Lane Thomas might not be making his last appearance in Seattle this season when the Washington Nationals wrap up a three-game series against the Mariners on Wednesday afternoon.
There is an ever-increasing chance Thomas will return for the July 11 All-Star Game at T-Mobile Park.
Thomas boosted his resume with a two-run, two-out double in the 11th inning on Tuesday, leading the Nationals to a 7-4 victory over the Mariners.
“I can’t say enough about Lane,” Nationals manager Dave Martinez said. “I keep saying this: If he keeps doing what he’s doing, to me, he’s an All-Star. He really is.
“He’s playing really well in the field. He’s knocking in big runs, hitting home runs for us.”
Thomas, who hit a leadoff home run in the first inning on Monday and added a run-scoring double in Washington’s 8-4 loss, went 2-for-5 in the second game of the series to raise his average to .299. He has a team-leading 14 home runs, all since May 1.
With runners at second and third in the 11th inning on Wednesday, the Mariners decided to pitch to Thomas. The move backfired as he lined a 1-0 sinker from Trevor Gott down the right field line to snap a 4-4 deadlock. The Nationals had tied the score on Keibert Ruiz’s solo homer with one out in the eighth.
“They fought,” Martinez said of his players. “Like I said, this team is relentless. They don’t give up. They focused, they stayed in the game, and we come out victorious at the end, which was awesome.”
The Mariners went 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position. They failed to score after loading the bases with no outs in the 10th against Nationals reliever Jordan Weems, who went on to record his first major league victory.
“Throughout the course of season, you play so many games and every year you look back and there’s games that you absolutely should have won,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “They’re there to win and for whatever reason, you don’t win them — and they hurt.
“We certainly had chances. You can go through all the different things that happened throughout the game, and ultimately it comes down to we had guys out there and we failed to execute and get them in. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. We should have won the game. There’s no if, ands or buts about it. Really disappointing.”
Cal Raleigh, who hit a soft grounder back to Weems to end the 10th, was more direct in his assessment.
“We just didn’t execute,” he said. “It was three terrible at-bats. We’ve got to find a way to get that run in. That’s what good teams do, and we’re not doing it right now.”
In the series finale, the Nationals are set to send left-hander Patrick Corbin (4-9, 5.32 ERA) to the mound against Mariners right-hander Logan Gilbert (5-4, 4.07).
Corbin is 0-4 with a 6.55 ERA in June. In a 13-3 loss on Friday at San Diego, he allowed a season-high seven runs on seven hits, including a pair of homers, in five innings. Corbin won his lone previous start against Seattle, when he pitched six innings of one-run ball in 2015.
Gilbert gave up one run on two hits over seven innings in a 13-1 victory at Baltimore on Friday. He will be facing the Nationals for the first time.
–Field Level Media
