D12 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 , 2020
Palat, Point, Kucherov and Vasi-
levskiy and trade-deadline pick-
ups Coleman and Barclay Good-
row. In Goodrow and free agent
signings Maroon and Zach Bogo-
sian, General Manager Julien
BriseBois added some muscle to
all that talent, and that is giving
his team confidence to go toe-to-
toe with the Islanders in a series
that’s getting chippy.
“We’re not going to back down
from anybody,” Coleman said.
Players from each team had
some discussions during pregame
warmups, Trotz inserted tough
guy Ross Johnston into the Island-
ers lineup for more tough tough-
ness, and tensions rose at times.
New York’s Matt Martin shot the
puck at the first period horn, earn-
ing an unsportsmanlike conduct
penalty and inciting some push-
ing and shoving, but the result
hinged more on the play for 27 sec-
onds and two big Tampa Bay
shifts.
“It’s a game — it’s not a shift,”
Cooper said. “Part of my job is to
make sure they’ve got the confi-
dence to go do their job, and I have
full confidence in them and they
delivered.”
Point delivered a goal and an
assist while clearly playing
through some pain. He took only
one shift after getting tangled up
with Islanders defenseman Adam
Pelech early in the third, and his
status for Game 5 is a question
mark.
— Associated PressGame 3 before leaving in the third
with injury, fellow top liners Palat
and Nikita Kucherov set him up
for that goal, defenseman Victor
Hedman played 29:12, and goal-
tender Andrei Vasilevskiy made
26 saves.
Patrick Maroon scored an emp-
ty netter with 2:24 left.
With a 3-1 series lead, Tampa
Bay is on the verge of its first Cup
finals appearance since 2015.
Game 5 is Tuesday night.
“All the guys are pretty excited
to play for the big prize, but we
have business to do here,” said
Vasilevskiy, who has played every
minute of every Lightning game
this postseason. “We have to win
the fourth one first.”
The Lightning won its third
game of the series during the furi-
ous 27-second stretch with three
goals. That’s also where the Island-
ers lost it.
“You want to follow up a goal
with a good shift and have a good
response and kind of stay on it,
and they had a better response
than we did and got two quick
ones,” Nelson said. “That was the
difference: really 30 seconds
there. If you hang on there for a
bit, it’s a different game.”
Coach Barry Trotz wants strong
shifts out of his Islanders to start
and end each period and following
any goal. “We didn’t do it twice,” he
said. “That’s on us.”
It’s also evidence of the firepow-
er the Lightning has assembled,
from homegrown talent such asBY STEPHEN WHYNOedmonton — While the New
York Islanders were celebrating
Brock Nelson scoring the first goal
of the game, Tampa Bay Lightning
center Yanni Gourde was steam-
ing about giving it up. Coach Jon
Cooper decided to keep him on the
ice for some redemption.
“I’m not really happy out there
after that goal,” Gourde said. “I’m
like, ‘Let’s go back out there and
try to have an O-zone shift where
we can actually get momentum
back.’ ”
Tampa Bay did more than that.
Gourde set up Blake Coleman to
tie it 15 seconds after Nelson’s goal,
Ondrej Palat added another 12 sec-
onds later, and the quick-strike
Lightning moved within a victory
of the Stanley Cup finals with a 4-1
win Sunday in Game 4 of the East-
ern Conference finals.
“Getting scored on doesn’t sit
real well, but credit to Coop keep-
ing us out there, giving us a shot to
go get it back,” Coleman said. “Any-
time you can respond quickly in a
game, it’s going to swing the mo-
mentum right back. Then obvi-
ously our big boys took over from
there.”
Those big boys were the Light-
ning’s best players. Brayden Point
scored in his return after missingSTANLEY CUP PLAYOFFSTampa Bay quickly closes in on finals
LIGHTNING 4,
ISLANDERS 1BY NATHAN RUIZThe Baltimore Orioles arrived
in the Bronx with an opportunity.
They will return to Baltimore
having wasted it.
