BOSTON — There was a palpable sense of frustration in the visiting clubhouse at Fenway Park on Tuesday night. You could feel it in manager Matt Williams’ voice. See it in Ian Desmond’s face. Sense it. Everywhere.
It was only one game. There are 154 games left. That much is understood. But the way in which the Washington Nationals lost this one against the Boston Red Sox, the helpless feeling of a come-from-behind victory slipping through their fingers, the same awful script playing out one more time — that made it frustrating. More frustrating than a normal loss in mid-April, anyways.
In their 8-7 defeat, the Nationals squandered a two-run lead by committing three errors in the seventh inning. They have nine so far this season, the most in the National League and second only to the New York Yankees in the majors. Through eight games, they have a .970 fielding percentage.
“Same recipe,” Williams said. “If you put all the ingredients together the same way every time, then you’re going to get the same meal. That’s what we’ve been getting. There’s nothing to be said that hasn’t already been said. We got the pitches we wanted, didn’t make the plays. That’s the same recipe. That’s all I’ve got for you.”
In some ways, Washington’s seventh-inning collapse was symptomatic of its slow start. When an odds-on World Series favorite loses five of its first seven games, there’s frustration. When that frustration spills onto the field, every routine play becomes difficult. Whether or not they’ll admit to it, or are even conscious of it at the time, players begin to press. Blake Treinen bobbles a simple comebacker to the mound that he’s handled cleanly hundreds of times, then airmails a throw that he could make in his sleep. Ian Desmond, one of the best shortstops in the National League, wants so desperately to stop committing errors that he commits another one.
It can become a vicious, infuriating cycle.
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“If you continue to kick the ball around, you’re going to lose. Bottom line,” Williams said. “That being said, we’ve got to do better. We’ve got to do better starting tomorrow and give ourselves a chance to win. The last two games, we haven’t given ourselves a chance.”
How do they get better? That’s the challenge. Washington’s offense will ebb and flow. Denard Span and Anthony Rendon will return to the lineup, a host of players will fall into and out of rhythm at the plate, and the runs will come. The pitching will be there, too. Defense, however, is tricky. There’s no mechanical solution or amount of practice at this level that can correct it. The only fix is to play better in the moment, and forget the past.
“We’ve had a bad eight games. We’ve played bad,” Ryan Zimmerman said. “We gave the other team too many outs. That’s what’s killing us. So it’s no surprise. We just need to play better defense. As bad as we’ve played, we’ve been in pretty much every single game besides one or two and really had a chance to win every single game besides one or two. So we obviously need to clean up our defense, catch the ball, not give the other team extra outs. But it’s eight games into the season.”
After each frustrating loss, that’s what the Nationals fall back upon, and rightfully so. The season is 5 percent over. It’s been a frustrating start to a season filled with lofty expectations, but in reality, it is just that: a start.
“I can almost guarantee we’ll have another, what, 2-6 run this year,” Matt Thornton said. “We’ll have another one sometime this year. It’s happened at the very start of the year, and we’re too talented, too good of a team and way too driven to stay in this mode. We’ll be fine.”
By and large, Thornton’s teammates share his sentiment. They know they’ll improve. However, they also know some things have to change.
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“It’s the same recipe, you guys. We can go over it a million times,” Williams said. “At this point, all I’ve got for you is if you put the same ingredients together like we have in the last two games, we’re going to get the same meal. It doesn’t taste very good.”
So how do you change that recipe?
“Catch the baseball,” Williams said.
• Tom Schad can be reached at tschad@washingtontimes.com.
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