ST. LOUIS -- The Washington Nationals have dealt with plenty of adversity in the calendar year of 2019. It's kind of the story of their campaign: overcoming the loss of a franchise icon and a giant, early-season hole they dug for themselves to return to October baseball. But they have not reserved a spot in the playoffs yet, and if things keep going the way they are, adversity might come back to win this one.
Let's start with the reasons for these alarm bells. First, there was Monday's result, a 4-2 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in the opener of a key three-game series between teams battling to secure one of the five precious playoff slots in the National League, in which, at the moment, we can be sure to find only the Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves.
The second alarm prompter: Stephen Strasburg got into early trouble, went only five innings and ultimately took a no-decision. The righty strikeout king, enjoying a Cy Young-caliber season, was the first of three Washington aces lined up to face the Cardinals coming into the series. Patrick Corbin will take the hill on Tuesday and St. Louis native Max Scherzer on Wednesday. But now, dreams of a huge road sweep on the shoulders of that trio have already been dashed.
"The first inning was a debacle," Strasburg said. "One bad pitch and a couple of free passes jacked my pitch count up. [It was a] nail in the coffin, a little bit. [Had to] just keep pounding away."
Then there's alarm bell No. 3: Nationals GM Mike Rizzo told the media before the game that the reason his manager, Dave Martinez, remained in D.C. and the reason he left Sunday's home game against Atlanta early and went to the hospital to begin a round of what the team was calling precautionary tests was because he experienced chest discomfort, and among the tests he had was a catheterization procedure used to look for possible cardiac issues. Bench coach Chip Hale will run the team as long as Martinez is absent.
"[We have to] just keep playing," longtime Nationals slugger Ryan Zimmerman said. "Obviously we miss Davey. The game goes on, no matter who's here and who's not here, whether it's a manager or player. You've got to go out and play the game, and I'm sure he would say the same thing. We wish the best for him and are thinking about him."
Strasburg was outdueled by upstart Cardinals righty Dakota Hudson. Strasburg labored through his five innings, though the only runs he gave up came on a lightning-shot Marcell Ozuna two-run homer in the first. He escaped the loss when NL MVP candidate Anthony Rendon clubbed a solo homer in the sixth to knot the score at two runs apiece, setting an Expos/Nationals franchise record for a third baseman with his 34th homer of the season.
Rendon was the last Nationals hitter to reach base on the night; the final 12 went down in order in a fitting conclusion to a frustrating night for Washington. Hudson is a ground baller, but this was extreme: The Nats managed just two runs, even though St. Louis hurlers recorded just one strikeout and Statcast credited Washington hitters with 12 hard-hit balls. In addition to his early command problems, Strasburg's pitch count was bloated by foul balls -- 25 with him on the mound, according to Statcast, and 44 overall for the team.
All that meant Strasburg didn't come out for the sixth, having burned through 99 pitches on a hot, humid Midwestern night. He threw 76 pitches in his first three innings and tied his season high with four walks before gritting his way through two more frames on a string of groundouts.
"What a battle, from the start," Hale said. "They did a great job of making him throw pitches, putting a lot of pressure on us with their running game. He was just able to hold them to two runs. Obviously five innings, and it was a struggle, but he did it on a hot night. I was really proud of him. He gave us a chance to win it."
Nevertheless, Strasburg's outing got St. Louis into the soft underbelly of the Washington bullpen early. The relief corps has been the Achilles' heel of the Nats all season -- even on Monday, when they went to some of their high-leverage options early. The Cardinals regained the lead on Ozuna's two-out, two-run double in the seventh off Hunter Strickland. That handed Hudson his 16th win of the season.
The Nationals have dropped three of four and eight of 13.
"It's important for us to stick together," Strasburg said. "There's going to be highs and lows over the course of the season. We've got to do our best to flush this one and come out ready to play tomorrow. Score a lot of runs for Patrick."
The game played out with plenty of scoreboard watching to do up north at Wrigley Field, where the Cubs were thrashing the Reds 8-2 with an offense that has been gathering momentum in advance of the Cardinals' visit later this week. A little farther north than that, at Miller Park, the Brewers beat San Diego 5-1, beginning the string of also-ran teams that fill Milwaukee's remaining schedule.
NL Central fans surely fixated on their trio of contenders in that game of watch-the-scoreboard. St. Louis' win kept the Cardinals up two over the Cubs and three over the Brewers.
But as the Nationals have slumped at a bad time, they've slipped back into the wild-card pack with the Cubs and Brewers -- with the Cardinals still part of that conversation as well as the Central leaders. Instead of polishing off the home date for the NL wild-card game, suddenly the Nationals are fending off the Cubs for that right and the Brewers to get into the bracket at all. Washington's lead over the Cubs shrunk to a measly half-game, and Milwaukee is a mere 1.5 games back.
St. Louis isn't out of the woods with this group, either, but for one night at least, the Cards can breathe, knowing that they held the status quo and, in so doing, vanquished the first of the three Nationals aces staring them down.
Meanwhile, for Washington, the team that for months was riding the wave of a comeback story, it looks as if that wave has broken and is in the process of rolling back. The Nats have been here before. First, before the season even started, they lost franchise face Bryce Harper to a division rival, guaranteeing that Washington fans will get to boo him at least seven or eight times each season until the year 2031.
Second, a club that has won more games than any other NL team this decade except for the Dodgers and Cardinals stumbled to a 19-31 start, which heated the seat under Martinez to scalding. But then the Nationals started winning and winning and winning. From the beginning of May to the end of August, Washington went 64-42, rekindling its season and stoking hopes for an October run on the basis of star power led by Rendon, those three starters and wunderkind Juan Soto.
But just when the Nationals seemed to have turned a nightmare into a fairytale, all trends have spun a 180 in the parking lot and are coming right back at them.
"I would say this," Hale said, growing circumspect. "Our guys are battling. We've had a lot of tough luck with the bats, figuring out the bullpen. Guys are getting chances to pitch. We're playing a lot of good teams."
Of course, the Nats remain in prime position. They still have that No. 1 wild-card slot, even as they look ahead to two more games in St. Louis, a series against Harper's Phillies (four games to boo, boo, boo, boo) and an odd interleague season-finishing series with the contending Cleveland Indians.
It's a rough landscape, one they must traverse with uncertainty about their ailing manager -- for now, anyway. There is no choice for the Nationals but to do what they did back in May, when everyone was counting them out and writing off Martinez's tenure: They have to stare down the adversity and dominate it.
There is no other choice. The season has 13 days to go, and it's getting too late for the Nationals to be rewriting another nightmare.
"We play this game the same way when we're 19-31 and when we were three games up or whatever we were," Zimmerman said. "We've got [13] games left. Go out and play those games, and see what happens. We can't control anything, so there's no reason to think about it."