DENVER — The thin air of Denver and the theatrics of the Washington Nationals’ previous two games suggested a 2-1 win such as the one they put forth Sunday afternoon to clinch a series victory against the Colorado Rockies should have been improbable.
At Coors Field, you don’t expect to endure 5⅓ no-hit innings from Rockies left-hander Kyle Freeland, who had just been reinstated from the 60-day injured list and entered with a 13.21 ERA. You don’t expect to get one of the best starts of Jake Irvin’s life, a 10-strikeout, six-inning master class, and nearly waste it. And you don’t plan to enter the ninth inning with a deficit and just one hit, an infield single by Jacob Young.
But the run-happy environment, in which the Nationals and Rockies had combined for 31 runs in the first two games, got outfielder Lane Thomas thinking.
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“You look at the last few games and the last few innings [and] feel like no one’s going to win 1-0,” he said. “We thought at no part in that game that we weren’t going to score at least one.”
And so the Nationals rallied. Young opened the ninth with his second hit, another infield single that kicked off the top of closer Jalen Beeks’s glove. CJ Abrams hit a grounder to shortstop, reaching on a fielder’s choice, before he scampered to second base on a wild pitch. And Thomas — who has been one of the most consistent hitters in baseball since he returned from an injury in late May — snaked a flyball down the right field line, one he thought might slice foul but instead dropped in at the wall for a game-tying double.
Joey Meneses, fist clenched as he jogged into first base, put the Nationals ahead with a single that landed on the outfield grass in shallow center. The Nationals were on their way to their 22nd comeback win, the most in MLB.
“I had been battling this whole series,” Meneses said through an interpreter. “I felt like I haven’t been doing much, so [I] felt great relief and satisfaction.”
Manager Dave Martinez reminded reporters before the series that his Nationals had lost 1-0 on this field last year. So Sunday wasn’t a surprise to him.
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“Hitting is not easy. Some days you have struggles,” Martinez said. “Then, all of a sudden, boom, boom, boom, your back’s against the wall, and here we go. The one thing I can tell you about these guys, they got character. They don’t quit. They played hard for 27 outs.”
After Meneses put the Nationals (38-39) in front, they still needed three more outs. And so, just hours after Kyle Finnegan had stomached one of the worst blown saves of his career on the first walk-off loss via pitch clock violation in MLB history — and just hours after Martinez promised to put him in for the next save situation — there he was again, trotting out from the bullpen with a one-run lead.
In Saturday’s outing, the Rockies (27-51) had four straight singles before the pitch clock violation ended it. On Sunday, Finnegan began by conceding back-to-back singles. But a strikeout and a loud flyball settled him down as he remained mindful of the pitch clock. He closed it out with three straight fastballs past Michael Toglia — who had crushed a 462-foot homer off Irvin in the second inning for the Rockies’ lone run — to clinch his 22nd save.
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“He came in and gave me a big hug and said, ‘I needed that,’” Martinez said. “I go: ‘You’re good. You don’t need that. One game doesn’t justify who you are. You’re our closer.’”
“I beared down and told myself I wasn’t going to let it happen [again],” Finnegan said. “Was able to get a strikeout. It had been a while since I got an out. ... Feels really good to put [Saturday] behind me and get a series win.”
Before the momentous events of the ninth, each starter doled out a nearly immaculate performance. The more surprising of the two came from Freeland, who allowed just two base runners in six scoreless innings behind a four-pitch mix and a particularly effective slider.
With one out in the sixth — right around when the prospect of a no-hitter enters the crowd’s collective consciousness — Young reached on a chopper down the third-base line and hustled all the way to third after an errant throw by Ryan McMahon. But Freeland escaped, striking out Abrams and Thomas swinging on pitches outside the zone before strutting off the mound with a shout.
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Irvin nearly matched Freeland’s exploits. He wavered a bit early, falling behind in a handful of counts, and needed 37 pitches to complete the first two innings, which included Toglia’s no-doubter. But left-hander Patrick Corbin, who has played at Coors Field often, told Irvin he couldn’t be intimidated by the park’s reputation.
And so, with a curveball that hammered the zone and stymied the Rockies, he retired 14 of the next 15 batters, including the final nine he faced with seven strikeouts. He recorded his final out on a diving catch by Young and flung both arms in the air. Though his ERA dropped to 3.13, he remained relatively cavalier about his performance.
“Just giving us a chance to win there at the end is what I set out to do,” Irvin said.
But watching Finnegan execute as he did?
“That guy’s a freaking leader for us,” Irvin said. “To do what he did after yesterday, man, shows a lot about him. He’s such a high-character human being — freaking competitor. Love the guy. Fired up. Fired up for him and for us.”
