The botched rally that defined an opening day loss

Pick out any number of reasons the Nationals lost their season opener today, 2-0 to the Mets. Look at Ryan Zimmerman's first-inning line drive, the one snagged by a diving Jeff McNeil at third base to prevent a run from scoring. Point out Davey Martinez's late-game pitching decisions to let Max Scherzer return to the mound for the eighth, then turn to Justin Miller and Matt Grace to face a couple of key hitters instead of Trevor Rosenthal and Tony Sipp.

But if you really want to encapsulate this agonizing loss, look no farther than the bottom of the third and almost certainly the most important sequence of the afternoon.

"I think that might have been the difference in the game right there," said Trea Turner. And he would know because he was smack dab in the middle of it all.

The situation: The Nationals trailed 1-0 thanks to Scherzer's only real mistake of the game, a 1-1 changeup to Robinson Canó in the top of the first that caught too much of the plate and wound up reaching the red seats beyond the wall in left-center. But thanks to Victor Robles' leadoff double and Adam Eaton's subsequent single to right, the Nats had themselves a potential rally going against Mets ace Jacob deGrom.

With runners on first and third, nobody out and Turner at the plate with Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto behind him, the Nationals had an opportunity - maybe one of the only opportunities they were likely to get - against deGrom, the league's reigning Cy Young Award winner after a brilliant season in which he posted a microscopic 1.70 ERA.

"When you have a one-something ERA - I don't know what the heck he had last year, two-something? - it just basically means you're going to have a couple shots, and you better make the most of it," Eaton said. "If you don't, you're not gonna be successful."

As Turner stepped to the plate, he looked to third base coach Bob Henley, in case a certain play was on. It was not.

"I walked up thinking I might get the safety squeeze," the shortstop said, "and I didn't."

Turner still might've decided on his own to bunt and try to get Robles home with the tying run, but after deGrom misfired on back-to-back sliders to leave the count 2-0, he figured the alternative was better.

"When I got ahead in the count, I felt like I was seeing the ball pretty well," Turner said.

Turns out he didn't see the ball well at all, because deGrom started firing nothing but high fastballs, five of them in a row. But despite the fact only two of those pitches were in the zone, Turner couldn't help himself and proceeded to swing through two heaters way up, the last of which sealed a frustrating strikeout.

"He's just got that good fastball up in the zone where it looks good and then takes off," Turner said. "Once I got to 3-2, I still felt comfortable. He's definitely a good pitcher, but I felt confident, and so I took a chance. But I've just got to get in the zone."

If Turner merely gets the bat on the ball, the Nationals almost certainly score a run. Even if he grounds into a double play, Robles scampers home and the game is tied. But the strikeout? That changed the complexion of the entire inning and now brought Rendon to the plate facing more pressure to convert.

Rendon did make contact, but his grounder went straight to McNeil at third base. Which led to disaster on the bases by Robles, who was supposed to run on contact but instead froze.

"To be honest, I got a little confused," the rookie outfielder said via interpreter Octavio Martinez. "But we'll learn from this. We'll get better and move on."

That goof was bad enough, but Robles only compounded it when McNeil threw to second for the forceout. With little chance of turning a 5-4-3 double play, at least the Nats would still have runners on the corners and two outs. But Robles decided to make a break for the plate, and an astute Canó fired the ball back to catcher Wilson Ramos, who threw back to McNeil, who tagged Robles for the final out of a botched rally that left the sellout crowd either with head in hands or with head looking upward and arms extended outward in disbelief.

"In the middle of the moment, I realized I had made the mistake, so I tried to kind of make up for it," Robles said. "It didn't come our way, but it's something you learn from and then you move on."

"That's just a young baserunning mistake by him," Martinez said. "We talked about it. He knows just to run, stay out of the double play. We have Soto coming up if he runs into an out, but we have a man on first and second."

It would be one thing if these mistakes happened out of the blue. But they happened on the heels of a six-week camp in West Palm Beach in which the manager pounded the idea of better situational hitting and better baserunning into players every single day.

There are 161 games left for the Nationals to prove that message did hit home. But in Game 1, it seemed to have passed in one collective ear and right out the other.

"We just keep working on it," Soto said. "A couple plays, we missed it. But we just keep grinding. That happens. Nobody's perfect. So we're going to keep working, keep grinding."