Patrick Corbin was down 1-0 three pitches in, down 2-0 at the end of a half-inning, but he battled through it, giving Washington five innings in a 6-4, rain-shortened win over Baltimore in the Nats’ exhibition finale on Tuesday.
Corbin ended up going five innings, giving up two runs on six hits, striking out four, not issuing a walk, on 65 pitches, 48 of them going for strikes.
Daniel Hudson had a relatively clean sixth, giving up a hit, but striking out two.
Sean Doolittle muddled through an ugly seventh, giving up two runs on two hits, not throwing a single pitch over 89 mph.
His average fastball in 2019, according to Fan Graphs, was 93.8 mph, so he was probably throttling down because it was a preseason game, but still, he got tagged.
The game was called in the top of the eighth with two outs when the weather, which had been threatening all night long, finally imposed itself in the form of a heavy rain shower.
The Nats open the 2020 regular season at Nats Park on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Nats Park in a nationally televised ESPN opener with the New York Yankees.
Story by Chris Graham
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