After Meeting, Nats Lose Again
Braves 3, Nationals 0

By Dave Sheinin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 12, 2008

It was the right day for a team meeting, with the Washington Nationals on a losing streak that had been alive for more than a week, and so Manny Acta closed the clubhouse doors at 4 p.m. yesterday and spoke to his players for nearly half an hour about preparation and focus. But it was the wrong night to do anything about the mounting losses, and Tim Hudson was most certainly the wrong pitcher against whom to attempt a mass healing of ailing bats.

There was very little on the field last night, in fact, outside of Matt Chico's valiant eight-inning effort from the mound, that was conducive toward stopping a losing streak, and so, loss number eight in a row -- equaling the franchise's longest skid since baseball returned to the nation's capital in 2005 -- came quickly and with surgical precision, by a 3-0 score to Hudson and the Atlanta Braves before 28,051 at Nationals Park.

Yunel Escobar's first-pitch solo homer off Chico with two outs in the top of the sixth inning provided the difference in the game, as Hudson, now 5-0 against the Nationals since the start of last season, would need no more than that over his eight strong innings to destroy whatever kernel of confidence had been engendered several hours earlier by Acta's upbeat speech.

"Hudson beat us," said Nationals left fielder Willie Harris, Hudson's former teammate in Atlanta. "I wouldn't say we beat ourselves. Hudson beat us."

Once again, however, the Nationals' bullpen took a close game and made it less so. This time, right-hander Jon Rauch took over for Chico in the ninth and promptly loaded the bases on two singles and a walk. He struck out the next two batters, but Matt Diaz poked a single to center, scoring two more runs.

The Nationals had a couple of options against Hudson (2-0), the Atlanta Braves' excellent right-hander, neither of them high-percentage plays: Take a few pitches, work the count, maybe drive up Hudson's pitch count -- a strategy that, when employed a handful of times last night, resulted in little more than a lot of 0-1 counts.

Or, they could swing early and often, which the Nationals also did frequently, and which merely played into Hudson's strategy of quick outs and short innings.

"You have to pick your poison with him," said third baseman Ryan Zimmerman, who went 0 for 4 to drop his batting average to .191.

Working fast and pounding the strike zone with low-90s sinkers and tight sliders, Hudson allowed only one Nationals base runner to reach second base, when Cristian Guzmán led off the fourth with a single and advanced to second on Lastings Milledge's sacrifice bunt. From there, Hudson went strikeout-walk-groundout through the heart of the Nationals' order.

"They look the same [coming in]," Zimmerman said of Hudson's two bread-and-butter pitches, "but one goes one way, and the other goes the other way."

And pity poor Jesús Flores. Hudson saved some of his most oppressive pitches for the Nationals' second-year backup catcher, starting in place of veteran Paul Lo Duca. Flores saw seven pitches from Hudson in his two at-bats, before leaving for a pinch hitter. Six of them were strikes, and four of those were swinging strikes, the last of which was a slider that wound up nearly at the outer edge of the opposite batter's box.

Chico, though possessing just a small percentage of Hudson's raw stuff, was his opponent's equal for much of the night, using his new, more dynamic windup delivery to dial up 89 mph on the stadium radar-gun readout, and limiting the Braves' formidable lineup to five hits -- the majority of them weakly hit -- over eight exquisite innings, the longest start of his career.

"I'm very proud of the young man. Just a tremendous outing," Acta said.

But with the way Hudson was pitching, Chico must have known one mistake would be enough to cost him the game, and the mistake came on his first pitch to Escobar in the sixth. With Flores set up on the outside corner and calling for a fastball, Chico's offering stayed down the middle, where Escobar's bat found it and sent it atop the out-of-town scoreboard in right-center.

"Terrible pitch," Chico said. "A sinker that didn't do anything."

By yesterday afternoon, there was little question in the minds of the Nationals' veterans that a team meeting was coming on

"When you've been around awhile, you can feel one coming," veteran reliever Ray King said. "I had a feeling it was going to happen last night, or happen today."

Acta is not known for clubhouse histrionics, and like the lone meeting he called during his rookie season of 2007, this time Acta's tone was measured and calm, and his message overwhelmingly positive.

"It was just to take the temperature of the ballclub and let them know I'm not panicking," Acta said before the game.

In the waning moments of the ensuing game, fate would bring together the two principals from the dramatic finish of Opening Night, all those many nights ago, when Zimmerman homered off Braves reliever Peter Moylan in the bottom of the ninth for a stirring walk-off victory to christen Nationals Park.

This time, however, with the bases empty, two outs, and an eighth straight loss nearly complete, Zimmerman flailed at strike three and walked back to his dugout, with nary a hit nor an answer to speak of.