“I just missed it, flat-out,” Hairston said. “I put us behind the eight ball tonight. I really feel responsible for the loss.”
The Nationals built a one-run lead with a solid debut from starting pitcher Tom Gorzelanny and home runs by Danny Espinosa and Ian Desmond. They lost with Hairston’s miscue, and squandered it thanks to a continued dearth of clutch hits. The Nationals entered hitting .169 with runners in scoring position, second-worst in the majors. Saturday, they went 1 for 9.
The game changed, though, when Hairston committed his error. Carlos Beltran had already hit two home runs off Gorzelanny when he came to the plate in the sixth, David Wright standing on first after a leadoff single. Beltran launched another high flyball to right, but Hairston knew immediately this one would stay in the park.
Hairston sprinted back and to his left — “I had a great jump on it,” he said. Once he arrived at the spot the ball was dropping, he sensed center fielder Rick Ankiel closing in, even though Ankiel stood several yards away. Oddly, Hairston thought he may collide with him.
“Obviously, he was nowhere near,” Hairston said. “I just felt something. It wasn’t the wall. It wasn’t the lights. For whatever reason, I felt that.”
At the last moment, Hairston flinched and backed away from the ball. The ball plopped to the turf and dribbled away. Hairston could only stand there, naked from the taunts coming from the seats behind him.
“It’s my fault,” Hairston said. “I messed up. I should have caught the ball, plain and simple.”
The Mets should have had a runner at first with one out. Instead, Gorzelanny faced a no-out, second-and-third jam. Before Hairston’s drop, according to the analytical baseball Web site FanGraphs.com, the Nationals had a 56.6 percent chance to win. After, their chances dropped to 36.6 percent.
Gorzelanny tried to pitch his way out of it, fanning Scott Hairston — Jerry’s brother – for his eighth and final strikeout of the night. Gorzelanny started to believe he could wiggle out, and Ike Davis stepped to the plate. In their prior confrontation, Gorzelanny had thrown Davis a first-pitch slider. He tried again.
“I think he was looking for it,” Gorzelanny said.
Davis pulverized a triple to right-center, scoring both runners and giving the Mets a 5-4 lead. They would tack on one more when Chin-lung Hu drove in Davis with an RBI single off reliever Brian Broderick.
Gorzelanny had not started a game, spring training or regular season, in 15 days. He filled his time with bullpen sessions, a simulated game and setting up an XBox in the empty locker next to his in the Nationals clubhouse. “I’ll be here until 10:30 tonight,” he joked the day he hooked it up.
If any rust accumulated, it showed in the first inning. He walked the first batter he faced, Jose Reyes, and needed 28 pitches, one of which Beltran deposited in the left field seats. But he retired the next eight hitters he faced, striking out four of them, until Beltran walked to the plate again in the fourth. He again smacked a changeup into the left field seats over the left-field fence, a virtual replay from three innings earlier.
“I was comfortable,” Gorzelanny said. “I just made a couple mistakes, and I paid hard for it.”
The Mets would break the game open when Reyes smoked a two-run double off Doug Slaten in the eighth inning, and the Nationals would squander chances in both the eighth and the ninth, when they put their first two batters reached base and did not score.
The whole time, Hairston could not shake his play. He ended the game 0 for 9 this season with two walks, one of those intentional. His other crucial moment came late in Tuesday’s loss, when he was caught in a rundown between third and home . His first days as a National have been rough, but in 14 years he’s learned more than how to play everywhere on the field.
“I know in this game, sometimes nothing can go your way,” Hairston said. “But then the tide turns really quickly. And I can’t wait for that to happen.”
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