The Washington Nationals hold a seven-game divisional lead and are shoe-ins for the playoffs. Most folks would probably say they’re the favorite in the entire National League at the moment. But they do have one problem: their closer.
Rafael Soriano blew his second straight save last night and his fifth in his last 21 appearances. He has allowed ten runs in his lat 12 outings. He blew this one by giving up two home runs after coming in with a three-run lead. One of the homers was to Ben Revere of all people. The same Ben Revere who had one previous home run his 470 major league games coming into last night’s contest. The other came off the bat of Carlos Ruiz.
After that performance, manager Matt Williams acknowledged that he may be using a different closer down the stretch. From Chase Hughes of CSNWashington.com:“We’ll address it, yeah. We need to address it.”
“We’re certainly going to have to take a hard look at it,” Williams said. “It’s not an easy decision. None of them are. But we want to be able to close those games out. Sori understands that, he’s been around the block.”
Soriano’s 6.98 ERA in the second half is awful, and it may be that Matt Thornton, Drew Storen or Tyler Clippard get some turns in the ninth inning in the coming days. Thankfully for the Nats, they have some time and a nice cushion at their disposal as they try to figure things out.
