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Corbin sets and a swing and a long drive to deep left center field this is way back this one is going going and gone goodbye

2 and 2 on Guriel Corbyn winds and delivers in a swing and a fly ball to deep left toward the corner

Hernandez back looking up going going and gone goodbye and the pitch McCormick hits at the deep left

center field Thomas on the run still going back he looks up and it is gone chas McCormick with his

third home run of the season and the bottom of the lineup continues to do damage for the Astros

Ceri scores ahead of him it's now Houston 5 and the Nationals nothing. And welcome to Natschat for Monday, May 16th, 2020, along with Massinsports.com, Nationals insider Mark Zuckerman, who is at Nationals Park. I'm Al-Galdi, host of the Al-Galdi podcast. Well, we pointed this out on the last installment of the Nats

chat podcast. When the Nats hit this season, they win. When the Nats do not hit this season,

they lose. The Nats in their now-concluded series against the Houston Astros at Nationals Park,

scored 13 runs on Saturday night and thus won that game. But the Nats in games one and three

of the series totaled a mere one run. But the Nats in games one and three of the series totaled a mere one

run, and the Nats, not shockingly, lost those two games, including an 8-0 loss on Sunday afternoon.

Nats this season now 12 and 24 have a National League East worst run differential of minus 36. You know, it's funny with these Nats games this season, Mark, because you can think that you know how the game is going to go early in the game, and then the game can end up taking an entirely different turn. Sunday's game was one of those games. Looked like a pitcher's duel between Patrick Corbyn and Justin Verlander. We would have had a lot to talk about with that. But the game ended up becoming very different from that. And the game ended up becoming a blowout loss to the Nats. Yeah, I was with you. I thought, hey, we're headed for like a pretty good game here, pretty good pitchers. I don't know that I expected Corbyn to keep shutting them out all afternoon. But his pitch count was down. He was really effective. And you also knew that Verlander, even though he hadn't allowed a hit, his pitch count was sky high. So you thought, well, they're going to get to the Astros bullpen here at some point. If Corbyn can keep it close, we may have something interesting here in the late innings. And it just did not play out that way at all. The Nats could not get anything going at the plate, not against Verlander and not against the relievers who came in. And as soon as Corbyn gave up those couple of home runs, it was like the air just fizzled out of the balloon. That was it. We're playing out the string. And it turned a pretty nondescript and kind of ugly loss in the end. And it's too bad because I do think it was shaping up to be something

pretty good. And in a lot of ways, a start that we would come out of this and say, boy, Patrick Corbyn has made some real progress here. Look, he just went toe to toe with Justin Verlander, who's pitched as well as anybody in the majors this season. And I suppose you can still look back and find the positives in there, but I can't get over the end results. After all that, his ERA actually went up in this start. There was a point there. He's like, he's got it down in the fives for the first time this year. If he finishes strong, he can even get close to getting it down to the fours. He ends up giving up five runs in the end on three homers and the RA goes up to 628. So I'm having

a hard time really processing here how to think about Corbyn. Has he made some major strides here?

Or is he just kind of become an acceptable big league pitcher who still can't win games for you?

Yeah, I mean, Patrick Corbin, right, he's not Josiah Gray. He's not Yohan Adon. He's not some evolving pitcher. He's not some growing pitcher. He's a guy who is a veteran who you're paying a lot of money to. He needs to be better than what he's been the last few years. We've talked about that ad nauseum. And yeah, I mean, as much as things look pretty good early on, I mean, he begins his outing with four scoreless innings. Ultimately, five runs and six innings is not good enough. You know, he gives up three home runs. You know, he wasn't awful. You know, the line maybe looks a little worse than what the actual output was in the game because he gave up all the runs over the fifth, sixth, sixth and seventh innings. But still, it's like at the end of the day,

six years, $140 million. You're not paying that for five runs and six innings,

no matter how you arrive at the five runs and six innings. And that's kind of just where we're at. You know, watching this game, though, it really did strike me. I mean, we know the Astros are good. We know they can hit a lot of home runs.

But boy, it is a grind to face them over three games because every inning you have to be on.

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