WASHINGTON - The Nationals keep leaning into the same idea, and Friday night it blew up on them again.
With a one-run lead over the Yankees and the ninth inning looming, Washington chose not to go with right-hander Clayton Beeter, the kind of arm traditional baseball would usually trust in that spot. Instead, manager Blake Butera stayed committed to platoon advantage, turning to lefty Matt Krook because a cluster of left-handed hitters was coming up.
It ended with Jazz Chisholm Jr. launching a two-run, go-ahead homer into the second deck at Nationals Park and the Nationals walking away with a 5-3 loss.
Butera didn’t hide from the decision afterward. When asked if the night changed how he felt about platoon splits, he said, “Yeah, 100 percent,” then added, “I mean, I’m sitting here wondering if that’s the right thing to do or not. Whenever you lose and get beat that way, you definitely question what we’re doing.”
Still, he wasn’t ready to abandon the approach.
“Sitting here, talking with our group after the game tonight, we all believed the process was right and the outcome was not,” Butera said. “We have four lefties in our bullpen because we expect them to do well against left-hand hitters and particularly against this group with a heavy left-handed lineup.”
The logic was clear enough. Beeter has limited left-handed hitters to a .595 OPS this season, but the Nationals believed Krook offered a better matchup against the Yankees’ pocket of lefties. Krook had also turned in a strong outing against Houston Astros star Yordan Alvarez on Tuesday, and he held lefties to a .182 batting average against in the minor leagues this season.
The Yankees’ lineup gave Washington some reason to believe, too. Cody Bellinger was due up first, and then came Jasson Domínguez, who owns a career .589 OPS versus lefties, and Chisholm, who carries a career .658 OPS versus lefties.
But the result was the result, and it fit an ugly pattern. The Nationals’ left-handed relievers entered the night with a 5.03 ERA and an MLB-worst 5.93 xERA.
Washington now owns a 6.90 ERA in the ninth inning and beyond, worst in the majors, even though Beeter’s ninth-inning ERA sits at 3.21. Chisholm’s homer was the fourth go-ahead shot the Nationals have surrendered in their last 16 games, and the 43rd earned run they’ve allowed with platoon advantage in the ninth, which now sits alongside their MLB-worst 26th blown save.
The organization is not likely to stop chasing that edge. Washington has been targeting low-slot left-handed relievers in recent weeks, trying to build a bullpen that can exploit platoon advantages more consistently.
Help could come in the MLB Draft this weekend, where the Nationals have 20 rounds to work with, and again before the Aug. 3 trade deadline. But those are future fixes, and neither guarantees the kind of arms they need right now.
For now, the club is still living with the consequences of that belief.
“I think it is,” Butera said of whether the ninth inning is different. “And look, when you’re facing three hitters in the ninth like those three, it doesn’t help your case at all. But at the end of the day, these guys in the bullpen, they’re going to have to get big outs for us.”
Krook, for his part, kept the explanation simple.
“The game, it matters more in the ninth inning,” he said. “Obviously, you’re trying to get the last three outs. So just trying to do my best to execute.”
Butera said he has laid the whole plan out for his pitchers, and that the clarity matters as much as the results.
“I’ve explained it to all of them,” he said. “And the big thing for them is, whether they agree or not, they’re just happy that they have some clarity and understanding and what our process is and what it’s going to look like.
And to be honest, we try not to deviate from it, so that these guys aren’t wondering what’s going on. They pretty much know when they’re going to be asked to pitch, when they’re asked to pinch hit, all those things.
“We believe in our process. And it feels like we keep getting burned.”
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