After five shutout innings, Treinen's error paves way for Dodgers

Stop me if you've heard this one before: An error opened the floodgates to another disappointing Nationals loss.

The Nats entered Tuesday night's game with 27 errors, third-most in the National League, and another pair of fielding miscues resulted in four unearned runs in an 8-3 loss to the Dodgers. Facing reigning Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw, who was making his return following a stint on the disabled list with back problems, was bad enough, but the Nats again gave away runs that could have altered the outcome of the game.

Rookie right-hander Blake Treinen's inability to corral Kershaw's dribbler to the first base side of the mound leading off the sixth led to three unearned runs in what had been a scoreless game. Treinen pounced on the roller, but appeared to start his throwing motion before he had fully fielded the ball. By the time he got it and threw to Adam LaRoche at first, Kershaw was already across the bag.

"I get a ground ball back to me (and) I tried to make the throw before I fielded," Treinen said. "I feel like I made pitches when I needed to and had good defense behind me. I field that ball to start the sixth there and it might be a totally different ballgame. I'll work on settling down and taking my time next time and see where it goes."
The next batter, Dee Gordon, hit a grounder that LaRoche fielded off the bag toward second base. Treinen got to first to take the throw, but LaRoche's lob caught too much air and the speedy Gordon was safe. Carl Crawford's swinging bunt barely traveled 20 feet but loaded the bases for Hanley Ramirez, whose single to right gave L.A. a 1-0 lead. Craig Stammen relieved, and after Matt Kemp stuck out swinging, another run scored on Andre Ethier's fielder's choice grounder. Juan Uribe's sharp single to left made it 3-0.

"He pitched so well," Nats manager Matt Williams said of Treinen, who allowed three unearned runs on seven hits in five-plus innings. . He missed that first one in that last inning, and we weren't able to get Dee at first and that kind of set the inning up for him. Then a swinging bunt base hit. At that point he'd been to his pitch count and we didn't want to push him any further past that."

The first three batters to reach base in the sixth failed to hit a ball out of the infield off Treinen.

"They didn't hit many balls hard off him tonight, and that's a pretty good lineup over there." Williams said. "So that was impressive."

Some young pitchers might become unraveled after committing a fielding error that coughed up the lead, but Williams was pleased with the comportment shown by Treinen against a potent Dodgers attack.

"We talked to him after the game about it and he was disappointed that he gave up some runs," Williams said. "I said, 'That's a pretty good lineup over there, facing a pretty good pitcher and you held your own. You should be proud of that.' It didn't go his way, for sure, but I think he just pitched very well. He was poised, threw fastballs for strikes (on) both sides of the plate, used his breaking ball and competed. That's all we can ask."

Treinen had already hit the showers by the time left fielder Scott Hairston dropped a fly ball off the bat of Crawford an inning later. That allowed Gordon, who had tripled to right-center with two outs, to come home with the fourth Dodgers run. L.A. teed off against lefty Ross Detwiler in the eighth, scoring four times on a leadoff solo shot by Ramirez and Drew Butera's three-run homer.

Williams preached solid defense in spring training, and can't be happy with the Nats' propensity to give opponents extra outs. On Tuesday, errors again proved costly.