The Washington Nationals are in a state of despair at the moment. Yesterday, they were absolutely embarrassed at the hands of the Colorado Rockies, who won the game 13-1 over the Nationals. After such a promising first game of the series, the Nationals have now sputtered in consecutive losses, and last night's loss might have been even more costly for one of their rookies.
Blake Butera ruins rookie's MLB debut with costly managerial decision
If the Nationals were not already at rock bottom after some of their disastrous performances in the month of August, perhaps last night's loss to the Rockies will be the punch in the gut they needed. In a month that has seen the Nationals go from fringe Wild Card contenders to one of the biggest laughing stocks in all of baseball, the last 2 nights have been the worst.
Playing against a far inferior opponent in the Colorado Rockies and getting stomped on your home field just can't happen, and only scoring 1 run even without James Wood in the lineup is unacceptable. Doing it once would be something you can brush off, but doing it twice is when you have to question all of the processes that got you to their current place.
One process that should specifically be questioned is why Blake Butera, the manager of the Nationals, decided to send out his rookie Luis Perales, making his MLB debut out of the bullpen, back out there for a third inning of work. The final frame he worked ended up being a disaster, and something that could hurt the rookie hurler's confidence moving forward.
After the first 1.1 innings of Perales' debut, he had already thrown 30 pitches while tossing just 14 of them for strikes, and had escaped without allowing any runs despite issuing a pair of walks. He also struck out a pair of hitters for the first 2 punchouts of his career, likely giving him some confidence for his first shot in the majors.
Then, Butera sent him back out there for the 7th inning, where Perales got a groundout to lead off the inning before serving up a pair of singles, a walk, struck out a batter, and then issued a grand slam to make a 4-1 game an 8-1 game, and then allowed yet another single before mercifully bring pulled. It begs the question, why was Butera so insistent on sending a rookie back out there after already throwing 30 pitches? Couldn't he have just let the youngster have a shutout debut to build on?
We might never get the answer, but Butera was critical of the team's overall effort following last night's defeat, and is hoping the team can turn over a new leaf heading into today's game. The Nationals need to split to avoid utter embarrassment, and hopefully Butera can learn from what is not his first bullpen mistake of the season to be better from it.
What did you think of Blake Butera's decision to send Luis Perales back out there for another inning of work? As always, please let me know on X, @DCBerk.
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