For McLouth, hand gash the most troublesome remnant of collision with wall

Nate McLouth peeled back the white bandage covering the fleshy section of his right hand between his thumb and index finger to reveal a dime-sized divot, the result of his eighth-inning sliding catch Monday night and his collision with the wall in foul territory in left field.

The Nationals left fielder left the game after tumbling into the wall to make the catch of Dee Gordon's foul slice, and the chunk taken out of his hand was the most significant problem he experienced after making a catch he joked was "probably one of the more dangerous ones" in his career.

Surprisingly, he still hasn't seen replays of the catch, but he mused that third baseman Anthony Rendon has to do a better job of warning him when he's getting close to the wall.

McLouth isn't in the starting lineup for Tuesday night's game, with Scott Hairston playing left field, and isn't sure whether he'll be available off the bench.

"That's kind of a tough area right there because there's not that much foul territory before you get to the wall, and then there's that little corner right there, to where foul territory gets really narrow," McLouth said. "What I tried to do, I tried to slide a little bit early so I could coast into it on my butt, so I wasn't going so fast into the wall. It's kind of lucky, too. You slide, you know you're going to be close and you throw your glove out. It was a pretty big out."

After the catch, McLouth said he did a quick personal check to see how he was after contacting a portion of the wall that doesn't really have a significant amount of padding.

"I hit (the wall) kind of with my right knee before I slid," he recalled. "Apparently my hand. So when I got up, I said, 'My knee hurts, my thumb hurts, but I can walk fine.' I look down and my hand was gushing blood. So that was the reason I had to come out, because it wouldn't stop bleeding."

Once in the dugout, Nats athletic trainers made the decision to pull off the chunk of skin that had been ripped in the collision. McLouth said it resembled a blister with the dry, dead skin removed; manager Matt Williams joked Tuesday afternoon that it looked like McLouth had wound up on the wrong end of a battle with a potato peeler.

McLouth said he wanted to see how he fared in pregame batting practice before deciding whether he'd be available for Tuesday night's game against the Dodgers.

"Knee's a little sore, hands a little sore. But (I'm) fine. ... I'll just have to see," McLouth said. "Unfortunately, it's right where though.