Washington Nationals allow 29 runs in exhibition loss as 'things just got a little bit out of hand'

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Washington Nationals fans have reasons to doubt 2022 will be their year. They got 29 more of them Wednesday.

Pitchers Anibal Sanchez and Cade Cavalli allowed 10 runs each while the Nationals were shellacked 29-8 by the St. Louis Cardinals in a spring training game — a laugher even by exhibition standards.

«Things just got a little bit out of hand,» Washington manager Dave Martinez said. «They had some hits where they had the magic wand today.»

The Cardinals scored 15 times in the eighth inning, a barrage that began against Cavalli.

St. Louis has never scored more than 12 runs in an inning during a regular-season game. The outburst was so brain-breaking that when Washington's Gilbert Lara hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth, the scoreboard operator briefly awarded the runs to the Cardinals — perhaps out of muscle memory.

Home runs by Paul DeJong, Paul Goldschmidt and Yadier Molina were among St. Louis' 26-hit outpouring.

Over 131 years in the National League, the Cardinals' regular-season record is 28 runs in a game, against Philadelphia in 1929. Records dating to 1996 show their spring training high at 18 runs.

Hopes aren't especially high in Washington a year after the franchise traded Max Scherzer, Trea Turner and Kyle Schwarber ahead of the trade deadline. No one sees this kind of loss coming, though.

Sanchez allowed 10 runs on 12 hits and one walk over four innings. In the second inning, the 38-year-old threw so many pitches that Martinez removed him, only to have him re-enter the game the following inning.

«I threw like 90 pitches, and I'm still healthy,» Sanchez said. «So that's a good thing right now. I'm just working on being ahead in the count. I don't want to be afraid of