“It’s more staying out of these 2-3-run innings for him,” Davey Martinez told a reporter who’d asked the manager before last night’s game what to make of the Nationals’ 34-year-old, 12-year vet Patrick Corbin at this point in his career, “... but things spiral for an inning, and then he settles down and he gets some big outs for us.”
Corbin barely avoided one of those spirals in his previous start before facing the San Diego Padres in Monday’s series opener in Petco Park.
Back-to-back singles, a base-loading walk, and a bases-loaded walk led to a run coming in, but Corbin held the Arizona Diamondbacks there last week in the nation’s capital, with just the one run allowed in the fourth inning of a five-inning, 90-pitch outing.