For Nats, Another Bad Turn

Failed Double Play Helps Lift Rockies: Rockies 5, Nationals 4

DENVER, July 7 -- The Washington Nationals have now played 81 games, their season's midpoint, and the manner in which they passed that marker on Tuesday suggested they are in no way done with preposterous losses.

At this point, Washington's season is too cooked for a new defining moment, but that didn't stop the team from trying in this three-error, three-unearned-run, fall-from-ahead 5-4 loss to the Colorado Rockies.

In the middle game of this three-game series at Coors Field, the Nationals succumbed to the familiar problems -- circus-like fielding and sloppy, walk-happy relief pitching. Only they took it a step further.

Their second baseman took a ground ball in the groin. Their shortstop let a grounder boot off his shoe. One of their base runners, Austin Kearns, did a belly-flop on the base paths after getting picked off. But the capstone moment? That came in the bottom of the eighth, in a 4-4 game. The Rockies, with one out, had runners on first and second -- the result of back-to-back walks from Julián Tavárez, who summarily walked to the dugout in exchange for Joe Beimel.

The left-hander, Washington's ace veteran in the bullpen, forced pinch hitter Ryan Spilborghs to one-hop a potential double play ball back to the mound. But Beimel turned toward second and fired a ball that went nowhere near the base. It soared above shortstop Cristian Guzmán and landed in the glove of second baseman Willie Harris, who was backing up along the outfield's edge. Harris tried to salvage the play by attempting get Spilborghs at first, but the throw was way late.

Suddenly, the bases were loaded. When the next Colorado batter, Clint Barmes, knocked a sacrifice fly to center, the Rockies had taken the lead. And Washington lost its second in a row, falling to 24-57.

"I just blew it," Beimel said. "There's no other way to describe it."

Manager Manny Acta reserved most of his ire for Tavárez, the losing pitcher, who threw eight balls in a nine-pitch span.

"I am very patient," Acta said, "but my patience runs out when there's a veteran who's not throwing strikes."

Now on pace for 114 losses, the Nationals must play .481 ball (39-42) to avoid 100 losses. Though they have reached the halfway point -- a customary point for reflection, renewed vows of hope, projection of what's to come -- the Nationals have rendered most of these rituals meaningless. In the first half, they caught a virulent strain of baseball, and revisiting that period still makes everyone who experienced it a bit queasy. Especially because they're not sure if they're over it.

They just know something knocked them down, something they never saw coming.

Suppose you'd been told back in April that, halfway through the season, Ryan Zimmerman would crack the all-star team, that Nick Johnson would maintain his health and his .400 on-base percentage, that Adam Dunn would follow a 45-homer pace and that Guzmán would keep his average north of .300. And suppose you'd been told that John Lannan would step forward to become the ace of a promising staff, that Jordan Zimmermann would show start-by-start improvement and that three other rookie starters would prove themselves major-league ready. Suppose you'd been told, too, that those alpha-teams of the NL East would be gasping to stay around .500. Sounds promising, right?

The fact that Washington collapsed in spite of so many things going right made the collapse all the more vicious.

Lessons?

"I didn't see this coming. That's for sure," Dunn said. "I think you know now how valuable getting good pitching and playing good defense and doing the little things offensively -- we've learned how important those things are."

On this night, Washington struggled even where it didn't expect to. Rookie starter Zimmermann hadn't allowed more than two earned runs in any of his previous five starts, even launching a little rookie of the year talk. "He's got ridiculous stuff," Beimel said.

But here, he couldn't pitch beyond the fourth. Zimmermann was all but out of the inning when a two-out grounder trickled toward Harris. But the ball skipped off Harris's glove and squarely hit him in the groin. He buckled to the ground, removed his cap. He was weak and sweating. He looked like he had a 106-degree fever. Harris remained in the game, but his error resonated. One unearned run scored on the play itself, and one batter later, Barmes singled to right, tying the game at 4. By the time the inning was finally over, Zimmermann had thrown 94 pitches, too many to continue.

Washington struggled to compensate for those unearned runs. The game, at that point, was tied because of two homers -- a solo shot in the second from Josh Willingham and a three-run shot from Ryan Zimmerman in the third. But the Nationals also left eight on base, and went 1 for 9 with runners in scoring position.