Too soon to worry about baserunning mistakes?

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Davey Martinez wants his guys to be aggressive on the bases, especially in spring training when the stakes aren't high. But the Nationals have already run themselves into eight outs on the bases in their first four Grapefruit League games.

Isn't that at least some cause for concern?

"That's OK. That's OK," Martinez insisted yesterday following a 2-1 loss to the Braves in Lake Buena Vista. "I'd rather them be aggressive that way and not take any chances. We talked about that early in the spring. We want you in spring training taking chances to see what you can do. Because you'll never know. In games, they'll be a little smarter. But go ahead and see what balls you can make, which balls you can't make. So I'm not worried about that. I'm happy to see them playing aggressive, playing with a lot of energy."

The Nationals' aggressive approach hasn't been all bad. They've successfully stolen five bases so far, tied with the Cardinals for tops in Florida. They've seen several runners go first to third or second to home on singles, including Matt Wieters (who chugged around third to score Sunday in West Palm Beach).

But some of the outs haven't been pretty. Matt Reynolds tried to tag up from third on a shallow fly ball to right yesterday and easily was thrown out at the plate. Victor Robles, trying to go first to third, overslid the bag and was tagged out.

From Martinez's perspective, though, now is the time to try those kinds of things out. It won't be time to do it for much longer.

"At a certain point we want them to be aggressively smart," the manager said. "Know the situations in the game. Know when you should dive and when you shouldn't dive. That'll come. We'll teach that fairly soon here.

"This way they get an idea. I don't want them going into a game not knowing what to do when the opportunity rises. We'll have these conversations daily."