Griffin's rare struggles leave Nats coming up shy of elusive .500 record

The Nationals are still chasing the .500 mark after a lopsided series finale against the Reds.

The Nats lost their final game of the series, 15-1, on Thursday afternoon at Great American Ball Park and missed out the series sweep. They return to Washington with a 21-23 record after going 3-3 on a two-city road trip through Miami and Cincinnati.

A win would've put the Nationals at .500, the deepest they've made it into a season with that record since July 3, 2021.

“There’s just so many games. If our goal is to be 22-22, I don't know what that does for us,” manager Blake Butera told reporters. “Our goal is to just keep getting better every day. I know it might sound cliché or whatever, but that really is what these guys are focused on doing.”

The road trip was a roller coaster of results for Foster Griffin. The lefty dominated in the series opener against the Marlins last Friday. He hurled 103 pitches to strike out nine and allow one earned run in seven innings for his fourth win of the season.

In his start against the Reds, though, Griffin uncharacteristically struggled. The lefty allowed a career-high nine runs off seven hits in just 4 1/3 innings. While he recorded seven strikeouts, his day ended after 92 pitches.

“It's the big leagues,” Griffin told reporters. “Any given day, if you don't have your best stuff, they're going to penalize you for it. … [It was] one of those outings. Just couldn't really locate my offspeed stuff. If it was in the zone, it was in the middle. And if it wasn't in the zone, it was a pretty easy take for them. I was falling behind on a lot of hitters and they did some damage.”

Griffin, 30, is a top free-agent signing success story after playing the past three years in Japan. He entered the afternoon tied for the 10th lowest ERA in baseball (min. 40 innings pitched), but it jumped from 2.12 to 3.53 after the start.

“Foster's been as good as they come every outing so far,” said Butera. “[I] just thought he ran into some trouble today. He didn't have his best stuff. … One blip on the radar. He's been great so far. No concerns. It's a tough lineup, too. A very right-handed-heavy lineup there outside of [JJ] Bleday. I thought they had really good at-bats against him.”

After using five relievers on Wednesday, Butera called on outfielder Joey Wiemer to pitch the eighth inning. It was Wiemer’s second appearance of the year on the mound. Only three games into a stretch of 16 straight, the Nationals optioned reliever Zak Kent to Triple-A. A corresponding move has not been made.

“Every time you're trying to go deep,” Griffin said. “But especially today, we've got a few more games in a row after this, as well. So I was willing to -- whatever the results were -- I was trying to just go as deep as I could. But they got to me there.”

The Nationals narrowly missed tying their mark for most runs allowed this season (16 at Pittsburgh on April 13). They were outscored, 31-41, on the road trip. Each loss was decided by three runs or fewer, except for Thursday’s blowout margin.

Reds right-hander Chase Burns spun six scoreless innings with seven strikeouts. Only Luis García Jr. and Jorbit Vivas were able to connect for hits against him. Burns, who was college teammates at Wake Forest with Nationals No. 8 prospect Seaver King, improved to 5-1 and dropped his ERA to 1.87 on the season.

“I'm not too caught up in our record here on May [14],” said Butera. “We want to win every day. So whatever our record is, our job is to go out there and play our best game every day. I know we keep coming up to one game below .500, but at the end of the day, we care about where we're at come August, September, October. Our job is just to go out there and play our best every day.”