Turner's walk-off double rewards Corbin on emotional night

Patrick Corbin led the Nationals out of the dugout shortly before 7:05 p.m. tonight for what should have been an ordinary start against the Marlins, the opener of the final homestand of the season's first half, an opportunity to continue to lift his team during its slow climb up the standings.

Before he tossed his first warm-up pitch, though, Corbin knelt down behind the rubber and with his index finger wrote the number 45 in the dirt. Astute observers also would have noticed the left-hander had changed his uniform number from the usual 46 to the aforementioned 45.

And now it was clear this was no ordinary start.

"He's just all I'm thinking about," Corbin said through tears when asked about his relationship with Tyler Skaggs.

Taking the mound some 27 hours after learning his former teammate and close friend had died at the Angels' team hotel in Texas, Corbin was pitching for far more than the Nationals on this rainy Tuesday night. His seven innings of one-run ball ultimately didn't factor into the Nats' 3-2 victory over Miami. Trea Turner's walk-off double to the right-center gap, with Yan Gomes racing all the way around to score from first, was the deciding factor.

But that's not what Corbin, or his Nationals teammates, will take away from this game.

"It's one of those performances that we're going to remember, he's going to remember, just because of how much motivation he had behind it," Gomes said. "And I know Tyler would've been proud of him. And for what he did for his family today, it's a really cool moment and it's really heartfelt."

Skaggs' unexpected death hit the entire baseball world hard, but it hit Corbin especially hard. The two left-handers had been friends since 2009, when they were part of the Angels' same draft class. One year later, they were part of the same trade with the Diamondbacks. And two years after that, they both made their major league debuts for Arizona (along with Adam Eaton).

Corbin and Skaggs hadn't been teammates for some time, but that didn't mean they couldn't remain close friends. To wit: Skaggs was in Corbin's wedding party last winter. And so once the initial shock of Monday's awful news began to wear off and Corbin talked things over with manager Davey Martinez, the question of whether or not to pitch tonight was never really a question at all.

Corbin was adamant he wanted to take the mound.

"I think when you have a loss, you want to keep things as normal as you can," he said. "You want to go out there and do what you have to do. Saw the Angels played today, too. I don't know, I think it's best to just go out there and play the game of baseball."

Corbin did so wearing Skaggs' number, a tribute that came to him Monday night.

"I looked at our roster first to see if anyone had (45)," he said. "I didn't see anybody, so I just thought it'd be a good idea."

Some pitchers, most notably Max Scherzer, need to put their emotions on display for the world to see while they're performing. It brings out the best in them. Corbin prides himself on his ability to show no emotion when he's pitching. That brings out the best in him.

But the challenge facing the stoic lefty tonight was unlike any he previous faced.

"You could tell: Not that he wasn't his usual self, but he was holding it in," Gomes said. "And when we went out to the bullpen, he kind of lost it a little bit during the moment of silence."

It's impossible to know what Corbin was feeling when he threw his first pitch to Miguel Rojas, who promptly sent it back up the middle for a single. And when the Marlins' next two batters also singled, bringing Rojas home for a quick 1-0 lead, it was perhaps fair to wonder if the lefty was going to be up for this difficult assignment.

"For me, the first inning was going to be the toughest," Martinez said. "Knowing him, I could see it a little bit in his face. Once he got through that inning, I thought he was going to be OK."

Sure enough, Corbin began showing off the mettle that made him so attractive to the Nationals in the offseason. He struck out a pair of hitters and escaped the top of the first with no more damage. Then he got down to business and tossed six more scoreless innings, all of them with the Nats clinging to a 2-1 lead made possible by Juan Soto's bottom-of-the-first homer off Marlins starter Zac Gallen.

Corbin needed only 87 official pitches to get through his seven innings of one-run ball, but that number doesn't provide a true account of his workload on a night when a fierce line of storms delayed the game 1 hour, 16 minutes in the middle of the third inning.

"The training staff was on him, stretching him, keeping him loose," Martinez said. "He was throwing (underneath the stands during the delay). Once the game started, he went out there, we kept a close eye on him. After (the fourth) inning, he came in and said: 'I feel great.' I told him: 'Let's see how long you can go, and we'll go from there."

Martinez didn't hesitate to pull his starter after the seventh and entrust the eighth inning to Wander Suero. Suero couldn't hold the 2-1 lead. He gave up a leadoff double to César Puello on a ball to deep right-center that appeared playable for either Eaton on Victor Robles, and two productive outs later this game was tied.

But neither the manager nor the starter second-guessed the decision.

"He just looked at me, and I said: 'Hey, that's it,'" Martinez explained. "He said: 'Good, because my legs were getting heavy.' That was awesome. Very proud of him."

The Nationals squandered an opportunity to re-take the lead in the bottom of the eighth when Ryan Zimmerman grounded out with the bases loaded and two out. But that only set the stage for the bottom of the ninth, and an opportunity for Gomes, Turner and the Nats to make sure Corbin's gutsy effort tonight in honor of his friend would not be in vain.

"I can only imagine what he's going through, the Angels, Skaggs' family. It's tough," Turner said. "But he picked us up tonight. Rain delay. Tough past 24 hours or so. Still went out there and pitched and competed, and hat's off to him. I think words don't do it justice. That was big on many different levels."