WASHINGTON — Tomoyuki Sugano watched Nationals ascendent youngster James Wood rip a sinker 116.3 mph off the bat, 431 feet over his head toward the right field bleachers. It was the eighth hardest hit ball in MLB this season. Josh Bell followed Wood’s lead moments later with a two-run home run off Baltimore’s best healthy starting pitcher.

It had been 20 minutes. Sugano had thrown 14 pitches. Two of them landed in the right field seats, putting the Orioles in an early 3-0 hole. With the way the Orioles have been hitting as of late, three runs looked like a mountain to climb. They’ve only overcome such a deficit once this season.

And so a 4-3 loss to the Nationals on Wednesday night marked their third straight, tying their longest drought of the season.

Even on a night when Sugano flushed that first inning, holding Washington scoreless in his next six frames – he struck out one batter, walked none and gave up five hits – Baltimore couldn’t capitalize.

“Nobody’s satisfied with how we’re playing,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “We were just a little short tonight, but really happy with how we played.”

Washington’s eventual game winner came on an anticlimactic sacrifice fly in the eighth by Luis García Jr. to center field, scoring pinch hitter Alex Call. A play earlier, Orioles reliever Gregory Soto nearly escaped the jam by inducing a chopper to third from Nathaniel Lowe, but the double play try was a hair slow. A missed strike call by home plate umpire C.B. Bucknor loomed large, allowing Wood to walk and put runners on first and second with no outs to start the inning.

Baltimore (9-14) had its chances.

With two on in the third, the Orioles failed to push either across home plate. Mid-Atlantic Sports Network cameras caught Gunnar Henderson punching his helmet into a dugout cubby and ripping his gloves off, inherently frustrated after dragging out what is now a 1-for-14 slump.

There were two more runners stranded in the fourth. One in the fifth. Etcetera, etcetera. The Orioles’ final chance came in the ninth. Henderson singled. Ryan Mountcastle put the go-ahead run at first. But Tyler O’Neill’s strikeout and Heston Kjerstad’s game-ending pop out left the Orioles trudging back to the locker room still searching for its first lead since Saturday.

Twelve Orioles were stranded on base by night’s end. All that traffic was for naught, as Baltimore went 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position.

“Obviously you want to cash in and score runs,” said Jackson Holliday, who went 2-for-3 with a walk. “But I thought, as a team, we put together some good at-bats and had runners in scoring position. You’ve got to take the positives when you can get them.”

Added Hyde: “We play baseball like that, we’re going to win a lot of games. … We hit a lot of balls hard that we weren’t rewarded for. I thought we took really good at-bats for the most part. We did a nice job running the bases. To be able to give up three runs the way we did early and scratch back to tie it, I’m proud of that.”

The Orioles struck out five times against Nationals right-handed starter Trevor Williams. They also managed a run on six hits. The rest of their offense — four hits for a pair of runs — came against the worst bullpen in MLB. The Nationals’ relievers’ collective 6.96 ERA is more than a full run worse than the next team. They have a collective 77 strikeouts this season, tied for ninth worst in the league.

This appears to be Baltimore’s reality until its best bats return to form.

Mountcastle’s single in the ninth ended an 0-for-6 skid. Ryan O’Hearn is 0-for-his-last-7, as is O’Neill. And Jordan Westburg was hitless in six consecutive at-bats before tripling late in Wednesday’s loss.

These are small April sample sizes coming at a time when Baltimore needs its offense to reignite.

“Breaks are kind of hard to come by right now a little bit. We can’t feel sorry for ourselves,” Hyde said. “We’ve just got to continue to play that way.”

Postgame analysis

For all of Baltimore’s pitching woes over the first month of the season, here’s a glimmer of positivity: Nobody on the current staff flushes away frustration quite like Sugano. He let up a pair of home runs in the first inning, digging his team into a 3-0 hole. Sugano forgot about it and retired the next nine batters. He’s the only Orioles pitcher who has shown an ability to keep a bad inning from unraveling an entire outing.

Sugano became the fourth Orioles pitcher in the past decade to complete seven-plus innings with zero walks in back-to-back starts.

For the only Japanese speaker in the clubhouse, much of that is reliant on communication.

“I think the biggest thing that leads to efficient outcomes is the pregame meetings with the catcher and the pitching coach and between innings,” he said through team interpreter Yuto Sakurai. “I make sure I communicate well.”

What they’re saying

Holliday on Baltimore’s three-game losing streak:

“This team expects to win, and it’s obviously frustrating to not win and perform at the level I think we all know we can. But we’re going to keep pushing and keep being competitive and try and push through this. Like I said, we have a really good team, so I’m not too worried about it.”

By the numbers

Hyde said this week that every other hitter should keep a watchful eye on Cedric Mullins’ competitive at-bats. The center fielder continues to slug, riding a 10-game on-base streak and a five-game hitting streak. During that stretch, Mullins is hitting .313 with a 1.145 OPS, three home runs and 11 walks.

On deck

The Orioles dropped a nail-biter on a night they needed to right the ship, ending a seven-series winning streak against Washington. The last of this three-game set will pit lefties Cade Povich and MacKenzie Gore. Then on Friday, 26-year-old righty Brandon Young will take the ball for his second big league start, the first of a weekend series in Detroit.

Have a news tip? Contact Sam Cohn at scohn@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/samdcohn.