Andrés Chaparro turned July 17 into a rout, going 4 for 5 with two home runs and eight RBI as the Washington Nationals beat the Athletics 23-4 in West Sacramento, Calif. The win snapped a three-game skid for Washington and handed the Athletics their 10th straight defeat.
The outburst gave the Nationals 23 runs, tying for the second-most in franchise history. They also piled up a season-high 21 hits, with Curtis Mead adding four hits and three RBI and Cade Cavalli striking out nine without a walk over six innings to earn the win.
The number that mattered most was not just the margin. Washington has now matched the 23-run total it put up against the Mets on April 30, 2017, and it still sits one game short of the club record set against the Mets on July 31, 2018. In a season that had left the Nationals searching for a clean response, this was the kind of night that changes the conversation fast.
Still, the game was not a total shutout of the Athletics' bats. Cade Cavalli gave up Tyler Soderstrom's two-run homer in the fourth inning, and Shea Langeliers added his 22nd homer in the ninth. Washington answered every time, though, and by the middle innings the gap had become too wide for the Athletics to close.
That is the mark of the night for the Nationals: every Washington Nationals batter had at least one hit, and the offense kept building even after the game was essentially decided. Roe-run production came from Chaparro, Mead, James Wood and others, but Chaparro's damage stood out most, especially his three-run homer in the seventh that pushed the score to 18-2 and finished the game as a statement more than a contest.
Washington is set to keep moving Saturday, with Nationals RHP Zack Littell scheduled to start opposite Athletics RHP J.T. Ginn. For the Athletics, the harder question is no longer how a losing streak starts, but how a team that has dropped 14 of 15 games finds a way to stop it.
