For Nats, Victory Just Out Of Reach
Diving Kearns Can't Snare Winning Hit: Astros 6, Nationals 5

By Barry Svrluga
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 7, 2008

HOUSTON, May 6 -- Austin Kearns charged in from right field, and the ramifications of what happened next were clear. Catch Carlos Lee's sinking line drive, and Kearns's Washington Nationals would preserve a one-run lead into the ninth inning against the Houston Astros. Fail to snare it, and the game would be tied. Let it sneak by, and the Astros would be handed back the lead.

"I thought I could catch it," Kearns said.

The ball sank. Kearns dove. Not only did it fall to the Minute Maid Park turf, but it trickled past his glove. Kearns popped up, but the tying run scored easily, and lumbering Lance Berkman scooted all the way home from first with the run that gave the Astros a 6-5 victory over the Nationals on Tuesday night.

"I think he had to take a shot," Manager Manny Acta said. "You're on the road. You're trying to play to win. . . . It shouldn't have gotten to that point."

Right there is the salient point, because as much as Lee's double won the game for Houston, the Nationals could point to a litany of other problems that caused just their second loss in their last eight. They wasted their first three-homer night of the year, getting solo shots from Nick Johnson, pinch hitter Aaron Boone and Kearns himself. They were victimized by Berkman, the Astros' first baseman, who went 5 for 5, scoring four times, stealing two bases. Four times, they gave back one-run leads to the Astros -- including once on a balk.

"It's definitely a game that I think everybody feels like we should have won," Kearns said. "It's a tough one."

Toss out, for a moment, all the misplays from the early innings, including right-hander Shawn Hill's fourth start of the year. It was, for the most part, forgettable, 5 1/3 innings in which he needed 107 pitches, gave up eight hits and three runs.

"I [stunk]," Hill said. "Period."

The fear in an outing like this for Hill -- who doesn't have a decision in his four starts and was coming off an eight-inning, one-run outing last week against Atlanta -- is that the lack of control with all of his pitches is a result of his persistent, lingering forearm pain. Indeed, the tightness was there from the start Tuesday night, though Hill wouldn't blame his performance on it.

"It was aching today, but nothing that was stopping from throwing," Hill said. "Velocity was still fine."

The results might have been fine, too, had Houston's Hunter Pence not blooped a two-out single into right field in the fifth, scoring the run that tied the game 3-3. But by the end of the night, that was the least of the Nationals' worries.

Start with the seventh. Boone gave the Nationals a 4-3 lead with the first regular season pinch-hit homer of his career, a towering shot to left that landed on the railroad tracks above the Crawford Boxes, which sit just 315 feet from home. With Saúl Rivera on in relief, Berkman -- who enjoyed the first five-hit game of his career and is now hitting .353 -- drove a ball to center. Lastings Milledge first turned to his left, then twirled to his right. All that twisting led only to a ball over his head, Berkman's second double.

"That's the play that started everything," Acta said.

Rivera got Lee to fly out to center, but with Pence up, Berkman swiped third. When Pence walked, Rivera was in a bit of a tight situation. With the count 2-2 on Astros third baseman Ty Wigginton, Acta -- aware of Pence's speed -- wanted to see if he might figure out whether Pence would steal. He called for Rivera to fake to third, then turn to first.

"It's a great play," Acta said.

But in this case, it failed the Nationals. Home plate umpire Brian Runge ruled that Rivera stepped toward the plate, not straight at third base. The balk brought Berkman home with the tying run.

"It's frustrating," Rivera said, "especially in that moment right there."

But more of that was to follow. With the game tied yet again, Kearns drilled a fastball from Houston reliever Doug Brocail into the Crawford Boxes, his third of the year, and the Nationals led 5-4. The formula at this point is simple: Luis Ayala in the eighth, Jon Rauch in the ninth.

But with two outs in the eighth, disaster. Miguel Tejada fought off an 0-2 pitch from Ayala and blooped it into center, where it fell in front of a Washington outfield that was playing deep to prevent doubles. Berkman followed with a single to center, putting runners on first and third.

Then came Ayala's key mistake. He got ahead of Lee 0-2. "Luis didn't execute," Acta said. Lee got a pitch he could work with, and he drove it to right. Kearns, aware of all that could happen, broke in.

"The situation dictates itself," Kearns said. "You know what to do, not to do, the consequences of it."

The most important part: He thought he could catch it. He didn't. Tejada trotted home to tie it, Berkman followed with the game-winner. And when Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman drilled a ball to left off Houston closer José Valverde, and watched José Cruz Jr. secure it in his glove, the Nationals had suffered a loss that might well have been a win.