After losing Rendon to neck injury, Nats beat themselves up over loss

MIAMI - Tonight's 8-7 loss to Miami was disheartening enough for the Nationals, who have suffered their share of comparable losses this season. But this one stung a little more, with players inside the visitors clubhouse at Marlins Park particularly upset because of the manner in which this game was lost.

And that doesn't even take into account the loss of Anthony Rendon to a neck injury. (Though the news on that front was relatively encouraging.)

"He had a stinger in his neck," manager Dusty Baker said. "He's day-to-day. We think he'll be OK tomorrow. But he's never had that before. It scared him, and it scared us."

Rendon hurt himself making a diving stop of Giancarlo Stanton's 114 mph bullet to his left at third base in the bottom of the third, though he was able to stay in the game until his turn to bat came up in the top of the fifth and he had to ask out.

"Just a little jolt in my neck, a little whiplash maybe," Rendon said. "But nothing too serious. I'm just trying to be cautious. It didn't feel good the next two innings. ... It definitely was a little nervewracking, a little scary. It was a jolt of pain. A lot of heat in my neck."

If Rendon's injury turns out not to be significant, the Nationals will feel like they dodged a bullet. They'll still feel like they let a game get away from them, though, a game that seemed entirely in their control early on.

But handed a 6-0 lead, Tanner Roark proceeded to give it all back during a disastrous bottom of the third. The inning included, in no particular order: back-to-back walks, an RBI triple, a wild pitch, a grand slam on a 2-2 changeup after he had been ahead in the count 0-2, and a whopping 44 pitches that left Baker with no choice but to pull his exhausted starter.

"We tried to stick with him as long as we could," the manager said. "Because we didn't want to just tear up our whole bullpen at that time."

Some three hours after he threw his final pitch, Roark - who in the wake of three straight subpar outings owns a 4.88 ERA and a 1.41 WHIP - was still beating himself up over this one, the shortest start of his big league career.

"I'm pissed off," the right-hander said. "You get a six-run lead and you give it up. That's pathetic on my part."

Though Roark's abbreviated start turned this into a whole new ballgame and put pressure on his bullpen to provide 6 1/3 innings of work, the Nationals nonetheless had plenty of opportunity to emerge victorious.

A lineup that scored those six early runs on left-hander Justin Nicolino, though, managed only one in six innings against the Marlins bullpen, squandering leadoff batters reaching base in the fourth, sixth and ninth.

The Nats bullpen, meanwhile, did a fairly admirable job given the circumstances, getting 3 2/3 combined scoreless innings from Matt Grace and Oliver Pérez. Jacob Turner did surrender a game-tying homer to Stanton in the seventh, but Enny Romero churned out a scoreless eighth and then got two quick outs in the ninth to put the game on the precipice of extra innings.

Then it all came crumbling down.

With Miami's big boppers looming in the on-deck circle and the dugout, Romero walked Dee Gordon on four pitches to keep the inning alive. The young lefty had Stanton in an 0-2 hole and then induced a chopper up the middle from the big slugger, one that left his bat at a modest 84 mph. Daniel Murphy ranged to his right but couldn't corral the chopper, leaving Stanton with an infield single and leaving the bottom of the ninth still alive.

A full-count walk to Christian Yelich then left Romero with more margin for error: bases loaded, two out, tie game, Marcell Ozuna at the plate.

Despite the disadvantageous matchup, Romero got ahead 0-2 after Ozuna fouled off a slider and swung through a fastball. But then he left another fastball over the plate, and the Marlins slugger proceeded to drive it to the gap in left-center for the game-winning hit.

"I was trying to locate fastballs up, at chest level," Romero said via interpreter Octavio Martinez. "Unfortunately, I didn't execute that pitch and it got more of the plate than I wanted to, and the results were what happened."

Why did the Nationals lose this game? Was it Roark's disastrous third inning? Was it the lineup's inability to add on after a hot start? Was it Murphy's inability to make a play that would have sent the game into extra innings? Was it the bullpen's continued inability to post a zero when it's most needed?

Take your pick. If they reverse any one of those developments, they might have walked out of Marlins Park with a win. Instead, they walked out with one of their most disheartening losses of the season.