Nats' woes with bases loaded continue

For all the trouble they had when the Reds were at bat Wednesday night, the Nationals might actually have given themselves a chance to win the game had they simply converted some golden scoring opportunities in their first two innings at the plate.

Instead, another failure to pounce on a struggling opposing starter set the tone for what became a 9-2 rout rather than a competitive ballgame.

Seven of the Nationals’ first nine batters actually reached base against Cincinnati starter Graham Ashcraft, who entered with a 6.66 ERA. Only one of those seven (Lane Thomas) would score, and he only did so via wild pitch.

Thomas opened the bottom of the first with a walk, the 30th time he has reached base in the 61 games he has led off the first inning. Luis Garcia followed with a single, but Jeimer Candelario grounded into a killer double play that moved Thomas to third but left the Nats with two outs. Even so, they still proceeded to load the bases when Joey Meneses walked and Dominic Smith was hit by a pitch.

Ashcraft’s wild pitch scored Thomas and moved everybody else up one base, but Keibert Ruiz then grounded out to end that rally with only the one run across the plate.

The situation was even more agonizing in the bottom of the second, when Corey Dickerson, CJ Abrams and Alex Call each singled to load the bases with nobody out. But rather than take down a clearly faltering Ashcraft, the Nationals squandered the opportunity when Thomas popped up and Garcia grounded into a 4-6-3 double play on the fifth pitch of his at-bat, having swung at all five pitches.

“Those are big and good at-bats for us, and we’ve just got to execute,” Garcia said, via interpreter Octavio Martinez. “In reality, unfortunately, we haven’t been doing it as a whole, and we’ve had a few opportunities. But at the end of the day, those are our at-bats that we have to execute better.”

This was nothing new for the Nationals. They loaded the bases with nobody out during Tuesday’s loss and failed to bring any of those runners home as well.

“Chase. Chase,” manager Davey Martinez lamented when asked about the missed chance Wednesday night. “I don’t think we swung at a strike in two at-bats there. We’ve got to get the ball in the zone. I try to talk to them about the pitchers are the ones, in that big moment, they’ve got to throw strikes. So get a good ball you can handle and try to hit it hard. We’ve just got to learn how to keep the ball in the zone in those situations.”