Nationals top Dodgers behind a five-HR explosion
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LOS ANGELES — It wasn’t the little details that pushed the Washington Nationals to a sweep-avoiding win over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday. The Dodgers converted each of their six steal attempts. Kyle Finnegan walked Chris Taylor on a pitch clock violation in the seventh, then Taylor scored on a game-tying single. In the eighth, in the middle of the go-ahead rally, CJ Abrams floated off second on a grounder to the right side and was tagged out between second and third.
That’s not an exhaustive list, either. But what did lead the Nationals to a 10-6 victory over the first-place Dodgers: power. Lots and lots of power.
The biggest swing came from Luis García, who crushed a three-run homer in the eighth, pulling an inside slider from Brusdar Graterol, and skipped down the line while he watched it. The second-biggest came from Keibert Ruiz, who lined a two-run shot for needed insurance in the ninth, reaching for a low slider that Phil Bickford left over the plate. Not many pitches were safe in the series finale.
“Just great emotions,” García said through a team interpreter. “You get to look at the dugout and see how excited your teammates are and just the way we always battle and don’t give up. Just to see us in that moment, to be able to do that job … it’s really exciting.”
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To set the tone, Ruiz and Abrams crushed back-to-back solo shots off Noah Syndergaard in the second, then Jeimer Candelario smacked a two-run homer off Syndergaard in the fifth. Candelario reached base safely in four of his five at-bats. Joey Meneses chipped in with two singles, a double and two runs scored.
The Dodgers, meanwhile, greeted Patrick Corbin with two homers in their first three at-bats (courtesy of Mookie Betts and Will Smith). Betts lifted his second off Finnegan to begin the eighth. But in the end, the Nationals (24-32) were on the right side of a full-on slugfest, using homers to paper over those mistakes and a rocky fifth inning for Corbin. And while that was certainly a sharp change of pace for Washington, it was foreshadowed by a number of loud and long outs in Tuesday night’s loss.
“Home runs are going to come,” Candelario said. “At the end of the day, we know if we put a good swing on the ball, it’s going to fly. We’ve been hitting the ball really hard, you know? Sometimes the balls aren’t carrying. Thank God they did today.”
Syndergaard was the right pitcher for the Nationals to flip their luck. The right-hander entered with a 6.27 ERA in 47⅓ innings. When he exited after five, it had inched to 6.54. Yet throughout the afternoon, it felt as if the Nationals were walking a tightrope between an encouraging win — stuffed with bright spots for their young core — and a head-scratching loss. In the third, after Ruiz, Abrams and Candelario teamed to tie the score, they even seemed hellbent on letting the Dodgers (32-23) pull away again.
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García booted a routine grounder to start the inning. Freddie Freeman, not known as a fast runner, then stole against Corbin and Ruiz. Then on Smith’s single to right, Lane Thomas threw home instead of hitting the cutoff man, allowing Smith to take second. Somehow, though, Corbin escaped the mess having allowed only one run. He pushed to five innings and 88 pitches despite the early signs of disaster.
While Carl Edwards Jr., Finnegan and Hunter Harvey worked behind Corbin— Edwards escaping a self-made bases-loaded jam, Harvey recording the final six outs on 34 pitches — García and Ruiz took some very big hacks. Both are working on their pitch selection, with García making more progress through the first two months of the season. But in his past two games, facing the team that traded him to the Nationals in July 2021, Ruiz blasted three homers, doubling his season total.
“I’ve been hitting the ball hard, and I wasn’t getting the results that I wanted,” Ruiz said. “But I just got to keep doing what I’m doing, control what I can control, keep working hard in the gym, on my routine, and the results are going to be there.”
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Batting right-handed Tuesday, Ruiz ripped a high fastball inside the left field foul pole. Batting left-handed Wednesday, he knocked three hits and unlocked his power swing. He entered the game with a batting average on balls in play of .221, 76 points lower than the MLB average. Ruiz, like his team, had experienced at least a bit of bad luck. So the Nationals capped a 3-3 trip by taking fielders and bounces out of the equation.
The win was the first time this year they had homered more than twice in a game. They had not hit five in a game since June 3, 2022, when Lane Thomas went deep three times and Juan Soto and Nelson Cruz joined him. García started the road swing with a 6-for-6 night and ended it with a celebration in front of the Nationals’ dugout. Ruiz soon joined him, screaming in the direction of his teammates before chopping his hips.
To have Ruiz, 24, García, 23, and Abrams, 22, homer in the same nine innings was a small mile marker in the Nationals’ rebuild. And to do it against a tough contender made it that much better.
“Hopefully we figured something out here as a club,” Manager Dave Martinez said. “And we come back and do it again Friday.”
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Source: The Washington Post
