Nats Keep Skidding, Demote Bergmann

"He's 23 years old," Acta said. "He's learning how to play the game up here, and he's going to keep making mistakes here and there, and we just got to keep talking to him."

Those types of things, though, are noticed in the clubhouse, particularly during such a skid.

"I don't think anyone was pleased with kind of how things went today," Kearns said. "You can always handle it when everybody's going hard and stuff like that. We just make mistakes. Just need to be better. Mentally, physically, everything. . . . It just seems like the cruise button was hit, almost."

If the cruise button is hit now, all the preaching about how it's still early will mean little by the end of the month. Bowden, and others, feel that change -- at this point -- can't hurt.

"You could bring a squirrel in here and he's going to do better than we've been playing," said catcher Paul Lo Duca, who went 0 for 3 and is hitting .212. "Got to do something. . . . We need to clean it up."

Bergmann was part of making the mess. Now, he'll try to clean up his performance in the minors. When, or if, he'll be back is impossible to say. And what he finds when he returns is yet another mystery.

"It's been a tough ride," Bergmann said. "I don't even know how many days in a row now we've lost. It's just a low feeling right now, especially for me, because I'm going down. But these guys will continue to work hard, and they will pull out of it."

If they don't, there will be more changes.