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Nats hope to keep having a blast vs. Mets (Aug 01, 2018)
WASHINGTON -- What will the Washington Nationals do for an encore?
Hours after general manager Mike Rizzo expressed his confidence in the club as constituted by not making any significant trade deadline deals, the Nationals went out and improved to .500 by demolishing the New York Mets 25-4 on Tuesday.
Now with a few hours of sleep they'll face the Mets' Noah Syndergaard (6-1, 2.89 ERA) in a 12:05 p.m. start that concludes the brief two-game series.
A stressful day that featured the passing of the trade deadline as well as an emotional apology to the team by shortstop Trea Turner for racially insensitive and homophobic tweets he sent several years ago, ended with a laugher.
"It's been an emotional day and it was a good way to end it," Nationals manager Dave Martinez said after his team pounded out 26 hits and scored six runs in the eighth inning off emergency reliever Jose Reyes.
Other than shipping reliever Brandon Kintzler to the Chicago Cubs for a minor league pitcher, general manager Mike Rizzo decided to play his hand for the final two months. Washington (53-53) begins Wednesday in third place, 5 1/2 games behind the first-place Phillies.
"I'd rather keep the team together. A really good group of guys," the Nationals' Ryan Zimmerman said. "Obviously there's a lot of baseball left. We're not in an ideal situation, but we are in the situation that we're in. And it's not an impossible situation."
Impossible does describe the situation the Mets were in after the Nationals followed up a seven-run first inning with three runs in each of the second, third, fourth and fifth innings.
"Even to throw Jose Reyes out there and the guys hit them like they did, you don't even see that in BP," Mets manager Mickey Callaway said. "Those guys were locked in, they came out tonight and they beat us up pretty bad."
Daniel Murphy homered twice against his former team. After missing the first 64 games of the season following right knee surgery, Murphy has caught fire, going 14 for 36 in his last 11 games to raise his average to .287.
Syndergaard returns after missing his last start with hand, foot and mouth disease. He previously missed seven weeks with a strained index finger.
Against the Nationals, Syndergaard is 3-4 with a 3.38 ERA in 11 career starts, including a win July 13 when he allowed a run on seven hits in five innings.
Syndergaard is charged with helping the Mets bounce back from the worst loss in franchise history.
"It's embarrassing. We've got to be better than that," Callaway said of Tuesday's laugher. "We made way too many mistakes and they weren't missing those tonight."
Veteran left-hander Tommy Milone (0-0, 5.40) will oppose Syndergaard.
Milone, who appeared in 11 games for the Mets last season, makes his second start for Washington. In his first time out he gave up three first-inning runs against the Marlins but held them scoreless for four innings after that for a no-decision in a 10-3 Nationals win.
"It was kind of just a little bit of anxiousness, I guess, nervous -- whatever you want to call it," Milone told the Washington Post. "I settled down after that and felt pretty good."
Milone has a 1-0 record with a 4.50 ERA in two career starts against the Mets, but both of those starts came in 2011.
