The Washington Nationals played their second home game of the year Thursday night before about half as many fans as saw them lose their home opener two days earlier.
Since then, they had sent their starting center fielder/leadoff hitter to the minors, seen the Florida Marlins drive off even further into the NL East horizon and sat idly as rain Wednesday washed out a chance at their first win.
But when victory No. 1 finally came, it couldn’t have been a much clearer picture of what the Nationals are capable of when everything’s going right.
Their revamped lineup, altered even more with Lastings Milledge at Class AAA Syracuse, handed Shairon Martis an early lead. The young right-hander subdued a fire-breathing lineup. The Nationals’ bullpen hummed through the last three innings, and the offense scored enough extra runs to turn the game into a snoozer.
It all added up to an 8-2 win against Philadelphia, ending a nightmarish seven-game losing streak to start the year with an emphatic victory against the defending World Series champions and sending Washington into a weekend series against the Marlins with a little juice.
“I think there were a lot of guys pressing,” left fielder Adam Dunn said. “When we did have a chance to break it open, we did.”
There’s little else Martis could have done to stop the losing streak. He gave up five hits and two runs in 6 1/3 innings by doing exactly what manager Manny Acta and pitching coach Randy St. Claire have implored him to do: Throw strikes without running up his pitch count out of fear he won’t be able to challenge hitters.
He went right after the Phillies’ lineup, walking Chase Utley but getting through the menacing top of the order without any other problems. Martis established his change-up as a viable out pitch early, later adding his slider as another complement to his fastball. Although only 49 of his 86 pitches were strikes, he didn’t throw more than six pitches to a single hitter.
“Anytime a pitcher’s throwing like he was, he’s fun to play defense behind,” third baseman Ryan Zimmerman said.
Offensively, there was just enough clicking for the Nationals. Hitting in the No. 2 hole for the first time, Nick Johnson singled in the first, and he was followed by a single from Zimmerman. Then Joe Blanton’s high fastball to Dunn landed in the second deck over the Nationals’ bullpen, drawing a gasp from the 20,494 in attendance.
Leading 3-0 after the inning, the Nationals never found much trouble. Martis allowed single runs in the fourth and fifth but finished his start with the lead, handing the ball to Mike Hinckley in the seventh and ensuring the Nationals’ first quality start. Hinckley retired Jimmy Rollins to end the seventh and was lifted for pinch hitter Josh Willingham with the lead 3-2.
It soon grew. Willingham battled Chad Durbin to a full count, then dropped a home run just beyond a leaping Raul Ibanez and into the Phillies’ bullpen. The homer was the kind of insurance run the Nationals haven’t gotten yet this year - or, for that matter, much of last year.
Victories just don’t come that easy to the Nationals. But with the solo blast from one of their newly acquired veterans, they were able to give a lead to another new acquisition: setup man Joe Beimel, who seemed nothing more than a frivolous luxury the first week of the season.
In the glass-half-full worldview, though, Beimel could be an important cog in an otherwise young bullpen. The left-hander, who signed a one-year, $2 million deal in March, looked like exactly that Thursday. He set down Shane Victorino, Utley and Ryan Howard with all the excitement of a highway worker fixing a pothole.
“We were talking in the dugout about how comforting it was to see Beimel get out there in the eighth inning against the hitters that he saw and go 1-2-3,” Acta said. “It was key for us to set things up.”
Elijah Dukes dropped another insurance homer into the Phillies’ bullpen to lead off the eighth. Alberto Gonzalez tucked one just inside the left-field foul pole three batters later, Anderson Hernandez and Zimmerman each added RBI singles and Joel Hanrahan didn’t even have a save opportunity when he entered in the ninth.
It became the cursory appearance Acta said Hanrahan would get Thursday night, regardless of the score. He pitched a perfect ninth, retiring Pedro Feliz on a fly out to right as Nationals Park, at last, exulted with fireworks.
“However it happened - one-nothing, 15-14 - to get in the win column was big,” Willingham said. “It’s what we needed.”
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