Dreams of contention for Elly De La Cruz and the Reds take a hit with a sweep at Washington

WASHINGTON (AP) — Elly De La Cruz predicted before the second half of the season began that the Cincinnati Reds were going to make the playoffs and “win it all.”

That optimistic goal became even more of a long shot on Sunday, when the still-rebuilding Washington Nationals completed a three-game sweep of the visiting Reds.

The Reds came out of the break three games under .500 but only three games out of the final NL wild-card spot. They fell to 47-53 during their lost weekend at Washington, four games out of the wild card and last in the NL Central.

“We have so much to play for. So much time left ahead of us that that’s the focus now,” Reds manager David Bell said. “You have to find ways to improve, especially when things aren’t going well.”

De La Cruz, Cincinnati’s All-Star shortstop, doubled in the sixth inning Sunday to extend his hitting streak to nine games. He stole two bases in the series to increase his major league-leading total to 48, but the Reds’ sparkplug only scored one run in the three losses.

He tried to take third on a hard grounder to the left side Sunday and was tagged out. With the game tied in the eighth, he walked and stole second but was stranded when Jeimer Candelario popped up.

Cincinnati got into playoff contention thanks to aggressive baserunning — the Reds lead the majors in steals — and a strong starting rotation led by All-Star Hunter Greene, Andrew Abbott and Nick Lodolo.

Then they got a huge boost from rookie Rece Hinds, who was recalled from Triple-A Louisville on July 8, homered in his big league debut and went on to hit five homers in his first six games, earning NL Player of the Week honors. He was the first player to receive that designation in his first week in the majors since Houston’s Tyler White and Colorado’s Trevor Story in the opening week of the 2016 season.

The Reds went 5-1 during Hinds’ scalding start, but he’s 1 for 12 since and got his first day off Sunday.

Bell said neither he nor Hinds were overreacting to the rookie’s brief slump. He tried to ease any pressure on Hinds by chatting with him about baserunning.

“He’s done great since he’s been here. You obviously want to keep that going,” Bell said. “But there’s so many ways in this game to contribute and compete. I haven’t talked to Rece specifically about his hitting, but we’ve talked about other things.”

Any further contributions from Hinds would boost a team that struggles to cash in on its speed. The Reds rank 27th in the majors in batting and 22nd in on-base percentage.

They knocked Nationals starter MacKenzie Gore out of Saturday night’s game after two innings but couldn’t put Washington away, leaving nine runners on base as Washington rallied for a 5-4 win.

On Sunday, they got two solo homers but otherwise did little against Nationals starter Jake Irvin.

Cincinnati will try to salvage its nine-game trip starting Monday at NL wild card leader Atlanta. After three against the Braves, the Reds play a weekend series at Tampa Bay.

“There were some missed opportunities and games we could have won this series for sure,” said Stuart Fairchild, who homered Sunday. “It’s unfortunate, so, yeah. Let’s move on.”

Before the Washington series began, Bell took no issue with De La Cruz’s prediction of a World Series title.

“Perfect. I mean, that’s the goal. That was the goal in spring training,” he said. “We need our improvement to show up, because we know we have to get better. We know we can play better. The way we do that is have the same approach.”