Nationals save bullpen, not game

There are times during the course of a 162-game season when a club’s long-term welfare is more important than the outcome of that day’s ballgame.

Frank Robinson has been around the game for the better part of five decades and understands this. That is why he refused to overwork his already tired Washington Nationals bullpen during a 5-2 loss to the New York Mets yesterday, even if it meant sending an Independence Day crowd of 44,331 at RFK Stadium home unhappy.

“Some of these guys need rest,” Robinson said of his decision not to use Gary Majewski, Joey Eischen, Hector Carrasco or Chad Cordero in a game that screamed for their participation. “If they’re going to be effective the way they can be, sooner or later they have to sit down there and relax a little bit.”

With none of those stalwart relievers at his disposal, Robinson was forced to push starter John Patterson beyond his limit, then ask Luis Ayala and Sun-Woo Kim to finish things off.

The result wasn’t pretty. Patterson, who allowed no runs on two hits through his first six innings, put on the only two batters he faced in the seventh before departing. Ayala then allowed both inherited runners to score and tie the game, setting the stage for Kim, who took the loss after surrendering three runs in the ninth.

With that, the Nationals (50-32) opened the second half with a disappointing loss, snapping a six-game win streak in the process.

“What are we going to do, push the panic button?” Robinson said. “Come on. We can’t win every ballgame.”

No, but fans probably have been spoiled by the way Robinson’s squad has played for the last five weeks. The Nationals had won 15 of their last 16 home games and found a way to win precisely these kind of games every night.

That wasn’t the case yesterday. The Nationals took a game they usually win — leading 2-0 through six innings — and handed it to the Mets.

The trouble began in the seventh when Robinson sent Patterson back out to the hill with a two-run lead but a pitch count of 108. The reason? He had only two fresh arms in his bullpen: setup man Ayala and long reliever Kim.

Under normal circumstances, Robinson almost always would have given the ball to Majewski or Eischen, but neither was available. Majewski already has made 37 appearances between Washington and Class AAA New Orleans this year, and the Nationals have been making a conscious effort to limit his use in recent weeks. The left-handed Eischen, meanwhile, had pitched the last two days after his two-month layoff from a broken right arm.

So it was that Patterson opened the seventh by allowing a single to Marlon Anderson and a double to David Wright, forcing Robinson to call upon Ayala.

“I stretched [Patterson] out probably beyond what he should have gone,” Robinson said. “And I needed that because what I used from the bullpen today, that was the bullpen, period. I had to try to get seven innings out of him, and he just couldn’t get it done.”

Ayala immediately ran into trouble. He gave up a run-scoring single to Jose Reyes, cutting the Nationals’ lead in half. He managed to trap Wright in a rundown on Chris Woodward’s comebacker but ultimately allowed Reyes to score the tying run on Mike Cameron’s broken-bat single up the middle.

That sealed a familiar fate for Patterson — a no-decision, his eighth in his last 10 starts — but he agreed with his manager’s handling of the pitching staff in this case.

“That’s the right decision,” Patterson said. “[Ayala] comes in and gets out of that situation most of the time.”

Once Ayala was pulled following the seventh, Robinson’s only remaining reliever was Kim, who rarely has been used in the late innings of close ballgames. The right-hander breezed through a 1-2-3 eighth, but he gave up an infield single to Reyes with one out in the ninth. Reyes then stole second, allowing him to score the eventual winning run on pinch-hitter Jose Offerman’s line-drive single to left.

The Mets tacked on two more runs when Cameron turned what should have been a soft single up the middle into an RBI double and Carlos Beltran followed with a single through the left side of the infield.

“I think it was just bad luck,” said Kim (1-1). “They had many groundball hits.”

The five runs were far too much for Washington’s depleted lineup to overcome. Robinson used only three true regulars against New York lefty Kaz Ishii — outfielders Brad Wilkerson and Jose Guillen and third baseman Vinny Castilla — and that group managed only five hits off Ishii and relievers Heath Bell, Roberto Hernandez (4-2) and Braden Looper (18th save).

Afterward, no one worried inside the Nationals’ clubhouse was worried, just as the manager predicted. It was simply one of those individual games that has to be sacrificed for the greater good.

That may have been hard for fans to accept yesterday, but if it gives Washington any kind of advantage come September, there probably won’t be many complaints.

“That’s the big thing with Frank right now. Down the road, guys won’t get tired,” Majewski said. “This isn’t a sprint; it’s pretty much a marathon. For 162 games, we have to go out and do it.”