did it go in the river? Yeah, we can’t see that,” Martinez said upon being informed of the ball’s final location. “But I knew that the ball disappeared. I was just happy it was a homer.”

Add it to the growing legend of Juan Soto. If only it hadn’t come in another loss.