Lopez still learning what it takes to beat big league lineups

NEW YORK - Reynaldo Lopez has made six big league starts. Two of them have ended in victories for both the rookie right-hander and the Nationals. Each of those, however, came against the Braves, owners of the worst record in the National League and earlier today officially eliminated from the race for a division title.

Lopez's four other starts all have come against teams contending for postseason berths: the Dodgers, Giants, Orioles and Mets. And the results in those four games have been eerily similar: Fewer than five innings pitched, at least three runs surrendered and a sky-high pitch count.

There's no questioning Lopez's electric repertoire. And everyone who has interacted with the 22-year-old raves about his confidence and poise, no matter the situation in which he has been placed.

But it takes more than electric stuff and confidence to get big league hitters out, something Lopez himself wasn't afraid to admit tonight following a 5-1 loss to the Mets.

"The hitters are very intelligent," he said via interpreter Octavio Martinez. "It's not about power. It's not about power on my end, either, not throwing the ball past everybody. I've got to pitch intelligently, just be smart and get smart, and that's the game up here. The hitters are a lot smarter."

The Mets displayed enough smarts to make Lopez work extensively tonight. They forced 25 pitches out of him in both the first and second innings. Then they delivered the big blow in the third: Curtis Granderson's two-run homer off the façade of the second deck down the right field line.

That blast, along with Jay Bruce's two-run homer off reliever Mat Latos in the bottom of the sixth, accounted for the disparity in the final score and accounted for New York taking two-of-three in this weekend series.

"He did pretty well," manager Dusty Baker said of Lopez. "He just got two strikes on hitters and couldn't put them away. The pair of two runs homers, that's what did us in."

Lopez wasn't necessarily supposed to be in this position this season. He opened the year at Double-A Harrisburg, but when the Nationals needed a fill-in starter after Joe Ross went down with shoulder inflammation, he got the call.

Over the course of the last two months, Lopez and fellow prospect Lucas Giolito have made the trip back and forth between the big leagues and Triple-A Syracuse, trying to contribute to a first-place club that also had to place Stephen Strasburg on the DL late last month, but unable to find any consistent rhythm on the mound.

"He hadn't been pitching that long (before his initial promotion)," Baker said. "He's come a long way in a short period of time. He's more or less starting - which a couple guys are - because we don't have Stras and we don't have Ross. And he wouldn't be in that situation, but we are in that situation. So we've got to ride it out and try to get the most out of them that we can."

Lopez actually got this start because the Nationals elected to give Max Scherzer an extra day of rest, sending the ace right-hander home early in advance of Monday afternoon's game against the Braves.

He labored from the outset, walking leadoff man Jose Reyes on five pitches, then giving up a single and uncorking two wild pitches in the bottom of the first alone.

Lopez did make one key adjustment at the Nationals' request: He changed the location of his glove when pitching from the set position, with some wondering if he had been tipping his pitches to keen-eyed opponents.

"I felt like the location of my glove - the way I moved it downward a little bit - was good," he said. "I didn't feel like the hitters were getting tipped by any means, and I felt comfortable."

Lopez spoke confidently after his sixth big league start, just as he did after his previous five.

Confidence, though, hasn't been the issue. Results have. The Nationals may not need to call upon Lopez much more this season, not with Strasburg on track to return Wednesday and Ross following not far behind.

But whenever the time does come for Lopez to take a big league mound again, he's going to have to take that next important step and prove he belongs at this level after a perhaps too-rapid ascension this summer.

"He's very aggressive," catcher Wilson Ramos said. "He works his pitches, all of them, very well. You don't notice any fear out there out of him. He doesn't get nervous at all. And he's able to mix in his pitches and hold his composure very well out there."