The Nationals looked like a team playing their fourth game in 48 hours this afternoon, leading to an 11-2 loss to kick off the weekend series against Boston. An alarming trend has emerged from the Nats’ starting pitching, which has now allowed runs in the first two innings in seven of the last eight games. The stadium was packed at nearly 38,000 for this matinee game on Independence Day, and the weather was perfect — but the home team had little to cheer about.

The slow starts continued this afternoon as the Red Sox threatened in the first inning, but Michael Soroka managed to escape unharmed. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the second inning, as Boston got an RBI double from Ceddanne Rafaela, followed by an RBI single from Jarren Duran to go up 2-0.

The score stayed that way until the top of the fifth inning when the wheels fell off completely for Soroka as his pitch count climbed from the 80’s into the 90’s as his command faltered and his fastball velocity dropped over 2-mph from earlier in the game. The real concern was that Soroka’s velo was down the entire game about 3-mph from his previous game.

After loading the bases with nobody out, Soroka walked Carlos Narvaez to force in a third run, then Trevor Story singled home two more to make it a 5-0 lead with still nobody out. Zach Brzykcy was brought in after the Story single but even he couldn’t stop the bleeding as Marcelo Mayer greeted him with an RBI single, Jarren Duran doubled home two more, and Abraham Toro singled in the seventh run of the inning to make it a 9-0 game.

Meanwhile, former Nats’ No. 1 prospect, Lucas Giolito, was spinning a gem of a game. He did not allow anything on the scoreboard until the bottom of the sixth inning when Luis Garcia scored CJ Abrams on a sacrifice fly, to at least ensure the Nats wouldn’t be shut out. Giolito would pitch well into the eighth inning this afternoon, being pulled with two outs in that frame. The 7.2 inning performance would be the deepest he’s made it into a game since August of 2021.

• Lucas Giolito: 7.2 innings, 4 hits, 1 run (1 earned), 3 walks, 7 strikeouts, 108 pitches
• Michael Soroka: 4 innings, 9 hits, 7 runs (all earned), 2 walks, 6 strikeouts, 93 pitches

The Red Sox added two more runs in the top of the eighth on a Trevor Story home run off of Ryan Loutos. Daylen Lile brought in a run on an RBI double in the bottom of the ninth but Garrett Whitlock bounced back to get the final out, ending what was just a dud of a performance from the Nationals, with an 11-2 loss.

There’s obviously got to be a lot of problems with a team’s performance if they’re 37-51, but one that’s been particularly apparent lately is the starting pitching. They all look to be running out of stamina in the middle innings and these shaky first innings have become the norm. MacKenzie Gore is pretty much excused from the rest of this paragraph, before you all try to bite my head off. Jake Irvin has not taken the step forward that I think a lot of us thought he would this year, in fact it’s looking like he’s taken a step in the wrong direction from the breakout season he had last year. Mitchell Parker started the season off on a tear, but has since been a shell of himself and really a coin flip in terms of how effective he is from outing to outing. Michael Soroka has been a solid first-five innings guy all season, getting lit up like he did today was not the normal, but seems to be a placeholder more than anything until the Nationals can field a more competitive rotation. I’ll spare my thoughts on Trevor Williams, as I’m sure those can be guessed. If anything, we’ve discovered this year that our rotation may be a lot further from what it needs to be in order to contend for a playoff spot than what we thought it was back in March. Cade Cavalli is going to get his long-awaited chance to join this Nationals rotation on Sunday and while his Triple-A results have been a mixed bag, the Nats really need him to pan out and be a contributor for the future.

The positives for today’s game were brief. Andrew Chafin and Eduardo Salazar both threw scoreless innings out of the bullpen today, and while no National had a multi-hit game, CJ Abrams and Nathaniel Lowe both got on base twice via a hit and a walk.

Game two of this series will be tomorrow afternoon at 4:05, Walker Buehler (5-6, 6.45 ERA) will get the ball for the Red Sox, the former Dodger has really struggled lately. Hopefully the Nats can take advantage of that and get some run support for Mitchell Parker (5-8, 4.63 ERA), who looks to even up this series at a game apiece.