The New York Yankees com-
pleted a four-game sweep with a
3-1 victory to bury the Orioles in
the American League’s playoff
standings, with Gleyber Torres’s
pinch-hit, two-run double with
two outs in the eighth serving as
the decisive blow. Baltimore’slineup, meanwhile, managed
only three runs across 33 innings
in the quartet of defeats that left
the Orioles 51 / 2 games behind the
Yankees in the hunt for an AL
wild-card spot after they began
the series only 1^1 / 2 games back.
Sunday’s loss, like Saturday’s,
featured a wasted performance
from a foundational rotation
piece. All-star left-hander John
Means pitched six innings of
one-run ball, u sing decreased ve-
locity with improved command
to great effect. But like Dean
Kremer before him, Means got
little backing from the offense.
Renato Núñez’s wall-scraping
home run in the second account-ed for all of Baltimore’s scoring.
New York’s Tyler Wade tied the
game with a homer in the third,
but Means prevented further
damage over the rest of his out-
ing.
Dillon Tate, a former Yankees
farmhand the Orioles acquired in
trading Zack Britton to New York
in 2018, replaced Means in the
seventh and retired the first five
Yankees he faced. But he allowed
Aaron Hicks’s two-out single and
then an infield single from Clint
Frazier that Núñez couldn’t make
a clean play on, setting up Torres
to drive in both with his double
off left-hander Tanner Scott.
— Baltimore SunO’s are swept in Bronx, gutting playoff hopes
YANKEES 3,
ORIOLES 1BY JESSE DOUGHERTYMax Scherzer looked in need of
rest, a shower, maybe a time
machine, if that were possible, to
rewind 10 minutes and take two
pitches back. The first, his 116th
of the game, went for a game-ty-
ing, two-run home run by Adam
Duvall in the sixth inning Sunday.
The second, his 119th and last of
the afternoon, went for a go-
ahead, two-run shot by Ozzie
Albies that chased Scherzer in a
blink.
And so Scherzer ambled off the
field, his shoulders a bit slumped,
his hand bobbling a baseball he
would soon lob into the tunnel to
the clubhouse. There was no
glove slam. There wasn’t much of
a scene. There was just bound
leather rolling down a shaded
hallway, a fitting illustration of
the Washington Nationals’ 8-4
loss to the Atlanta Braves.
The Nationals are 17-28 and
regularly frustrated. With two
weeks left in the season, they are
headed straight toward missing
the playoffs. Their ace was the
latest promise to fall short; Scher-
zer continues to struggle in the
back half of otherwise dominant
starts. His last four batters went
single, homer, single, homer to
turn a two-run lead into a perma-
nent hole. Just add it to the list.
“I was able to make some good
pitches to prevent any big inning
until the end,” said Scherzer, who
pushed deep because of upcom-
ing days off and the bullpen’s
heavy workload in recent games.
“At the end, I lost my location and
paid for it.”
The Nationals expect to take a
dual approach from here. On one
hand, the hand of practicality,
they are looking beyond this year,
assessing Carter Kieboom and
Luis García in the infield; Austin
Voth and Erick Fedde in the
rotation; and Kyle Finnegan,
Wander Suero and Kyle McGow-
in, among others, in the bullpen.
But on the other hand — call it
the hand of knowing no other
way — they remain keen on
competing right now.
“You’re going to see a steady
diet of our young players and
players that we’re committed to
for the long term,” General Man-
ager Mike Rizzo explained Sun-
day morning. “But with that said,
we’re still trying to win baseball
games, and each and every time
out we’re expecting to win and
disappointed when we lose.”
Scherzer exists only on the
second hand. He knows only
grunting, growling, demanding
the ball in the later innings. To
ease up in September, to do
anything below 150 percent,
would be a sort of sacrilege.
Scherzer calls this “posting,” his
word for emerging every turn to
give the Nationals a shot to win.
And on Sunday, for the second
straight start, he posted into the
twilight of a lost year.
