Nationals give Michael Soroka little help, drop series finale to Reds

Washington Post

4 days ago

The final pitch Washington right-hander Michael Soroka threw Wednesday afternoon had little bearing on the game's final result, a 5-0 loss to the Cincinnati Reds at Nationals Park. Once replay review showed his sinker nicked Noelvi Marte's elbow, it was just another free pass that the Nationals were able to work around in a scoreless sixth. The pitch, his 88th, was overshadowed by the 105 that Reds righty Nick Lodolo needed to toss the third complete-game shutout against the Nationals.
'He was nasty,' interim manager Miguel Cairo said of Lodolo. 'You don't want to give credit to another team's pitcher, but he mixed it up.'
In the context of what could come next for Soroka and the Nationals — more acutely, the evaluation process for contending teams who may view the 27-year-old as a weapon down the stretch with the trade deadline approaching — the metrics on that pitch (and the 87 pitches that preceded it) were more noteworthy.
That's because the sinker left his hand at 89 mph.
'If I knew, I would have been throwing harder today, right?' Soroka said when asked why his velocity was down. 'You go through ebbs and flows in your career, and I think it's something that we're going to be working tirelessly at, just like everything else.'
Across Soroka's first 10 starts, his fastball consistently sat between 94 and 95 mph. On Wednesday, his four-seamer and two-seamer hovered between 90 and 91 mph, ultimately topping out with a 93.2 mph heater that sailed above the zone in the third. Eight of his final 11 fastballs were under 90 mph, continuing a trend that has persisted for a few weeks.
Soroka has expressed some optimism throughout this recent stretch — because he has pitched well without his best stuff, he expects to get even better results when the velocity returns. He navigated around the declining velocity, needing just 25 pitches to retire the first eight batters. His breaking ball generated ugly swings throughout the lineup and his fastball wasn't hit all that hard. There was a workmanlike efficiency to his outing that his line backed up: 5⅔ innings, just two hits, one run and six strikeouts with three walks.
'I used to get outs without [great velocity], so I think just continuing on the path that there's a lot more to pitching than velocity,' Soroka said. 'Still spinning the ball really well ... keeping the righties between two-seam and four-seam was big again. So yeah. Had to pitch again.'
A walk of Elly De La Cruz, an ensuing stolen base and an RBI single up the middle from Jake Fraley in the fourth was all the Reds were able to muster against Soroka, who signed a one-year, $9 million deal last offseason.
After his final pitch, Soroka bounced the ball off the palm on his hand and turned his head toward Washington's dugout. Cairo had already began to walk Soroka's way.
What cost him was a lack of run support. The Nationals (41-61) were shut out for the eighth timeas Lodolo snuffed out their bid for a three-game sweep of the Reds (53-50). Lodolo struck out eight and allowed just four hits (three of which were singles) without any walks.
'You never really know what you're looking for,' Jacob Young said of facing Lodolo, who had a fairly even split in usage between his four pitches. 'He threw anything in any count, and they're all strikes. He kept it down mostly. I think he made a couple mistakes where we had chances. I can think of a couple chances I had there, and I didn't put them in play. That's usually the difference.'
After scoreless efforts from Cole Henry and Konnor Pilkington in relief, Jackson Rutledge and Andry Lara each allowed a pair of runs in the eighth and ninth.
If there was a silver lining for the Nationals, it came in the eighth. With two outs, Rutledge threw Will Benson a first-pitch fastball. Off the bat, it looked gone. Out in center field, Young felt differently about its final destination. Young tracked the pitch off of the bat, broke for the wall, turned his body and scaled the fence as the ball began its descent. Somehow, at full extension, he plucked it from the air, robbing Benson of a home run.
Rutledge stood on the mound hunched over. In the dugout, pitching strategist Sean Doolittle stood with his mouth agape. Young smirked, reminiscent of his reaction when he robbed another home run a month earlier. The 25-year-old admitted Wednesday's catch felt a bit smoother than his last one, which came against the Detroit Tigers.
Young, a Gold Glove finalist in 2024, continues to grade out as one of the best center fielders in baseball. He has seemed to appreciate the reactions to his catches more than the process of catching them.
'We're all big leaguers,' Young said. 'So whenever you can make other big leaguers in awe [of a play], it feels good.'