Nats' bats remain silent in 1-0 loss at Coors Field (updated)

DENVER – Coors Field can play tricks with the minds of pitchers and hitters alike. Pitchers enter this gorgeous ballpark at mile-high elevation and panic about anything left up and over the plate being launched into the stratosphere. Hitters come here and assume all they have to do is get the ball in the air and then watch it fly.

It doesn’t always work that way. It certainly didn’t this afternoon in the 30th home opener in Rockies history, in which the home team scored one run thanks to a fly ball lost in the sun and the visitors never came close to crossing the plate themselves.

Yep, that’s a 1-0 final, only the 11th in ballpark history, the Nationals losing for the sixth time in seven games to begin the season despite getting six highly effective innings from Josiah Gray and two more from reliever Mason Thompson. Quality pitching at altitude matters not if your lineup can’t even score a run.

"It's tough," manager Davey Martinez said. "He threw the ball well. Mason came in, threw the ball well. We couldn't score any runs today."

It's the first time the Nats have been shut out this year, but it's hardly the first time they've been rendered helpless. They've scored a total of 17 runs in seven games. They're batting .227 as a team, while slugging just .289.

"I think they're pressing a little bit, trying too much," Martinez said. "They've just got to relax a little bit and make good solid contact and see what happens."

The Nationals hoped their struggles during a six-game homestand to begin the season wouldn't carry over during this weekend’s four-game series in Colorado. But if today’s outcome was any indication, it’s going to take a lot more than geographic location to start scoring runs.

They couldn’t do anything against Rockies starter Kyle Freeland, who scattered three singles and two walks over six scoreless innings. They didn’t even get a runner into scoring position until there were two outs in the eighth, with Alex Call going first-to-third on Jeimer Candelario’s single. Call was stranded there when Joey Meneses skied a fly ball to right to end the inning.

All of this made a hard-luck loser out of Gray, who surely deserved a better fate.

"It's a long year; we all know that," he said. "I probably have 30 more starts ahead. Some will be good, some will be bad. I understand that. I've kind of come to acknowledge that. But with every good start, you just have that much more confidence coming out for the next one."

That Gray was having any success at all early on was something of a miracle, given how poor his fastball command was. Not one of the right-hander’s first 10 fastballs landed within the strike zone. The Rockies swung at three of them, but all were located outside the box, and the majority of the pitches were way outside the box.

"A lot of those were strategic, trying to get inside," he said. "And if I threw a ball, so what? I know I have plenty of pitches in my arsenal to get back in the count."

Sure enough, Gray figured out how to keep the Rockies from getting anything going against him. Relying on his slider and curveball despite those pitches’ typical ineffectiveness at high altitude, he was able to get whiffs, strikeouts and weak contact.

"For me right now, that's just kind of who he is," Martinez said. "When his fastball's scattered, he's got to go rely on that slider. And for the most part, he threw the slider down, which is what you want to do here."

Gray entered the fifth with nothing but zeros on the scoreboard, then got taken down by a nemesis that has wreaked far too much havoc with the Nationals through the season’s first week: The Sun Monster. Ezequiel Tovar’s routine fly to right to begin the bottom of the fifth morphed into a cheap double when Lane Thomas recoiled in fear as the ball landed only a couple of feet to his right, blinded by the sun hovering over the first base grandstand.

It was the latest in a string of balls lost in the sun by Nats outfielders already this season, an odd byproduct of a bunch of day games and cloudless skies to begin April.

"I told (center fielder Victor Robles) earlier the sun was on me," Thomas said. "And I just called it. I probably should've let him have the ball. But I saw it the whole time until it just got on me, and I kind of hesitated a little bit. I told Jo Jo: 'I'm sorry, man. I probably should've let Vic have that.' It's just how it goes sometimes."

Gray did what he could to overcome the gaffe, but all it took was Kris Bryant’s one-out single to left to score Tovar and give the Rockies a 1-0 lead.

It wouldn’t have been that big a deal had his teammates been able to mount an offensive attack to make up for that lone run. Alas, that once again proved too difficult, even in the best hitter’s park in baseball history.

To their credit, the Nationals did finally start hitting the ball in the air after pounding the ball into the ground all week at home. They just hit too many of those balls at Colorado defenders. And when they didn’t, Colorado’s defenders tracked them down in impressive fashion. Jurickson Profar endeared himself to the Coors Field faithful in his first home game as the Rockies’ new left fielder, robbing Candelario of a double (or possibly homer) at the wall in the top of the first and Luis García of a single (or double) in left-center in the top of the second.

But they never could crack Freeland, who didn’t overpower anyone but never let them get any kind of sustained rally going. The Nats didn’t advance a single runner into scoring position against the Rockies starter. They only had two batters reach at all in one frame – the top of the third – but then watched CJ Abrams get thrown out trying to steal second.

It was the Nationals’ third baserunner caught stealing in four attempts for the season. As the rest of the world takes advantage of the new, larger bases and limits on pickoff attempts, they’ve regressed in that department.

"They're trying to get something going," Martinez said. "They've got to focus and get better leads. It's not that we can't steal bases. All of a sudden, our leads are starting to get shorter and shorter. That's the difference between the bang-bang play."