Most everything about the scene 30 minutes before first pitch Tuesday at Nationals Park looked normal — the skies were clear, the grounds crew was putting the finishing touches on the field, fans were filing into their seats.
A few players were going through warm-ups on the field when the PA announcer informed that the game would be delayed because of incoming thunderstorms in the area. Yet the next two hours produced barely a drop of rain, making many wonder why the game had been delayed in the first place.
The game started at 8:30, 85 minutes after the scheduled first pitch. And on a wacky July night, when the team couldn’t figure out the weather, the Nationals survived nearly five hours of waiting, playing, waiting again, then playing two eventful innings for a 6-5 win over the Colorado Rockies.
The Nationals trailed 5-1 in the seventh when the second delay arrived — this one with actual precipitation. But they scored five runs after play resumed, capped by a three-run homer from Joey Meneses that gave Washington a one-run lead in the eight that would hold after Kyle Finnegan worked an uneventful ninth for his 14th save.
CJ Abrams and a handful of his teammates came running out of dugout. The few fans who stayed through both delays cheered them. And somehow the Nationals found a way to win on a night that started normal but was anything but.
“It’s not so much frustrating as it was a little tedious,” Meneses said through an interpreter. “Just a little boring, just the way you kind of get yourself warmed up and ready and then you’re stopped and you have to do it all over again. But it definitely was very satisfactory to be able to pull off the win. Especially the fact that if we would’ve stopped the game because of the rain delay, then we would have lost the game.”
The game endured its second pause in the top of the seventh inning with Amos Willingham on the mound, runners on the corners and two outs. To that point, the length of the game once the first pitch was thrown was 1 hour 38 minutes — meaning the game would’ve probably finished had it held to its scheduled start. Instead, the Nationals’ weather experts rolled the dice.
The rain started once the game officially did get underway, though not enough to stop Trevor Williams from making his 21st start of the year. But no matter what Williams seemed to throw early — his fastball in, his change-up down, his slider and curveball away — the visitors found a way to make solid contact.
Williams, 31, doesn’t fit the profile of a modern-day pitcher — he pitches to contact and relies heavily on location, not velocity. The average exit velocity on balls put in play against him this season is 88.4 mph, the league average.
But the Rockies put 22 balls in play against Williams over six innings and 14 of them had an exit velocity of at least 90 mph. In the first three innings, the Rockies had nine hits.
The Rockies (40-61) grabbed a 2-0 lead in the second inning thanks to four hits with two outs. Elías Díaz hit a 108.2 mph single before two run-scoring hits: Michael Toglia with an RBI double at 95.2 mph before Alan Trejo followed with a 95.4 mph single. Then Brenton Doyle hit a 103.7 mph single.
The follow inning, Ezequiel Tovar hit a solo shot off the foul pole at 104.6 mph before Díaz added a 95.9 RBI single later in the frame to extend their lead to 4-0.
Williams’s velocity on all of his pitches was down Tuesday compared to his season averages, a likely factor in why the Rockies were able to drive the ball. But as his outing progressed and his velocity dropped, Williams seemed to make the necessary adjustments — he retired the final 10 batters he faced.
“Didn’t give up any hits,” Williams joked about what was different in the final three innings. “But I think the main thing is we just continued our game plan. We pitched to contact. We tried to limit the damage as much as we could. We’re a good hitting ballclub and we had to keep it in reach. And thankfully we were able to do so today.”
The Nationals (42-59) cut their deficit to 2-1 in the second on an RBI single by Stone Garrett but were held mostly in check by Austin Gomber. Willingham tried to pitch through a jam in the middle of torrential downpour before the umpires paused the game. After a 51-minute delay, Jose A. Ferrer finished it for him by getting a strikeout and a groundout.
If there was any consolation for the Nationals, the rain forced the Rockies to turn to their bullpen. Former Nationals reliever Brad Hand allowed a solo shot to Garrett in the seventh inning that cut the deficit to 4-2. Even after Ferrer allowed another run in the eighth, the Nationals clawed all the way back. Jeimer Candelario hit an RBI double to trim the gap to 5-3 before Meneses played hero again, golfing a low and away curveball from Justin Lawrence into the left field seats for the night’s decisive hit on a night when few decisions worked out.
“We can’t control the weather or what’s going to happen, especially during the summertime, but the boys hung in there,” said Manager Dave Martinez, who applauded Williams for keeping the team in the game. “We swung the bats really good over the weekend. Yesterday, towards the end of the game, we swung the bat. And then the bats came alive today.”
Note: Hunter Harvey played catch at up to 75 feet, and Martinez said he felt good afterward. Harvey last pitched July 15 and was placed on the injured list two days later with a right elbow strain. Martinez said that it’ll probably take some time before Harvey can throw a bullpen again but said the veteran throwing at all was a positive step.