Reese Kaplan -- The 2020 Surreal Season Continues

I remember being in high school working weekends in a restaurant as a dishwasher.  In addition to the obvious job responsibility also came a lot of unloading of boxes, carrying out of trash and preserving of scrap from the diners’ plates to provide to employees’ dogs.  It was not a great job but it paid the teenage bills and helped me get some money saved up for more important things. 

 
I thought about this memory when Luis Guillorme was called upon to pitch in the 16 run laugher on Monday night.  There’s not a lot to expect when you are so bereft of pitching that you turn to little-used bench players to take to the mound because there’s no point in wasting yet another arm in what is obviously a lost cause game.

Guillorme has had some moments.  His first major league home run was one of them.  Catching that errant bat in a spring training game was another.  He’s shown he’s certainly capable of playing the field with aplomb and even occasionally has demonstrated the ability to swing the bat.  However, he’s normally buried on the bench behind the flavor of the week.  These past few weeks that’s been one Andres Gimenez and no one can deny the youngster has certainly shown he’s not intimidated by the majors.  However, Guillorme was ready for another make-or-break moment when Luis Rojas called upon him to toe the rubber.

Granted, this game was long gone with Steve Matz and Paul Sewald the major contributors to the demise.  Between the two of them they had given the Nationals 14 of their 16 runs.  Ex Yankee Chasen Shreve gifted them two more in his two innings of work.  Only reliever Drew Smith was unscathed in his inning on the mound.  By then the game was a 16-4 mess and Rojas had surmised a 13 run comeback in the final inning was highly unlikely to happen.  So he decided to give the television fans who were still masochistically watching something to enjoy and called upon the small infielder to take his arm and beard to the mound to hurl his heart out for the final inning.

Usually when you see position players attempt to turn to pitching there are numerous walks and comical long balls coming off the bats of the opposing hitters.  Maybe the Nationals were tired by that point.  Maybe they were charitable.  Or maybe, just maybe Guillorme had a little more up his sleeve with his 69 mph slow ball pitching that just caught them off guard.  

If you were watching the game or looked in the box score Tuesday morning you saw something that simply did not make sense.  Guillorme was three-up and three-down for a perfect 9th inning.  There were no walks, no hits (and no strikeouts).  However, the Nats’ hitters have to be a little bit embarrassed not making a dent against this shortstop turned savior on the mound.  It’s not likely to happen again except in another blowout (one way or the other).  Still it was a fascinating wrinkle not only to this awful game but also to Guillorme’s charmed and bizarre career.