At windy Wrigley, Nuñez turns page from miscue with 'unbelievable' play

CHICAGO -- The young Nationals heard the crowd was going to be loud at Wrigley. Then they had trouble hearing one another.

In the second inning of the Nats’ 10-2 loss to the Cubs on Saturday afternoon, shortstop Nasim Nuñez and left fielder Daylen Lile collided chasing a fly ball hit by Michael Busch off Miles Mikolas.

“It hurts,” said manager Blake Butera. “Both of those guys trying to make a play, just a miscommunication. Obviously a windy day, as we saw with popups throughout the day on both sides. But that one really hurt; two runs score on it.”

Lile ran in, Nuñez ran back and the ball landed on the grass while Moisés Ballesteros and Miguel Amaya scored. Nuñez was charged with the fielding error.

“I was thinking about how we could have prevented that or just caught the ball,” Nuñez said. “But it was honestly one of those situations where it’s just like, ‘That just happened.’ I called the ball at third base, and I ended up in the outfield. The wind got a pretty good hold of that ball. So it’s just like, somebody’s got to catch it.”

Instead of that at-bat being the last out, the Cubs added to a four-run inning that set the tone of the game.

“They couldn’t hear each other, which I understand,” said Butera. “Credit to the crowd here. They make a lot of noise on popups, they get super loud. So these guys are screaming, and they can’t hear each other. It’s tough.”

The Nationals practiced defensive drills throughout Spring Training. But the back fields of the training complex in West Palm Beach, Fla., don’t replicate the noise of 34,834 fans in Chicago.

“There’s nothing like the actual game,” said Nuñez. “You could go and call the ball when nobody’s in the stands, and of course everybody’s going to move. But it’s something everybody’s got to get used to. We’ll figure it out. It’s not going to happen too often.”

Saturday was just the fifth game played at Wrigley Field for both Nuñez, 25, and Lile, 23. (Nuñez got the start at shortstop while CJ Abrams is away from the team because of a death in the family.) The Cubs truly had home-field advantage; left fielder Ian Happ quickly recognized the conditions because of the wind.

“Ian came in immediately [after the first inning] and said, ‘It's going to be really rough in left field today. It's really hard out there. It's a high sky. There's some wind. It's just going to be really hard out there,’” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “And it showed up pretty quickly. We put four runs on the board -- I don't know if we hit a ball hard. We know that that's part of this park, and we took advantage of it today."

In spite of the early defensive mishap, Nuñez bounced back with an acrobatic play in the seventh inning in another Busch at-bat.

Busch hit a 92.6 mph grounder off Ken Waldichuk toward shortstop. Nuñez stretched out his glove hand as he dove onto the outfield grass, then tumbled as he secured the ball.

Nuñez spun himself around, jumped up and fired an off-balance throw to first base as he fell back onto the ground. First baseman Luis García Jr. scooped up the 74 mph assist. Nuñez covered a notable 38 feet to his right on the defensive play.

“Slow motion,” said Nuñez. “I didn’t really know how I did it. I just did it. And it was pretty cool to see everybody else’s reactions.”

Butera described the play as “unbelievable.” More importantly, it exhibited the importance of playing through the final out, regardless of the score.

“A credit to Nas, and I think our whole team is that way,” Butera said. “We made a mistake [on the fly ball], and to be able to turn the page and move on and know that we still have a baseball game to try to win, it just shows a lot.”