WASHINGTON -- If you were Jacob Barnes and the Nationals, you couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. Then you couldn’t have asked for a worse one.
The Nationals had a four-run lead in the eighth inning of their 4-2 win over the Yankees on Tuesday night at Nationals Park when Barnes, facing Juan Soto, got exactly what he wanted: a double-play ball with runners on first and second. Soto tapped a weak grounder to second, but Luis García Jr. threw the ball wide of CJ Abrams. And instead of two outs, the Nationals got none.
Now the Yankees had the bases loaded, down four runs, with no outs for Aaron Judge, sitting on 51 home runs.
Would you believe Barnes wiggled out of trouble again?
Judge smashed a sharp grounder to short that did turn into a twin killing but also brought home a run. The Yankees watched another rally fizzle in the ninth, and what had been a frustrating night offensively persisted into a sloppy loss to the Nationals in the nation’s capital.
Judge was kept at 51 home runs, and Patrick Corbin silenced the Yankees’ lineup enough to outduel Gerrit Cole. New York committed a season-high four errors, its first four-error game since Aug. 10, 2021, at Kansas City.
“We did not play clean tonight defensively,” manager Aaron Boone said. “And on a night when we’re not scoring a ton of runs, we’ve got to be cleaner than that.”
The veteran Corbin grew up a Yankees fan in upstate New York, and the Yankees courted the southpaw as a free agent after the 2018 season before he signed a six-year, $140 million deal with Washington. Entering Tuesday, Corbin had pitched to a 5.64 ERA over the course of the contract, and the Yankees might not have ponied up the nine-year, $324 million deal it took to sign Cole the following winter had they signed Corbin.
Corbin has had success against the Yankees in limited opportunities over the past three seasons. But Tuesday, he was really on. He retired 15 of 17 after Judge cracked a first-inning double, striking out six over six scoreless innings.
“[Corbin] did a good job attacking us and attacking the zone,” Judge said. “He really worked that cutter to both sides of the plate well. He worked it down and in, in off the plate a little bit, and really was able to get ahead in the count and keep the pressure on us as hitters.”
The Yankees managed only three hits before loading the bases in the eighth, when Barnes and Brandon Finnegan elicited grounders from Judge and Giancarlo Stanton to end the frame. The Yankees brought the go-ahead run to the plate twice in the ninth, but DJ LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres flied out against Finnegan to end it.
“We had a couple chances there at the end, a couple swings to maybe win it and sneak that one out,” Judge said. “Couldn’t come away with it.”
Said Boone: “We didn’t play our best tonight. Tough one.”
Cole, meanwhile, didn’t battle his command like he did in his last start, but he was hurt by allowing consecutive homers to Andrés Chaparro and José Tena in the fourth. He struck out seven over five innings of three-run ball and suffered his first defeat since July 24. The homers were the first of his career for Chaparro, a former Yankees prospect, and second for Tena.
“Ultimately, they beat me today,” Cole said.