Surging Reds complete four-game sweep of Nationals
In the end, after it rained, then sprinkled, then cleared up for the Washington Nationals to blow one-run leads in the sixth and eighth innings Thursday at Nationals Park, Nick Senzel took over for the Cincinnati Reds. In the ninth, after Riley Adams reached with a one-out double, Senzel leaped at the right field wall to rob CJ Abrams of what would have been a walk-off hit. And in the 10th, Senzel led off with a first-pitch, two-run homer off Hunter Harvey, leading the Reds to a 5-4 win and a four-game sweep.
When the Nationals rallied in the bottom half, Senzel was on his third position, going from center to right to third base. Once Lane Thomas skipped an RBI single past Elly De La Cruz and after Jeimer Candelario was hit in the right knee by Alexis Díaz and left the game, Dominic Smith struck out before Senzel charged a grounder nubbed by Corey Dickerson. His throw to first was low and wide, but Spencer Steer, playing his third position of the afternoon, laid out to snag it. The next batter, Keibert Ruiz, flew out to center to seal the loss.
“It looked like it was going to go, and then he just made a really good play on that,” Harvey said of watching Senzel’s ninth-inning catch from the dugout. “Which was kind of a bummer.”
Way earlier in the day, with one out in the second, MacKenzie Gore stood on the mound and turned his left palm to the crying sky. He sure wasn’t worried about a little rain. So instead of scampering for cover, he put his hands on his hips, shook his head, then stared at the plate as if Tyler Stephenson never should have left the batter’s box, no matter that a shower was quickly becoming a full-on storm.
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For a few waterlogged moments, the 24-year-old had the whole place to himself. He seemed to know that once he walked off the field, there was a good chance he wouldn’t retake it. And after a 103-minute weather delay, he was right, even though he tried to keep his left arm warm with a pair of simulated innings in the bullpen. There was no reason to push Gore in early July. That’s why Mason Thompson, Jordan Weems, Jose A. Ferrer, Kyle Finnegan, Harvey and Cory Abbott lined up behind him.
“After an hour and a half, we talked to him, and he was good,” Manager Dave Martinez said of Gore. “I told him: ‘We’re not going to put you out there like that. Last year you had arm injuries. We won’t do that to you.’”
Thompson recorded eight outs and stranded Gore’s runner on third in the second. Then, after searching all week for a breakthrough hit, the offense nudged ahead when Thomas singled in two with two outs in the fifth. Right before Thomas split the shortstop and third baseman, Abrams appeared to be picked off between second and third, but he escaped to extend the inning with a swim move slide that completed a double steal. But a half inning later, Weems, who has thrown 84 pitches since Monday, walked the leadoff batter and plunked Matt McLain with one out, setting up a matchup between De La Cruz and the rookie Ferrer.
De La Cruz finished the series with 10 hits, including three doubles and a 455-foot homer. In the finale, he singled off Gore — the second-to-last at-bat before the delay — then beat Ferrer by sneaking a double inside the third base line. One run scored. The Reds tried to push across another, but Stone Garrett, Abrams and Adams combined for a strong relay, ending with Adams tagging McLain’s outstretched hand at home plate.
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Ferrer, 23, followed with a one-two-three seventh. Alex Call followed that with a solo home run, his first extra-base hit since he returned from the Class AAA Rochester Red Wings. But Finnegan couldn’t hold the lead in the eighth, then Harvey couldn’t keep Senzel or the automatic runner from coming home in the 10th.
“I left the pitch over the plate, and he hit it,” Harvey said of the fastball Senzel pulled for the go-ahead homer. Sometimes it’s as simple as that.
Like the Nationals, the Reds didn’t plan to contend this season, yet they left Washington with a two-game lead atop the National League Central. Their Opening Day payroll, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, was just under $83 million (ranking 26th, four spots below the Nationals). After Joey Votto, who is owed $25 million in 2023, their next highest-paid player is Wil Myers at $6 million. Myers was the Reds’ only splash in free agency, the exact sort of player who keeps a spot warm in a low-cost, years-long rebuild. Then they cut Myers in late June, when rebuilding gave way to baseball’s hottest team — winners of 20 of their past 24.
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The headliner is the 21-year-old De La Cruz. But McLain, Steer and Andrew Abbott are all standout rookies, too. McLain, a first-round pick in 2018, was promoted in mid-May. Steer, acquired at the deadline last summer, has 14 homers. Abbott, recalled in early June, has a 1.21 ERA in six starts, though he didn’t pitch against the Nationals.
In the Reds — and their promising young talent, in a club that had a new player at every position by the end of Thursday’s game, matching speed and power with a ton of versatility — Martinez saw what his team could be down the line. But in the meantime, he really wanted to steal a win.
“We have some players that I’m really excited about that are really, really young still, that are going to have an opportunity to play up here,” Martinez said, referring to the prospects who haven’t arrived yet. “ … So I look at that team, and I say, ‘Man, what’s to come for us is going to be pretty good.’ ”
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