August 10, 2020: Nationals trounce Mets in 16-4 blowout win

On Monday, August 10, 2020, the New York Mets played the Washington Nationals at Citi Field. Entering the game, the Mets were 7-9, unusual given the month, but the COVID-shortened 60-game 2020 season had not begun until July 23.

The Mets were a game ahead of the cellar-dwelling Nats, who were defending their 2019 World Series title. Washington had won only a third of its 12 games, scoring just 35 runs in the process, the fewest in the majors and 31 fewer than the Mets.

On the mound for the Queens men was 29-year-old Steven Matz, who wound up going winless in his six 2020 starts. As the New York Post reported, the game began “[o]nly hours after [Matz’s] fellow Long Island native Marcus Stroman cited coronavirus concerns and opted out for the season.”1 It was Matz’s fourth start of the season and second against the Nats. He had pitched against them on August 4 at Nationals Park and was hit hard, giving up seven hits and five runs in three innings while throwing 78 pitches in a 5-3 loss.

The Mets needed Matz to pitch well, as they had placed Michael Wacha on the injured list with right-shoulder inflammation, the third time this season they had added a starter to the list.2 In addition to Stroman and Wacha’s absence, Noah Syndergaard was out for the season after getting Tommy John surgery.

Opposing Matz was 31-year-old Patrick Corbin, who was 1-1. He was the winning pitcher in the August 4 game, when he threw 102 pitches in 5 2/3 innings and allowed three runs.

Corbin had a stellar season in 2019, winning 14 while losing just 7, with a 3.25 ERA. He earned the win in the clinching Game Five of the NL Championship Series against the St. Louis Cardinals and Game Seven of the World Series against the Houston Astros. In comparison, Matz that year was 11-10 with a 4.21 ERA, the 11 wins the most he had in his six seasons as a Met.

The game opened well for Matz. He set down the side one-two-three in the first. Corbin faced four batters in the bottom of the inning. Jeff McNeil doubled, but did not score.

In the second, Washington’s Juan Soto, batting in the cleanup spot, bounced the ball back weakly to the mound on an 0-and-2 count for the first out. An out later, Asdrúbal Cabrera homered. The Nats would never relinquish that lead.

The 34-year-old Cabrera, in his 14th major-league season, had been a nemesis to the Mets since he signed with the Nationals the prior August after appearing in 374 games for the Queens club from 2016 to 2018. In seven prior games against his former team, he hit .370 in 27 at-bats with a .593 slugging percentage.

In the Mets’ turn at bat, they got their first hit when Wilson Ramos doubled, but the next two batters’ deep flies to center field were not deep enough, so the Mets got another zero on the scoreboard.

The Nats sent seven batters to the plate in the third. Yan Gomes singled and, one out later, Trea Turner homered, making it a 3-0 game. Matz seemed to be out of the inning when Josh Harrison grounded out and Starlin Castro struck out, but the third strike got away from catcher Ramos for a wild pitch.3 Soto homered on the next pitch, a blast that “travel[ed] an estimated 463 feet and sail[ed] over the Mets’ ‘Big Apple’ sign beyond the center field wall.”4 The visitors’ lead increased to four runs.

Corbin silenced the Mets bats in the third, facing just three batters. Neither of the two batted balls left the infield.

Matz put up a scoreless top of the fourth. Cabrera doubled, his second extra-base hit, but was the only Nat to reach base.

Corbin’s mastery of the Mets continued in the fourth, a one-two-three inning, his second.

Washington made it a rout in the fifth. Three of the first four batters reached base. Turner and Harrison singled. Soto’s line-drive double, on a 1-and-2 count, scored Turner.

Mets manager Luis Rojas replaced Matz with Paul Sewald, who faced eight batters before getting the third out. Six baserunners crossed the plate while Sewald was on the mound, giving the Nats a 12-0 lead.

Mike Puma of the New York Post wrote, “Matz would have been booed off the field if the stiffs occupying the seats had a pulse, so in that regard fake fans were a welcomed backdrop for the left-hander, who surrendered three early homers to the Nationals in their 16-4 beatdown of the Mets.”5

In his 4 1/3 innings, Matz faced 22 batters and threw 91 pitches. He gave up eight runs and eight hits, but no walks.

Corbin allowed two baserunners for the first time in the fifth on a single and his first walk. Neither runner reached second as the first batter was erased on a double play.

The sixth began with Soto stepping into the batter’s box. He singled, his third hit. Sewald then walked both Howie Kendrick and Cabrera, loading the bases.6 Rojas summoned Chasen Shreve from the bullpen. He faced five batters before he could retire the side. Two scored.

