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The Washington Nationals couldn’t catch a popup with two outs in the first inning. The Cleveland broadcasters thought that Eddie Rosario gave up on the ball while Kevin Frandsen of the Nats booth thought that shortstop Ildemaro Vargas should have caught the ball. Manager Dave Martinez in his postgame presser saw it like Frandsen. Replay showed Vargas calling for the ball then he stopped running after it. Instead of a 2-1 win, the Nats lost 3-2. Their 9th loss by one-run in 13-games. A sad reminder of what this season could have been.

Forget about the other mistakes as there were plenty on the base paths with two runners thrown out on awful mistakes that included another blunder by third base coach Ricky Gutierrez who gave his base runner the go sign and then the stop sign when it was too late. And the team suffered their 12th pick-off of the season. This time Jesse Winker was picked-off on a set play that should never work at the MLB level. The Guardians deked him by the first baseman jumping off of first base like he wasn’t holding him on. Winker froze and was thrown out trying to go back to the base standing up. How embarrassing.

The Guardians play aggressive mistake-free baseball. You could point to their outfielder slipping on the turf as a mistake — but that was like a freak accident. The Guardians won, and they are firmly in first place in their division. If you look at their roster, besides Jose Ramirez, they don’t look so great. They just find a way to score enough runs per game. We saw their best starting pitcher yesterday in Ben Lively. Their starting rotation has a higher ERA (4.15) than the Nats at 3.93. The Guardians are 11-6 in one-run games.

The Washington Nationals have Mitchell Parker back on the mound after normal rest, and having just thrown a career-high 100 pitches against the Braves. Parker faced the Dodgers for his MLB debut in mid-April when the Dodgers were the top scoring offense, and now he faces the American League’s top offense today in Cleveland.

The Washington Nationals won a key series against the Braves, and now have this weekend series against the very hot Cleveland Guardians, a team in first place in the AL Central that was just voted the 5th best team in MLB power rankings. Only the Phillies and Dodgers have scored more runs than the Guardians this season. Tonight’s challenge: Patrick Corbin and his 6.12 ERA is on the mound with a back of the bullpen that has pitched a lot in the past two days.

The Washington Nationals received a gem last night from starter MacKenzie Gore to deliver a victory to the Nats with the big offense coming from Lane Thomas who put the Nats in front to stay with a 3-run homer off of the Braves’ starter. With some add-on runs, closer, Kyle Finnegan, did not have to pitch the 9th inning. Gore had 10 Ks and no walks and just one earnie in last night’s game. On the season, the Nats are now a road win from being .500 as the visiting team.

The Washington Nationals were tied at 0-0 to enter the bottom of the 7th inning last night. Manager Dave Martinez went to Jacob Barnes who got lit up quickly, but maybe the game was lost by the fact the Nats had baserunners they could not score — and baserunners erased on mistakes. The Nats had their chances and squandered them.

The Washington Nationals were KRuiz’ing with an 8-0 lead on Monday until the Braves were let back into the game with a 4-run surge in the 7th inning and one out with 2 runners on-base. Derek Law dialed up one of the most timely double play balls of the season to end the threat. Starter, Mitchell Parker, had a gem going until the 100th pitch of his game — but certainly I questioned the wisdom of pushing the rookie to exhaustion before the inning even started. Consider this rookie has to pitch in five days with no extra rest. His scoreless gem was forever tainted by three earned runs when his gas tank was on fumes.

The Washington Nationals had one of those scrappy comebacks with a 4-run 7th inning on Sunday that looked like the Nats 5-4 lead would hold up going in the 8th inning. While Hunter Harvey was unavailable due to his workload, Derek Law had been warming up. But instead, manager Dave Martinez went with Dylan Floro who was collared with the blown-save-loss after giving up two runs.