WASHINGTON – There is no such thing as earlier this condensed baseball season. There is no time to relax on things. In a normal schedule, the page turned like a pen. Now it weighs like a safe bank.
James Paxton, who underwent lower back surgery in early February and would not have been ready for the original opening day in late March, started his year of walking on Saturday night with a smelly He placed the Yankees in a ditch that they couldn’t get out on the road to a 9-2 beating by defensively challenged nationals in an empty national park.
Since Chad Green was not required on Saturday night, he will likely open Sunday’s game and be left-handed by Patrick Corbin with each team 1-1 and 58 games remaining.
A year ago, Paxton’s fastball had a speed between 93 and 97 mph. Saturday was in neighborhood 91-93 and led him not to leave the second entrance. In more than one frame, the Yankees’ No. 2 starter allowed three runs, five hits, made one turn and sniffed one.
A day after stud outfielder Juan Soto was sidelined by COVID-19, the Nationals scratched right-hander Stephen Strasburg, last year’s World Series MVP, with a nerve problem in his right hand.
Erick Fedde replaced Strasburg and saw the Nationals make four errors in the first three innings. Two of them came in the fourth when Fedde gave Giancarlo Stanton a double-play ball that ended the inning.
For the second game in a row, Stanton flexed his sizable muscles by sending a 483-foot homer to the left that nearly left the building in the fourth.
Mike King replaced Paxton and retired the first five batters, but gave up a two-run homer to Victor Robles in the fourth and Jonathan Holder delivered an RBI double to Howie Kendrick in the fifth. Former Met Asdrubal Cabrera homered Ben Heller in the seventh for an 8-2 lead. Michael Taylor’s home run off Luis Avilan in the eighth made him 9-2.
Stanton’s home run in the third inning was clocked at 121 mph and shaved the Nationals’ lead to 3-2. According to Statcast, Stanton started the game first for the most homers (82) at 110 mph or more since 2015 and first on most homers (26) at more than 450 feet.
After making two mistakes in the top of the first, the Nationals had four more boots before Fedde came out in the third inning. Inexplicably, shortstop Trea Turner not only misinterpreted Gio Urshela’s routine punishment at the start of the inning, but his loose shot at Fedde caught the pitcher and allowed Urshela to take second place.
Brett Gardner’s ball into the warning field on right field moved Urshela to third and scored on DJ LeMahieu’s single to left center that reduced the Nationals’ lead to 3-1.
Paxton worked around a two-out triple for Starlin Castro in the first inning as he retired Kendrick on a line trip to center. He was not so lucky in the second frame.
Victor Robles delivered a two-run double with the bases loaded and no outs. When Paxton walked with Michael Taylor, the 9th hitter, Aaron Boone called right-hander Mike King, who came in with the bases stuck and no outs in his second major league game.
King induced Turner to hit on a 6-4-3 double play that scored Carter Kiebom and ended the play by putting Adam Eaton on a routine flight to center.
After hitting a two-run homer in the first inning of Thursday night’s game measured at 459 feet, Stanton had a chance to hurt the Nationals in the opening inning on Saturday night.
Thanks to errors by first baseman Howie Kendrick and second baseman Miguel Castro, LeMahieu was in second and Gleyber Torres at first with one out when Stanton came to the plate.
Fedde should have been in the dugout and not faced Stanton, but managed to get him to hit a double play 5-4-3 that killed the scoring threat.
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