Baker bemoans strikeouts, homers again bedevil Scherzer

MILWAUKEE - The hushed tone of Dusty Baker spoke volumes after a 5-3 loss to the Brewers on Friday night stretched the Nationals' losing streak to a season-worst six games and left a once-thriving offense searching for answers.

Baker can live with the occasional skid - it happens to every team at some point during a season, and he didn't think his Nationals would escape baseball normalcy. But the alarming rate at which his hitters struck out against five Milwaukee pitchers - 16 times in all, including nine over the first five innings against starter Kyle Davies - produced a sense of uneasy bewilderment.

"It's real tough to generate (offense) because that means you don't have a chance ... to do anything," Baker said when asked about the strikeouts. "A ball in play is a dangerous ball. But that was a tough night for us."

Save for catcher Wilson Ramos, who went 4-for-5, and second baseman Daniel Murphy, who had two hits and reached base three times, there wasn't much contact. The bottom four hitters in the lineup - first baseman Ryan Zimmerman, third baseman Anthony Rendon, shortstop Danny Espinosa and the pitcher's spot in the order - combined to go 0-for-12 with 10 strikeouts. Zimmerman, Rendon and Espinosa whiffed three times apiece, as did center fielder Michael A. Taylor.

"We definitely got to get better early in the count," Baker said. "We got to look for that fastball, because that's what they're throwing us early. Some pitches were borderline, but if he's calling it, you got to go get it."

Like Baker, Murphy understands the inevitable ups and downs the 162-game season brings. And he's not in panic mode, though as he tried to make sense of the offensive funk, you could have heard a pin drop in the clubhouse.

"We're not getting any hits," Murphy said. "The season ebbs and flows. Early in the year, the pitcher's throwing the ball really, really well (and) the offense got going in the right direction. You see this over the corresponding 162 games. It happens."

Murphy and Ramos tag-teamed to drive in all three of the Nationals' runs in the third, erasing the early 2-0 hold right-hander Max Scherzer had dug for his teammates. Murphy lined a two-run double to right and Ramos followed with a run-scoring single to center. Washington loaded the bases with one out in the eighth, but couldn't come up with a hit when it was most needed. In the ninth, Murphy's two-out single put runners at the corners for Ramos, who fanned swinging to end it.

While the offense was stumbling, Scherzer was working through a most unusual evening. He fanned 10 batters, the sixth time this season he's reached that benchmark, but loaded the bases on walks in the first before Aaron Hill's two-run single got the Brewers on the board. Then, after retiring seven batters in a row once his club had gotten him a lead, he allowed two homers - a game-tying pinch-hit shot by Keon Broxton for his first major league homer in the fifth and a two-run no-doubter to right-center by Kirk Nieuwenhuis in the sixth. In his other three at-bats Friday night, Nieuwenhuis fanned swinging.

"The offense came out there and picked me up after I allowed two in the first - got me a 3-2 lead - and I didn't hold the lead," Scherzer lamented. "That's what I pride myself on is when you go out there, you have those shutdown innings. And when you get a 3-2 lead going into the fifth, that's times to step up and help the ballclub out. Especially now when we're kind of scuffling a bit."

Scherzer has now yielded 20 homers on the year, and has been touched for at least one longball in all but three of his 16 starts. In his last 10 starts, he's allowed 15 homers.