Multiple errors cost Nationals in defeat

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By Mark Zuckerman

Good teams find ways to win ballgames. Bad teams find ways to lose them.

If there were any question about which team was which Monday night at Nationals Park, it was painfully obvious by the conclusion of the Los Angeles Angels' 3-2 victory over the Washington Nationals.

A game the last-place Nationals looked poised to win unraveled during a hideous eighth inning in which the first-place Angels rallied to score two runs on a bunt single, two stolen bases, two errors and a couple moments that might very well wind up on a baseball bloopers DVD.

"That's the way it happens sometimes," Washington starter Jason Bergmann said. "Seldom do you have an inning where it's a clean hit there or a clean hit there. ... It's just the way baseball is."

Where to begin? Start with the evening's positive developments, which included a thoroughly impressive pitching performance from Bergmann (seven innings of one-run ball) and another surprising power display from utilityman Willie Harris (who homered for the second straight day and added a triple).

That combination had given the Nationals a 2-1 lead entering the eighth inning and had given the crowd of 24,805 reason to believe they might be going home happy for a change.

They were wrong.

Things started falling apart as soon as the eighth began. Chone Figgins dropped a bunt, and third baseman Pete Orr and reliever Saul Rivera collided trying to field it, with Orr spiking Rivera in the ankle and kicking his shoe off in the process. Figgins then stole second and continued on to third when catcher Jesus Flores' throw sailed into center field.

With the tying run now 90 feet away, the Nationals brought their infield in. And Rivera got exactly what the situation called for: a hard grounder from Erick Aybar right at second baseman Felipe Lopez. Figgins had to hold up, but Lopez came up charging as if he was going to fire to the plate and wound up watching the ball skip under his glove for a mammoth error.

"He just couldn't catch a groundball," manager Manny Acta said of Lopez, who has committed a team-high nine errors this season. "I'm not going to overanalyze anything. He should've had the groundball and didn't catch it. That's it."