They came to see Dylan Crews do something big in his major league debut. They left after an average night from the Nationals’ top prospect, three big hits from a powerful Yankees lineup, and three soul-destroying catches at the wall that ruined any chance of a win on one of the most anticipated nights in recent franchise history.

Gleyber Torres, Austin Wells and Jazz Chisholm Jr. all homered, and while Aaron Judge didn’t, the majors’ leading homer hitter did hit two potential homers near the center wall, electrifying the crowd of 32,812 and stealing the show in a 5-2 New York victory on a night that belonged to neither Crews nor Juan Soto.

Crews, the Nats’ first-round pick in last summer’s draft, went 0-for-3 with a walk, a strikeout, a flyout and a groundout in his first career game. It was a fairly uneventful night for the 22-year-old, whose biggest moment may have been a fourth-inning pitch from right field that just missed Anthony Volpe at the plate.

“First of all, playing against the Yankees, and playing against Judge and Soto for the first time, it was a pretty surreal moment to go there,” he said. “And obviously playing with my new team that I’m on now, the Nationals, is a great feeling. I’m just going to go back tomorrow and do it all over again.”

Crews was batting second, behind C.J. Abrams and ahead of James Wood. He came to bat with only one runner on base; he struck out with two on base and one out in the sixth inning, but couldn’t handle a 3-2 fastball from Nestor Cortes.

“They’re great pitchers up there that get you every once in a while,” he said. “I think overall I saw the ball great today. And my approach was the way I wanted it to be.”

The extra energy in the stadium was noticeable all afternoon and evening, and only part of it had to do with Crews’ debut. The arrival of the vaunted Yankees, and especially Soto’s return to Nationals Park, was enough to make this a big Monday night on South Capitol Street, regardless of who was in the home team’s lineup.

The crowd cheered for Crews when his name was first announced. And it cheered for Soto when he stepped to the plate at the top of the first inning, the 25-year-old former World Series great stepping out of the box to remove his helmet and thank the fans.

The Yankees, by the way, were already up 1-0 when Soto dug in, Gleyber Torres having led off the game with a leadoff homer off Mitchell Parker. Parker, facing the most daunting top-four hitters he would ever face in his life, would show nerves of steel by allowing Judge to double play in the first inning, then retiring Torres with the bases loaded an inning later (a scenario that only occurred after the left-handed rookie botched a routine play before his final fielding blunder).

“It’s a problem I want to work on over and over again,” Parker said of his fourth mistake in just 11 major league fielding opportunities. “Clear your mind when you get on the mound, and then deal with it the next day. Figure it out, and hope you don’t have to do it the next time.”

All things being equal, Parker held his own tonight. He gave up one more run in the fourth inning on a leadoff double by Volpe and two subsequent flyouts. But that was all he allowed. The problem: He needed 83 pitches to complete four innings, and with the heart of the New York order coming in the fifth, manager Davey Martinez decided not to push his luck and turned to his bullpen instead.

“It sucks not to be able to play anymore, to be able to get a couple more innings in,” Parker said. “But like we’ve tried to do all year, limit the damage against a really good team.”

(Martinez did not hold his usual post-match press conference. According to a club spokesman, he was not feeling well.)

Tanner Rainey made a splash by retiring Soto (who finished 0-for-4 with a walk), Judge and Giancarlo Stanton on a total of four pitches, but the right-handed hurler wasn’t so lucky when he returned for the sixth. Wells led off with a homer to right and Volpe followed with a single to center, including an error by Jacob Young, then stole third and scored on a sacrifice fly.

That left the Nationals with a 4-0 deficit, which honestly didn’t feel fair considering how well they hit the ball against Cortes. They hit four separate balls at least 375 feet in the first four innings alone, but had only one hit (an Andrés Chaparro double) to show for it.

That’s because the Yankees outfield made three highlight plays to rob the Nats of extra bases. Alex Verdugo slammed into the left-field wall while catching Keibert Ruiz’s deep drive in the second inning, going to the ground in a heap but ultimately staying in the game. Judge leaped to catch José Tena’s 408-foot drive to straightaway center, a ball that seemed inches from leaving the park. And Judge outdid himself in the bottom of the fourth.

Chaparro, who had already doubled to right-center, now hit a pitch to left-center that everyone in the park thought was gone. Except Judge, who tracked down, leaped, and pulled the 389-foot shot back off the top of the wall, then fired all the way back to first base to get a stunned Wood and complete an all-time double play.

“I thought we had a chance. It just hung there long enough,” Judge said. “I tried to go out there and make a play. (Verdugo) set the tone by basically running through another wall. As a teammate, you’ve got to go out there and match that energy.”

“Very, very surprised,” Chaparro said of the robbery, through interpreter Octavio Martinez. “Because I thought it was going to be a home run. And as soon as he caught it, I thought, ‘Wow, that was a good catch.'”

Juan Yepez finally decided to take matters into his own hands, sending a ball 432 feet over the left-field bullpen for a seventh-inning home run that no one could retrieve. And Young, of all people, also hit an eighth-inning home run off reliever Mark Leiter Jr. But it was far too late to make much of a difference, other than saving the Nats from elimination on a night that started with so much promise but ended with genuine appreciation for the latest big leaguer’s moment.

“I think it’s finally sunk in,” Crews said. “When I first went there, it was a pretty surreal moment. But I felt like a kid, just going there and playing every day. That’s how I treat it. It’s a pretty awesome feeling.”