Scherzer not crisp, inability to generate big inning leads to Nats' 4-3 loss

The Nationals fell to the Marlins 4-3 on Friday night in a game they pretty much had to have against a team near the basement in the National League East.

Right-hander Max Scherzer allowed a couple of early home runs and the Nationals failed to score more than one run with the bases loaded and no outs in the sixth. That all added to a demoralizing one-run setback to a 77-loss club.

The Marlins are now surprising 6-4 against the Nationals this season. Miami is 46-73 against everyone else and does not hold a winning record against any other NL East team.

Shortstop Ian Desmond hit a solo shot for the Nationals that tied the game at 1-1 in the second. The Nationals later trailed 4-1 and battled back to 4-3 in the sixth. Desmond singled to lead off the ninth, but was left stranded at second base as the game ended.

"We keep on knocking on the door eventually someone's going to answer," Desmond said. "Playing good baseball right now. None of us in here expect to win out. But it's about winning series and playing good baseball. Cards will fall where they fall. We battled back today, put up some really good at-bats and some not-so-good ones. But we gave ourselves a chance."

The Marlins built their lead thanks to a two-run homer by Martin Prado and a solo shot from Marcell Ozuna. Scherzer managed to go seven innings, allowing four runs on six hits. He walked none and struck out eight, but fell to 11-11.

"He grinded it," Desmond said. "After the second homer, he came back and dialed it in. All of his stuff looks good, just kind of grinding through it."

"I think (Scherzer) was OK," said manager Matt Williams. "The ball down and in to Prado for the homer and then Ozuna got one up out over that he hit over the center field fence. But three swings of the bat was enough for them against him tonight. I know he was strong throwing the ball like he wanted to. He just made a couple of mistakes."

Scherzer has now allowed seven homers in his last 22 innings over four starts. Catcher Wilson Ramos, who blasted a solo homer in the fifth, doesn't see anything unusual from Scherzer recently that would explain the uptick in home runs surrendered.

"I don't see nothing different," Ramos said. "Just pitching in the top of the zone. Those guys have a bat in their hands. They're aggressive. They hit the ball well. Nothing changed. He's doing his best."

Williams was asked what he sees that might explain Scherzer's second half of the season versus the first half. Scherzer has a 6.43 ERA the last 28 days. He is 0-3 in his last five starts.

"Yeah, I don't know. If I could tell a difference, it may be location," Williams said. "I think he's strong, reaching back for 98 mph tonight. I don't think there's an issue there. I know that he feels good. Location may be not as good as it was during that good streak that he had."

One excellent opportunity for the Nationals came in the bottom of the sixth.

With the bases loaded, Ryan Zimmerman hit a sacrifice fly to cut the Marlins lead to 4-3. Then later with two outs and the bases loaded again, Ramos' hot shot up the middle deflected off the pitcher and turned into a 1-4-3 groundout to end the threat.

"Bad luck, bad luck today," Ramos said. "I hit the ball really well. I was concentrating put the barrel on the ball, I did it but they have glove in their hands. Nothing to say about it."

"Willie hit that ball good, right off the pitcher," Williams said. "If that ball gets through, that's two. You can't do more than that, can't steer it. If it knocks off somebody, it knocks off somebody. He stayed on that ball good."

The Mets lost to the Red Sox tonight, so the Nationals are still 6 1/2 games back of the division leaders. But that doesn't take much sting out of this loss to a bad team.

"They are painful now, there's no doubt about that," Scherzer said. "You want to go out there and compete and do everything you can to help the ballclub win. When you're not able to do that, it's frustrating, there's no doubt about it.

"But I'm not going sit here and beat myself up over how I pitched tonight. I really did think I did some really good things tonight. It's just a couple of mistakes turned it into an outing that we couldn't overcome."

"They don't feel good," Desmond said of the losses. "But we've got a pretty good attitude in here, we believe. That's the first step, and we got to go out and play just good, competitive baseball like we've been doing and just kind of hope for some big hits."