WASHINGTON — The Nationals had the tying runs on first and second with one out in the bottom of the eighth inning of a 3-1 game when Mets Manager Terry Collins first wondered if he should make a pitching switch. Bobby Parnell was on the mound, having surrendered a walk and a single, and Collins sent word to his bullpen to have Jeurys Familia, the team’s closer, start warming up.
Parnell had once been Collins’s closer. After missing more than a year in his recovery from Tommy John surgery, he was only now reasserting himself in the Mets’ bullpen as a setup man.