Nats can't do enough right in loss to Rockies

DENVER – For 48 hours, the Nationals experienced Coors Field like they’d never experienced it before. Quality pitching. Quick games. No late-inning drama. Nothing about the first two games of their series against the Rockies felt typical for this unique baseball setting.

Ah, but you can’t leave the Mile High City without experiencing the true Coors Field at least once. And sure enough, today’s sun-splashed series finale provided a far more typical affair.

It took 3 hours, 25 minutes to play 8 1/2 innings. It featured five combined homers. And it ended in a 9-7 loss to the Rockies that was defined both by the Nationals’ inability to keep the ball in the yard and their inability to do the little things right.

"Two costly mistakes," manager Davey Martinez lamented.

Those two mistakes each resulted in a three-run homer, with Garrett Hampson taking starter Aaron Sanchez deep to left in the second and Brendan Rodgers taking reliever Josh Rogers deep to center in the fifth.

But those blasts alone didn’t doom the Nats. This loss also was made possible by another Alcides Escobar error at shortstop, plus some poor baserunning by Juan Soto, who got picked off by astute Colorado catcher Dom Nuñez and third baseman Ryan McMahon in a key spot in the top of the fifth.

During that particular frame, the Nationals’ first four hitters all reached base, with César Hernández singling to extend his hitting streak to 11 games, Soto (who also homered and doubled in the game) drawing the first of his two walks, Josh Bell doubling home one run and Yadiel Hernandez singling up the middle to briefly raise his season batting average to .383.

They only scored one run that inning, though, because Soto was caught napping off third base and thus wasn’t around to score on Hernandez’s hit.

"Bad play," Martinez said. "He gets overly aggressive. But the infield is playing back. You don't go on the corners. It's no outs. You don't get doubled up on a line drive. You don't have to get that far off."

"That could have (been) the tying run in the game, and I just made myself out," Soto said. "I won't blame anybody; it was me. And that's when the game started and everything changed. It feels really bad, because after that we (scored) a couple runs and it could have been different. But we learn from the failures."

The Nationals did jump out to a quick 2-0 lead in the first via Soto’s power and Bell’s speed, and no you didn’t misread the second half of that sentence. After Soto blasted a 411-foot homer, Bell drew a walk and then scored all the way from first when McMahon airmailed a throw across the diamond, sliding in ahead of the tag.

But they squandered a chance to add to the lead in the top of the second when Victor Robles bunted Dee Strange-Gordon to third and then Escobar (who squared around for a safety squeeze on the first pitch but missed the sign to attempt it again two pitches later, according to Martinez) struck out. César Hernández's flyout to left then ended the inning.

Pitching with a 2-0 lead, Sanchez gave it back and then some during a torturous bottom of the second that wasn’t entirely his fault. As was the case Wednesday night, an error by Escobar helped contribute to a sizeable Rockies rally.

This one, a booted grounder to short, wouldn’t have ended the inning, but it would’ve left Sanchez in a better situation than the two-on, no-out jam he now faced. And when Hampson proceeded to launch his next pitch to left for a three-run homer, Sanchez and the Nationals found themselves trailing 4-2, and Escobar found himself a significant contributor to the mess once again.

"I'm trying to get him another ground ball right away," Sanchez said of his mindset following the error by his shortstop. "I think that's why we went with the pitch we went with. If he doesn't jump first pitch, and maybe he hits it a little different and he doesn't get it into the air and it's a 6-3 (grounder) and it's a double play. I've been on the other end of that as a young player, being a shortstop and making errors. No one feels worse than the guy who made the error. So for me, I'm just trying to pick him up, at that point try to limit the damage."

Sanchez would recover to post zeros in both the third and fourth innings, but by the time he surrendered three singles in the bottom of the fifth, his afternoon was over. In came Rogers, and the lefty responded by striking out the two left-handed batters he faced that inning: McMahon and Sam Hilliard. Alas, he served up a three-run homer to the right-handed batter sandwiched between them: Rodgers, whose drive to center off a 1-2 slider gave Colorado a five-run lead.

Turns out Rogers shook off catcher Keibert Ruiz, who was calling for a fastball, and wound up paying the price for a poorly located slider.

"We had thrown him two fastballs," Rogers said. "We went fastball in and fastball in, so I felt like we had to move the ball around and change speeds. To not throw the best (slider) there and to not bury it, it's really unfortunate. I take full responsibility for this one today. I feel like if I get us out of that inning, we're going to win that game."

This being Coors Field, of course, even a five-run lead feels surmountable. So the Nationals weren’t about to roll over down 8-3 heading to the sixth. And sure enough, they began to claw their way back.

Ruiz led off the sixth with a 424-foot homer to right, the young catcher’s first of the season. One inning later, Ruiz followed Maikel Franco’s RBI double with one of his own, and now the deficit was down to 8-6.

Randal Grichuk’s seventh-inning homer off Kyle Finnegan, who needed the work even though his team was trailing, put the Rockies back up by three runs. And though the Nationals got one back in the top of the eighth, they couldn’t finish the job, leaving them wondering what might have been different had they done a few fundamental things better earlier in the day.

"It bothers me a lot," Martinez said. "And it's stuff we'll talk about a lot and we'll address tomorrow when we have our meeting. But we're not playing robots out there. There's going to be days when they have those. Especially our young players. They want to do a lot. You've just got to put the reins on them a little bit. I want them to be aggressive, but aggressive-smart."