But the outing was entirely
uneven. Atlanta scored in the
first when Freddie Freeman dou-
bled and Travis d’Arnaud doubledhim in. The pitch to d’Arnaud was
a slider on the outside edge of the
plate, though Scherzer may have
wanted it a few more inches away
from the catcher’s bat. Scherzer
leaned on his slider early, using it
for each of his first three strike-
outs.
“It’s been different. That’s a
good word for it,” catcher Kurt
Suzuki said of Scherzer clicking
early and waning late. “Usually,
that’s kind of where he thrives.
It’s just one of those years where
you just don’t know any rhyme or
reason. The stuff’s there.”
Kyle Wright, the Braves’ start-
er, entered with an 8.05 ERA in
five appearances. His WHIP —
walks plus hits per inning pitched
— was an abysmal 2.211. The
Nationals got to him in the fifth,
hitting three straight singles be-
fore two runs scored on Albies’s
throwing error to give Washing-
ton a 4-2 lead. But the progresswas soon erased by four swings.
Heading into the sixth, Scher-
zer had dominated everyone but
Freeman and d’Arnaud. They
were 4 for 5 with two doubles, two
singles, a walk, an RBI and two
runs scored. The rest of the
Braves’ lineup was 1 for 15 with a
walk, an RBI single and all 10 of
Scherzer’s strikeouts. Yet it was
the bottom of the order that
ultimately burned him.
Suero had warmed while
Scherzer labored through the
fifth. He quickly sat down,
though, and didn’t toss again
until Duvall had tied it with his
two-run shot to center. Scherzer’s
last frame was shaky from the
beginning. He needed Juan Soto
to make a leaping catch against
the wall for the first out. His
fastball velocity had slipped be-
low the mid-90s. Nick Markakis’s
rally-starting single was on a
well-placed cutter, inside and abit off the plate. The homers came
on a pair of mistakes.
“We get to the sixth inning, and
it was all about location,” said
Manager Dave Martinez, who had
a short bullpen for the series
finale. “He’s our ace, you know?
When you have these conversa-
tions, you’re watching him, and
he says he feels good — for me,
who else do you want out there?”
“I really feel good with how all
the pitches were executed,”
Scherzer added. “Really, this out-
ing was determined in the sixth
inning. That’s what will frustrate
me.”
Duvall launched a middle-low
fastball. Albies blasted a heater
that was in but not in enough.
Scherzer’s final line was 5^1 / 3 in-
nings, nine hits, six earned runs
and two walks. Once Scherzer
exited, Suero, Kyle Finnegan and
Ryne Harper retired eight
straight before Harper was
charged with two insurance runs
in the ninth. The Nationals had
chances to push back, to pick up
Scherzer, but couldn’t scratch At-
lanta’s bullpen.
The Braves improved to 21-0
when ahead after six innings.
Their relievers stranded two run-
ners apiece in the sixth and sev-
enth and another in the eighth,
and Chris Martin went one-two-
three in the ninth against the top
of Washington’s order. And that’s
how a checkered homestand, the
Nationals’ second-to-last of 2020,
met its sleepy end.
