It's Still Slow Going For Nats' Patterson

John Patterson's stride was slow, his gaze toward the ground. The Washington Nationals gathered, under cover from a cool drizzle, to welcome Patterson back to the dugout. He quickly acknowledged a teammate or two. Then he took off his red glove, sat down on the bench, pulled his hat from his head and ran both his hands through his long, thick thatch of hair, a cross between bewildered and frustrated.

These are not the circumstances in which Patterson wishes to depart games, not the emotions and questions he wants to engender in his teammates or his fans. But in the course of the Nationals' 4-2 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies yesterday at RFK Stadium -- a loss defined by the savvy and cerebral performance of Phillies lefty Jamie Moyer, who was scarcely threatened until the ninth -- a few things became clear.

Yes, the Nationals have found some stability after their wretched 1-8 start, and they are competitive nearly every time out, even putting the tying runs in scoring position in the bottom of the ninth before Chris Snelling looked at an 0-2 curveball from Phillies closer Tom Gordon to end the game. But chief among the lessons learned before an announced crowd of 18,671 yesterday: Patterson is not Patterson, and there's no telling when he might be.

"I'm having to swallow a lot of pride right now, to be honest with you," Patterson said. "That's not easy to do. I'm having to swallow it and take it until I can get it all together."

Read the numbers, and weep. Patterson's best fastball yesterday was 89 mph, not the 93 or 94 he throws when he's at his best. His outing barely lasted into the fifth inning, by which time he had loaded the bases with nobody out. He threw just 55 percent of his pitches for strikes, and started nine of 22 hitters with ball one. He has not completed six innings in any of his four starts, and has lost three of them. His most recent win came a year ago last Sunday.

The reason for all this? "It's physical," Patterson said. For him, there is a very simple explanation. He had a pinched nerve in his elbow last year. He underwent surgery to relieve pressure on the nerve last July. He is, he said, still building arm strength, and that alone is preventing him from hitting those flashy numbers on the radar gun.

"When you're throwing the ball 93, 94, 95 miles per hour, it changes everything," Patterson said. "It changes their approach. It changes the way I prepare for a game. I'm having to think like a different pitcher right now."

Thus far, though, he hasn't adjusted to being a different pitcher. Patterson has long displayed his disappointment with a blooper that falls in behind him, letting his shoulders sag a bit before he goes back to work. Yesterday's game began when Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins looped a ball just behind third base, among three Washington defenders. The speedy Rollins ended up with a double on a ball that, had it been hit 10 feet to the right, would have been an easy out.

"My thought when that ball fell in was: I can't catch a break," Patterson said.

Initially, it showed. Before he slowly took the mound to face the second hitter, his face bore disappointment.

"As long as I've known him," Manager Manny Acta said, "he's had that type of mound presence."

Several veteran Nationals were asked after the game whether that kind of body language could betray Patterson's mental state. "It could," one said. "But right now, John's not John. That's more important."

He allowed Shane Victorino's RBI single in the first. He allowed Aaron Rowand's solo homer to lead off the second, a 2-2 curveball that Patterson said was a classic example of why he isn't who he wants to be.

"It doesn't have the sharpness," Patterson said. "It doesn't have the velocity that it normally has. It just kind of sits there right now."

Hardly any of Moyer's 111 pitches just sat there. Through eight innings, the 44-year-old gave up only singles to Dmitri Young and Felipe Lopez, and only one National reached scoring position. He did it all with a fastball that topped out at 83 mph.

"You rush to get to his pitches," center fielder Ryan Church said, "and then you're done."

Patterson insists that he is not done, that he is just getting started. His arm does not ache, it does not tingle. It does, he said, wear out too quickly, and he reluctantly used words such as "fatigue" and "tighten" when describing the sensation. Ultimately, though, he came to one succinct conclusion.

"Right now," he said, "I'm not me."