Nationals fall behind early, drop to .500 in loss to Boston

BOSTON — Most Nationals losses have a familiar theme: The pitching falters as the offense wears down the opposing pitcher and does its best to keep the team in the game.

It’s rare that the Nationals’ explosive offense is completely silenced by an opposing pitcher. Even on their off nights, they typically produce enough for the team to have at least a chance to squeak by, like Monday, when they scored three runs and recorded seven hits.

But winning games when the offense isn’t at its best requires near-perfection from this pitching staff. In Monday’s 6-3 loss, right-hander Miles Mikolas was far from that.

He allowed six earned runs — four of them in the first inning — on nine hits with three strikeouts and no walks over seven innings. The early deficit led to the Nationals’ fifth loss in their last seven games and their eighth in their last 12.

That first inning gave the Red Sox much-needed momentum after Nationals left fielder James Wood’s leadoff homer.

Mikolas allowed back-to-back singles to center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela and right fielder Wilyer Abreu on good pitches they had to expand the zone for. But he made a mistake against first baseman Willson Contreras, leaving a four-seamer in the heart of the zone. The All-Star first baseman drove it over the center-field wall to give Boston an early 3-0 lead. The Red Sox added one more run after Caleb Durbin’s two-out solo homer on a sweeper that stayed up in the zone.

Mikolas said he leaned too heavily on his fastball — throwing it harder than he needed to instead of commanding it better — and that his sweeper slipped.

Even against a Red Sox lineup with a paucity of power — Boston entered Monday with the fewest homers hit in the majors — leaving hittable pitches in the heart of the zone is a recipe for disaster.

“I got to do a better job of just hitting my spots,” Mikolas said.

Two mistakes led to four runs, and that’s usually enough for Boston left-hander Ranger Suárez, who entered the game with a 2.83 ERA.

Suárez got more support when Abreu hit a sacrifice fly in the second inning to add another run and catcher Carlos Narváez hit a two-out sacrifice fly in the third to make it 6-1.

Mikolas allowed 10 hard-hit balls — any batted ball hit 95 mph or higher — against a Red Sox team that hasn’t shown a propensity for barreling the ball.

After Wood’s homer, Suárez threw four scoreless innings and allowed no hits until the sixth. Catcher Keibert Ruiz hit a leadoff single before Wood was called out on strikes after a ball three call was reviewed and overturned.

Back-to-back singles by designated hitter Andrés Chaparro and third baseman Curtis Mead loaded the bases. On a 2-1 count, shortstop CJ Abrams got just enough of a curveball low and inside for a two-run double to right field that cut the lead to 6-3 and snapped his 0-for-16 slump at the plate.

In the eighth, Abrams nearly got his second hit of the night when he lined out sharply to Rafaela on a 100.9 mph sinker from Tyron Guerrero.

Abrams’ liner had an expected batting average of .620 but was erased when Rafaela made a remarkable leaping grab.

“I thought CJ’s last two at-bats were awesome,” manager Blake Butera said. “I think you saw him when he got to second base there, look like he exhaled a little bit and was like, ‘All right, finally.’ Then that last at-bat too off Guerrero, and he crushes that ball to center field at Rafaela, unfortunately made a nice play.”

That sixth inning was the team’s best chance at getting back in the game.

Mikolas rebounded after the first to allow just two runs over his next six innings, giving the team length to keep the bullpen fresh. Boston was aggressive in the zone, which allowed Mikolas’ pitch count to remain low.

“They’re going to be aggressive, you’ve got a little more room to kind of go for the corners,” he said.

The Nationals’ Achilles’ heel has been their pitching — they’ve scored 452 runs and allowed 450 this season — and it continued to plague them Monday. But Mikolas gave the Nationals a better chance of being competitive for the rest of the series by going seven innings.

“If I want to feel bad about it, I can look at the bottom line,” he said. “If I want to feel good about it, I can look at the fact that I didn’t tuck tail and run. Got through seven, [kept] the bullpen fresh for the rest of the series, so hopefully we can win these next two games.”