[email protected]Scherzer falters in the sixth inning, and the Nats go down
NATIONALS ON DECKat Tampa Bay RaysTomorrow 6:40 MASN2
Wednesday1:10 MASNat Miami MarlinsFriday (2) 5:10 MASN
Saturday6:10 M ASNSunday (2) 1:10 MASNvs. Philadelphia PhilliesSept. 21 6:05 MASNSept. 22 (2) 3:05 M ASN2
Sept. 23 6:05 M ASN2Radio: WJFK (106.7 FM)BRAVES 8,
NATIONALS 4KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST
“At the end, I lost my location and paid for it,” said Max Scherzer, who allowed four runs in the sixth.Braves 8, Nationals 4
ATLANTA AB RHBI BB SOAVG
Acuna Jr. cf-rf................ 500004 .267
Freeman 1b.................... 322020 .339
Ozuna dh........................ 401113 .318
d'Arnaud c...................... 512201 .320
Swanson ss.................... 500002 .289
Markakis rf .................... 412100 .263
Inciarte cf....................... 000000 .208
Duvall lf.......................... 411201 .261
Riley 3b.......................... 411002 .235
Albies 2b........................ 321211 .227
TOTALS 37 8108414 —
WASHINGTON AB RHBI BB SOAVG
Eaton rf .......................... 402010 .235
Turner ss........................ 500102 .348
Soto lf ............................ 411012 .354
Cabrera 1b...................... 311110 .234
Suzuki c.......................... 400100 .270
Thames dh..................... 200011 .220
Taylor ph-dh................... 000010 .211
Kieboom 3b.................... 401002 .184
Garcia 2b........................ 312000 .276
Harrison ph-2b............... 100000 .280
Robles cf ........................ 411002 .234
TOTALS 34 48359 —
ATLANTA...................... 100 104 002 —810 1
WASHINGTON.............. 010 120 000 —4 80
E: Albies (1). LOB: Atlanta 6, Washington 8. 2B: Free-
man (16), d’Arnaud (6), Markakis (12), Soto (10). HR:
Duvall (14), off Scherzer; Albies (3), off Scherzer; Ca-
brera (6), off Wright. RBI: d’Arnaud 2 (28), Markakis
(12), Duvall 2 (31), Albies 2 (11), Ozuna (43), Cabrera
(23), Suzuki (11), Turner (28). SB: Freeman (1), Eaton
(3). DP: Atlanta 2 (Swanson, Riley, Freeman, Swanson;
Swanson, Freeman).
ATLANTA IP HRER BB SONP ERA
Wright ......................... 6 84324967 .20
Matzek......................0.2 00012143 .63
O'Day........................0.1 000109 0.69
Minter.......................... 1 0001223 0.51
Martin.......................... 1 0000113 0.64
WASHINGTON IP HRER BB SONP ERA
Scherzer ...................5.1 966210119 4.04
Suero...........................2 0000054 .05
Finnegan...................... 1 0000317 3.72
Harper.......................1.1 1222125 7.00
Bourque.......................2 0000090 .00
WP: Wright, (1-4); LP: Scherzer, (4-3). Inherited run-
ners-scored: O’Day 1-0, Bourque 2-1. IBB: off Wright
(Soto), off Harper (Freeman). WP: Scherzer, Harper. T:
3:37.HOW THEY SCORED
BRAVES FIRST
Acuna Jr. strikes out swinging. Freeman doubles. Ozu-
na strikes out swinging. d’Arnaud doubles, Freeman
scores. Swanson flies out.
Braves 1, Nationals 0
NATIONALS SECOND
Cabrera homers. Suzuki grounds out. Thames strikes
out swinging. Kieboom strikes out swinging.
Braves 1, Nationals 1
BRAVES FOURTH
d’Arnaud singles. Swanson called out on strikes.
Markakis doubles, d’Arnaud scores. Duvall lines out. Ri-
ley called out on strikes.
Braves 2, Nationals 1
NATIONALS FOURTH
Soto doubles. Cabrera lines out, Soto to third. Suzuki
reaches on a fielder’s choice, Soto scores. Thames
walks, Suzuki to second. Kieboom pops out, Thames
out at second, Suzuki out at third.
Braves 2, Nationals 2
NATIONALS FIFTH
Garcia singles. Robles singles, Garcia to second. Eaton
singles, Robles to second, Garcia to third. Turner reach-
es on a fielder’s choice, advances to second on error,
Eaton out at second, Robles scores, Garcia scores. Soto
is intentionally walked. Cabrera grounds out, Soto out
at second.
Nationals 4, Braves 2
BRAVES SIXTH
Swanson flies out. Markakis singles. Duvall homers,
Markakis scores. Riley singles. Albies homers, Riley
scores. Acuna Jr. pops out. Freeman lines out.
Braves 6, Nationals 4
BRAVES NINTH
Albies walks. Acuna Jr. called out on strikes. Freeman
is intentionally walked. Ozuna singles, Freeman to
third, Albies scores. d’Arnaud reaches on a fielder’s
choice, Ozuna out at second, Freeman scores. Swanson
lines out.
Braves 8, Nationals 4AfterBefBeforeoreGUTTERS
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