Gray battered early, bullpen blasted late in 13-6 loss (updated)

On a day in which they watched their brightest young starting pitcher get beat around for the second time in a week, the Nationals yet again found a way to overcome an early deficit and make the Mets sweat.

And they yet again found a way to turn a potentially inspiring comeback into a calamitous, late-inning meltdown that made it all moot.

At some point, this young team needs to show it has the ability to finish what it starts. Comebacks are nice, but curly W's are better.

So it was that in spite of a spirited rally to erase the early deficit created by Josiah Gray, the Nationals ultimately fell to the Mets again, losing 13-6 in a ballgame that felt so much like so many others these two clubs have played this summer.

The Nats dug their way out of the 4-0 hole Gray left them in following a disastrous top of the first, eventually tying the game at six in the bottom of the fifth. But they could not push across the go-ahead run themselves, then watched the Mets do it via three singles and a sacrifice fly in the top of the eighth off reliever Andres Machado before burying Austin Voth with six tack-on runs in the top of the ninth.

Asked to keep the deficit at one run and give his teammates a chance to rally in the bottom of the ninth, Voth failed to retire any of the six batters he faced, serving up homers on both his first and last pitch, capped by Kevin Pillar's grand slam.

"I tell these guys every day, when you're in a high-leverage situation, things automatically speed up," manager Davey Martinez said in his postgame Zoom session with reporters. "And you've got to understand that you've got to slow things down. Understand where you are at that point and just try to take everything pitch to pitch."

The Nationals have now lost eight of the 10 games they've played against the Mets since mid-August, many of them playing out in exactly the manner today's did. They'll face off one more time Monday afternoon in the 19th and final head-to-head matchup of the season.

No matter what transpired afterward - and a lot did - Gray's three-inning start was the most significant development of the game. On the heels of his first disappointing start for the Nationals, the rookie now had an opportunity to either make that one the outlier or struggle again and raise new concerns about what kind of big league pitcher he really is.

Alas, this outing only raised concerns, because it was appreciably worse than the previous one.

"I honestly don't think there's anything positive today," he said. "From pitch one to pitch ... I don't know how many pitches I had today, I was battling command. I was battling execution. A lot of hard-hit balls. Honestly, I'll just take nothing positive from this."

The Mets were all over Gray from the get-go. Their first five batters reached base against him, and though the sixth didn't, he still blasted a ball to the warning track in right field for a sacrifice fly to complete a four-run rally.

Unable to command his fastball or his curveball - he consistently missed with both pitches well outside the zone to left-handed hitters - Gray was fighting an uphill battle throughout his start.

"Especially some of the breaking stuff early, they weren't as competitive of misses," catcher Riley Adams said. "And we left some mistakes up and they capitalized on that."

Indeed, when Gray did finally find the plate, he found too much of it. Both Jonathan Villar and Javy Báez hammered pitches that were left on a platter for them, Villar homering off a 3-2 fastball in the top of the second and Baez homering off a 1-2 slider in the top of the third. Which makes it 15 home runs surrendered by Gray in 43 big league innings, a concerning trend to be sure.

His starter's pitch count all the way up to 82 after only three innings, Martinez decided not to push Gray any farther. And so the 23-year-old departed after back-to-back subpar outings, suddenly leaving himself with a 5.40 ERA and 1.400 WHIP in seven starts for the Nationals.

"I'm more concerned about this start. I'm not worried about the last two, just today," Martinez said. "We'll talk to him about that, and I'm going to have to say again it's part of the process. We'll get him back, get him squared away and hopefully his next start will be a lot better."

Though important in the bigger picture, Gray's performance wound up only part of the storyline to today's game, which once again saw the Nats battle back from a sizeable early deficit to the Mets. Down 4-0 after the disastrous top-of-the-first, they responded with a three-run bottom of the inning, thanks to big blasts by both Lane Thomas and Josh Bell.

Thomas delivered his second leadoff homer in as many days, not to mention his third homer in six games since Victor Robles was optioned to Triple-A Rochester. The 25-year-old center fielder also singled and scored a run in the fifth, plus threw out a runner trying to take third base.

"Just keep playing the way you're playing. Play hard, play aggressive and have some fun with it," Martinez said of Thomas. "You're getting an opportunity to play and you're taking advantage of it. It's awesome."

Bell, meanwhile, hammered the first pitch he saw from Mets starter Taijuan Walker to center for a two-run homer, turning that 4-0 deficit into a 4-3 game.

And even after Gray let New York extend its lead to 6-3 after the third, the Nationals kept battling back. It wasn't quite as dramatic as their charge from a 9-0 deficit to tie the game with two outs in the seventh (and scheduled final) inning of Saturday's doubleheader opener, but it was notable nonetheless when Juan Soto drove home a pair with a bases-loaded single in the fifth and then Alcides Escobar scored on a wild pitch moments later to tie the game.

"There's never a time that we feel like we're out of a game," Adams said. "I think that's a very exciting thing that we can always carry with us. ... It's cool to see when guys come back, especially against teams' top relievers. It's kind of fun when we're always coming up. But try not to do that as much."

It was just the latest example of a rebuilding team that has long since proven it will fight to the final out. But as this group has also proven too often, there's a big difference between fighting to the finish and actually finishing the fight.