Nationals suffer another one-run loss

ST. LOUIS — Inside a nearly silent clubhouse at Busch Stadium, Ray King summed up how perhaps the entire Washington Nationals roster felt right then.

“You take this one with you for a while,” the veteran reliever said. “It stings a little bit.”

A 5-4 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals was only minutes old, and in the wake of the Nationals third straight defeat — all of them by one run — it was easy to ponder how much difference a play here or a play there would have made.

There were a number of moments yesterday that came back to haunt Washington, from a poor throwing decision by right fielder Austin Kearns in the third inning to a squandered bases-loaded opportunity in the fourth to several mistake pitches thrown by Matt Chico (0-1) over the course of six innings.

The most aggravating sequence of the afternoon, though, surely came in the eighth, when the Nationals handed the Cardinals an insurance run.

With two outs and no one on base and the Nationals within 4-2, Jesus Colome walked No. 7 hitter Adam Kennedy and pinch-hitter Chris Duncan in succession, the reliever’s sixth and seventh walks in four innings of work this season.

“I’m not concerned,” manager Manny Acta insisted. “He’s never been known to have Greg Maddux control. But he can throw the ball close to 100 miles per hour. That’s why he’s in the game, and he’s valuable to us. He’s very resilient with a good arm. He just got a little wild there.”

Colome’s pair of free passes yesterday might not have been costly if King had done his job. But he walked No. 9 hitter Cesar Izturis to load the bases and then committed a bigger miscue.

With the count 1-1 to Skip Schumaker, catcher Jesus Flores called for a sinking fastball on the inside corner. King’s pitch, however, cut back toward the outside part of the plate, catching Flores by surprise. The ball squirted off his glove, rolled to the backstop and allowed Kennedy to score from third.

Flores was charged with a passed ball, but King took the blame.

“I take full credit,” King said. “Any time a catcher is setting up in looking for a sinker and the ball cuts away from him, I’ll take credit for that. I’m not going to put the blame on him.”

That play put the Cardinals up 5-2 heading into the ninth. Flores atoned for his defensive gaffe by launching a two-run homer to left off Anthony Reyes, but the Nationals still trailed by a run.

Of course, the situation would have different if not for Flores’ passed ball.

“For sure, it comes back to my mind,” he said. “Because we could be in a tie game. Unfortunately, that was the costly run.”

Said King: “It just goes to show … when you walk people late in a ball game, it ends up hurting you some kind of way.”

The Nationals might not have had so much regret had they done a couple other things right earlier in the day.

For starters, Chico could have performed better against the bottom of the St. Louis lineup. The young left-hander allowed four runs within the game’s first three innings, serving up RBI singles to Izturis, Yadier Molina and opposing pitcher Adam Wainwright.

“It was just stupid pitching,” he said. “I felt like I’d make two quality pitches and then leave one up in the zone. And that’s the one they’d hit.”

Chico wasn’t helped when Kearns made a poor decision in the third: trying to throw out Rick Ankiel tagging from second on a medium-deep fly ball. Kearns had no chance to throw Ankiel out, and in failing to hit the cutoff man, he allowed trailing runner Albert Pujols to take an extra base … and thus score on Molina’s two-out single later in the inning.

“Just like the last two games, we had some spots where we could have changed the outcome,” Kearns said.

Indeed, this latest one-run loss bore some striking similarities to the previous two, including Washington’s inability to produce with multiple runners on base.

Though they scored a run in the fourth, the Nationals still had the bases loaded with two outs later in the inning. Flores, giving starting catcher Paul Lo Duca a day off, came to the plate against Wainwright and worked the count full only to hit a grounder to third and end the inning.

Just one of many seemingly little moments that become magnified when a team loses its third straight one-run game.

“It’s still early. We don’t want to sit and dwell on it,” King said. “But losing one-run ball games are always tough.”