“It went farther than [I thought],” Soto explained.

Freese never scored, but that wasn’t necessary to prove the point. That play, one Soto would’ve made most of the season but didn’t in Sunday night’s Game 3 loss, illustrated one reason the Nationals’ season is on the brink as they trail the Dodgers two games to one in the National League Division Series. The Nationals aren’t doing “the little things.”

Manager Dave Martinez preached all spring training about how “the little things” — stealing one more bag or committing one fewer defensive miscue — could help turn the team around. The Nationals didn’t do those little things during their abysmal start, but they did as they climbed back into contention. Yet the Nationals have flubbed them again throughout this NLDS, and the most egregious examples in Game 3 — Howie Kendrick’s base-running blunder, Patrick Corbin’s inability to finish wipeout counts and Soto’s misjudged flyball — cost them.

Their margin for error, as small as it was Sunday evening, shrank to nothing by the end of the night. They’re now facing elimination, and it’s not just a matter of smoothing out those little things. It’s a matter of being perfect for 27 outs.

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“We’re weirdly comfortable right now, even though our backs are up against the wall,” said reliever Sean Doolittle. He added: “We kind of feel like we've played a lot of must-win games in the last month of the season.”

Everyone in the clubhouse expressed optimism the Nationals will tighten up and win Monday’s Game 4 to set up a decisive Game 5 on Wednesday in Los Angeles. Soto cited the starter, ace Max Scherzer. Doolittle mentioned that the Nationals were one of the best teams in the National League this season at home. Adam Eaton shrugged and pointed out they’ve been in similar spots before.

The little but costly miscues, though, have crept back into the team’s game, unlike at the end of the season. Michael A. Taylor didn’t back up from center when Soto misplayed the ball at the wall. Corbin got two outs and jumped ahead of several hitters, 0-2, before they battered the ball around Nationals Park; the Dodgers eventually tagged him for six runs in less than an inning. In the bottom of the sixth, with the bases loaded and no outs, a potential rally went awry. Asdrubal Cabrera’s sacrifice fly scored Soto, but Kendrick hesitated to go from second to third. He started, stopped and restarted — and was thrown out by at least 10 feet.

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“I should've trusted my instincts,” Kendrick said, lamenting: “Little things like that, they can change the game.”

It wasn’t hard to remember the last time they had. Corbin walked in the first run of Game 1. Kendrick committed two errors to extend the Dodgers’ lead. The Nationals, who preached they’d excel as underdogs and stay loose because they’d encountered every pressurized situation, just looked tight. They chased so many bad pitches that Martinez, an eternal source of positivity, admitted they uncharacteristically “chased a lot of bad pitches.” Even the best chance the Nationals had to climb back into Game 1 was a little thing gone wrong.

They had the bases loaded with two outs in the fourth inning and the Dodgers’ starter, Walker Buehler, had issued three walks in the last four hitters. The Nationals, trailing by a run, sent Cabrera to the plate knowing a base hit probably meant their first lead of the series. Cabrera disregarded Buehler’s command problems and swung at first two pitches, both out the strike zone, and tapped the second one back to him for an inning-ending out.

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The Nationals did almost every little thing right in Game 2. They were smart situational hitters, and their pitchers didn’t allow a leadoff walk in any inning for the first time in the postseason. The results showed in the 4-2 win. Soto stressed that the costly mistakes in Games 1 and 3 were hiccups, not indicative of how the Nationals would play on Monday night.

“That happens. Sometimes you're going to miss,” he said. “But you got to stay in the game.”

Eaton, for his part, is not worried. The Nationals are used to must-win games — they’ve been playing them for months — and he compared this team to a battle-tested ship accustomed to rough seas. You can’t see what battle-tested looks like in a few games, Eaton added. It takes a whole series.

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“[You’ll see it] when we come out and win” Game 4, he said. “And when we go to L.A. and win too.”