Nationals manager Dave Martinez subbed out stars Soto and Turner before Washington took the field in the sixth. The game was out of hand. “By the time the Mets came to bat in the bottom of the sixth inning, they were in a 14-0 hole,” lamented the New York Daily News.7 New York sent seven to the plate. A walk and two singles, aided by a fielder’s choice, resulted in the Mets getting their first two runs.

In the seventh, after Rojas’s late-game lineup shuffle brought in catcher Ali Sánchez for his big-league debut, the Nats quickly scored twice more. Cabrera again homered, this time with Soto’s replacement, Michael A. Taylor, on second, pushing the lead to 16-2. Corbin left the game after that inning, having thrown 87 pitches.

No batter reached base again until the bottom of the eighth. Against Wander Suero, the Mets scored their third run of the game, on Pete Alonso’s RBI single.

Rojas sent infielder Luis Guillorme to the mound in the ninth. Making his first big-league pitching appearance, Guillorme faced three batters, setting down the side in order.8

In the bottom of the ninth, with Sean Doolittle pitching, Brandon Nimmo led off with a home run. The next three batters all hit the ball well, but they all lined out, one to deep left, one to deep right, and one to deep center. Nimmo’s blast was the Mets’ eighth hit, nine fewer than the Nats’ total.

Cabrera went 4-for-4 with two doubles, two homers, three runs, and five RBIs. Soto’s three hits resulted in three runs and three RBIs. He went on to win the NL batting title with a .351 average.9 Turner also had three hits, and he scored twice and drove in three runs.10

The win, as a wire-service account of the game observed, “was a 180-degree turn for the Nationals, who reached double figures in runs for the first time in their 12 games.”11 The 16 runs were just one fewer than they had scored in their previous six games combined.

After the game, the Daily News’s Deesha Thosar wrote, “Following Monday’s blowout loss, nearly 30% of the season was over. … Time is quickly running out for the Mets to get back on track.”12 But that wouldn’t be easy, Puma added, because “with the Mets strapped for starting pitching … they have little choice but to stick with Matz.”13

At the end of the season, the Mets and Nationals were tied for fourth place in the NL East with 26-34 records. Both missed baseball’s 16-team postseason.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Laura Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Asdrubal Cabrera, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, screwball.ai, FanGraphs.com, and Retrosheet.org for player, team, and season data.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN202008100.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2020/B08100NYN2020.htm

Notes

1 Mike Puma, “Steven Matz Clobbered in Mets’ Terrible Loss to Nationals,” New York Post, August 11, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/08/10/steven-matz-hammered-in-mets-terrible-loss-to-nationals/. Stroman was already on the injured list (as of July 22) with a torn left calf muscle when he opted out on August 10 for the remainder of the season. Deesha Thosar, “Mets’ Marcus Stroman Opts Out of Remainder of 2020 Season,” New York Post, August 10, 2020, https://www.nydailynews.com/2020/08/10/mets-marcus-stroman-opts-out-of-remainder-of-2020-season/.

2 Deesha Thosar, “Mets See 3rd Starter Go on Injured List,” New York Daily News, August 10, 2020: 32.

3 Puma, “Steven Matz Clobbered in Mets’ Terrible Loss to Nationals.”

4 News Wire Services, “Cabrera’s Two Home Runs, 5 RBIs Help Nationals Pound Mets,16-4,” Buffalo News, August 11, 2020: 32.

5 Puma, “Steven Matz Clobbered in Mets’ Terrible Loss to Nationals.” “Fake fans” was a reference to the cardboard cutouts of spectators that teams displayed at ballparks while games were quarantined because of COVID-19 in 2020.

6 Sewald (who gave up six earned runs in two-thirds of an inning) was optioned to the Mets’ “alternate training site” (no minor leagues in 2020) the next day and never pitched for the team again. He signed as a free agent with the Seattle Mariners in the offseason.

7 Deesha Thosar, “Mets in a Mess,” New York Daily News, August 11, 2020: 33.

8 After the game on August 10, Luis Guillorme’s first mound appearance, he appeared in relief three more times for the Mets, each stint just an inning.

9 Soto also led the majors in on-base percentage, slugging, and OPS in 2020.

10 Turner went on to lead the majors in hits (78) in 2020 for the first of two consecutive seasons. He finished fourth in the NL batting race in 2020 and won it in 2021.

11 News Wire Services, “Cabrera’s Two Home Runs, 5 RBIs Help Nationals Pound Mets,16-4.”

12 Thosar, “Mets in a Mess.”

13 “Mets in a Mess.”