WASHINGTON — A game that could not end quick enough was so overstuffed with runs and detours that it couldn’t end quickly at all.
At some point during the Washington Nationals’ 14-6 drubbing of the Cardinals at Nationals Park, the maneuvering became less about the outcome of Saturday’s game and more about which club could navigate through its hazards and survive with some semblance of a bullpen for the remaining two games of the weekend series and not a sinkhole that swallows other games.
The “worst-case scenario†the Cardinals workshopped before the game manifested with the worst start of Lance Lynn’s 335-start career. But by the end of the 3-hour, 10-minute slog the Cardinals, with help from recast reliever Giovanny Gallegos, had avoided taxing a tired, tattered bullpen in a way that could cost them in the coming days.
“You go through the worst-case scenario before the game even starts,†manager Oliver Marmol said. “You look at it and if it goes well, what does it look like today? We were short even if it went well. It doesn’t go well — what does that look like? And then being able to save an arm …â€
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Coming of three consecutive extra-inning games and deep into a stretch of 28 games in 30 days, the Cardinals had roughly two relievers to cover innings if Lynn’s start went sideways.
It went upside down.
And fast.
Washington ambushed the veteran right-hander for two first-pitch home runs in the first inning. Leadoff hitter C.J. Abrams hit his fourth leadoff homer of the season on Lynn’s first pitch of the game, and it got worse from there. Like fellow starter Sonny Gray the day before, Lynn had a moment — several actually — where the Nationals had more runs against him than he had squeezed outs from there. Keibert Ruiz drilled the first pitch he saw for a three-run homer in the first that put the Nationals ahead 4-0, and rookie James Wood, a budding hometown star for the Nationals, hit his first big-league home run in the second — a three-run echo that vaulted the Nationals to nine runs before Lynn got his sixth out.
“I think it was the worst start of my career, and it feels like it,†Lynn said. “They did a good job of getting me out of what I do. They put good swings on balls. I wasn’t executing pitches either. When you have all of that in one day, it’s a bad day.â€
Lynn (4-4) allowed a career-worst 11 runs and a career-worst 10 earned runs. The four-seam fastball he used so effectively to get ahead for six scoreless innings this past week against Cincinnati fed right into the Nationals’ approach. Strike early. Strike hard. They laced the right-hander for 11 runs on nine hits and four walks, three of which Jesse Winker collected in the first three innings of the game. Winker’s third walk came on Lynn’s last pitch of his game, one out shy of completing the third inning. That left a minimum of 16 outs for the bullpen to get.
The Nationals, a team with a history of losing leads to the Cardinals, surged to a 9-0 cushion against Lynn before the third. Washington misplaced a 5-0 lead on Friday night, a 5-0 lead a year ago, and famously squandered a 6-0 lead on the Cardinals in a Game 5 clincher of the 2012 National League Division Series. Nine runs seemed a sturdy lead what with Daniel Descalso in the dugout as a coach and Pete Kozma nowhere in the vicinity. And yet the Cardinals threatened.
Washington sent nine batters to face Lynn in the second, and the Cardinals answered by sending 10 up to face MacKenzie Gore in the top of the third. Nolan Gorman doubled to lead off the inning with the first of his three hits, and RBI singles from Masyn Winn, Nolan Arenado and Brendan Donovan followed. By the time the inning looped back to Gorman, Dylan Carlson had turned a 1-2 count into a two-out walk to load the bases. Four runs already scored and Gorman had a crack at turning the nine-run lead into a one-run lead. He struck out.
The Nationals added on, widened the lead, and the game shifted to a subtler gambit.
Neither team got as many as four innings from the starter, and both teams wanted to avoid overstretching a well-worn bullpen. At the same time, the offense could continue tenderizing the bullpen for a payoff in the games to come.
“It’s hard to go to your ’pen any earlier knowing you want to finish that game with two guys,†Marmol said.
Lynn yielded the mound in the third with two on and one out to get. Lefty Matthew Liberatore, the long man for the day and a resilient reliever, finished that inning and covered two more leftovers. He allowed two runs on three hits but piloted the game through the fifth. The Cardinals wanted to complete the next three innings with one reliever.
He also happened to be a one-inning reliever.
One of the busiest setup men in baseball over the past four seasons, Gallegos returned recently from injury to find a bullpen completely reengineered without him. Relievers who had subleases on his former innings — the seventh and the eighth — now had the deed. Closer Ryan Helsley, the arm he used to hand games to, pitched two strong innings Friday night to get the win in a game that also saw the end of his streak of 31 consecutive successful save conversions. The Cardinals added horsepower to the bullpen and options to the late innings, leaving Gallegos, due to injury and ineffectiveness, without a role.
But not without something to offer.
“Right now, I think it’s very important to support my team, especially in those times, in that situation,†Gallegos said. “Enjoy my game and try to get out the hitters.â€
Gallegos needed 10 pitches to throw a scoreless sixth, eight to complete a scoreless seventh, and that efficiency made it possible for the Cardinals to ask one more from him.
“I said, ‘Yes. I’ve got to be ready for that one,’†he said.
The Nationals bruised his line with a run in the eighth inning to give them 14 runs, tying for the most the Cardinals allowed this season. But Gallegos’ willingness and effectiveness to complete three innings meant another reliever was not needed — and any reliever who pitched the eighth, Marmol said, would have been unavailable for sure Sunday. Credit Gallegos with a save that doesn’t show up in the crowded box score.
The worst start became the worst-case scenario and an ugly loss, but 5 1/3 innings of relief from two arms put the Cardinals in the best possible position as the series continues.
“He’s not a three-inning guy,†Marmol said. “His role has looked different this year based on the other arms we have in that ’pen, and he has done a really nice job of navigating that lineup for three innings. We were short today. For him to be able to do that and save us from using another arm sets us up a lot better for tomorrow.â€