The Washington Nationals made a remarkable series of baserunning blunders in Thursday’s game that led to one of the more ridiculous pseudo-double plays anyone will see.
The Nationals had a runner at second base with nobody out Thursday against the New York Mets, a seemingly safe situation to avoid two outs on one play. Josh Bell hit a routine ground ball to third, but Juan Soto tried to advance from second on the play. This ill-advised decision led to him getting tagged out. While Soto got himself in a rundown, Bell tried to take second, and seemed to have it when Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor threw the ball into right field.
![Nationals double play](https://larrybrownsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/nationals-double-play-800x450.jpg)
Then Bell got greedy, trying to take third on the bad throw. He was promptly thrown out as the Mets recovered quickly.
https://twitter.com/SNYtv/status/1524818098020306945
Note that this is not technically a double play, since there was a lot of action between the two outs. That doesn’t make it any less embarrassing or ugly from Washington’s perspective.
The Nationals are 11-22 and heading for a lost season, and plays like this are why. This was arguably even worse than this ugly effort from the American League earlier in the season.