WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Washington Nationals fell to their division rivals, the Philadelphia Phillies, in 10 innings on Opening Day by a score of 7-3. The team put up a great fight, led by MacKenzie Gore’s 6.0 innings pitched with 13 strikeouts and a performance from Keibert Ruiz that was arguably his career best. While the bullpen could not hold the fort down, today’s game was an excellent performance from a team that showed great promise.

Gore, in his first career Opening Day start, allowed no runs and just one hit while fanning 13 on 93 pitches, 66 of which were strikes. It was the most strikeouts by a starting pitcher on Opening Day in the team’s history, and he did not even seem tired when he came out. Unfortunately, on the seventh pitch after relieving Gore, Lucas Sims allowed a game-tying solo home run to none other than Bryce Harper, who walked up to a chorus of boos. Jose A. Ferrer then replaced him with two outs in the seventh and immediately surrendered a homer to another former National in Kyle Schwarber. By the time he turned the ball over to recently re-signed closer Kyle Finnegan, the bullpen had allowed three runs since inheriting a gem from Gore. Finnegan, despite giving the entire stadium a scare, pitched a scoreless ninth inning in a tied game. Colin Poche would start the 10th inning, but he did not finish it after surrendering four runs, only three of which were earned due to the automatic runner on second base. The inning probably could have ended after two, but Dylan Crews was unable to make a tough play in the right field corner, which scored two after the ball deflected off of his glove. Those four runs would ultimately kill whatever momentum the Nationals still had, but it was not a good look either way to have seven runs allowed by the bullpen in 4.0 innings of work.

The lineup, which featured no real surprises, got off to a slow start since Zack Wheeler was dealing in his own right. Ruiz got the first hit of the season for the team in the bottom of the third inning with a single up the middle. The next hit after that was also his, when in the fifth inning, he grinded out a 12-pitch at-bat and pulled a ball 371 feet into the Nats’ bullpen for the first home run of the season, which gave the team a 1-0 lead. Later on, down by two in the eighth, CJ Abrams grounded out to score Crews before Luis Garcia Jr. singled to center field to tie the game headed into the ninth. While those would ultimately be the last runs scored of the day, it was great to see the team not give up even though they were down late as they fought with everything they had to pull out a win.

The bottom of the tenth was quiet as the Phillies wrapped up the win. Outside of today’s game, more news came out about the injury situation surrounding DJ Herz. “It was new. He didn’t say anything about it until we sent him down. We went through the process with him like we do every spring.” Dave Martinez told reporters. “We know from previous springs his velo always started out really down. He didn’t think any different. And then he said he wanted to get checked out, because it just didn’t feel right. And obviously he ended up on the IL. It stinks for him. It stinks for us, because we counted on DJ to be one of our guys this year, but he’ll be back. He’s young. I tell him all the time he’s got a big future still ahead of him. Let’s get it right, get healthy and let’s work towards getting back here.”

Up next:

The Nationals will get tomorrow off before facing the Phillies again on Saturday at 4:05, when they will don their new City Connects for the first time as Jake Irvin begins his third year in the big leagues. On Sunday, Mitchell Parker will get the nod at 1:05 after debates as to whether it would be him or Michael Soroka. The team will then head up to Toronto for a three-game set with the 0-1 Toronto Blue Jays.