Nats can't make up for another bad start, lose to Pirates (updated)

PITTSBURGH - The Nationals have any number of issues right now, from a super-erratic lineup equally capable of being shut out or scoring 17 runs on any given night, to a steady stream of mistakes made on the bases and in the field.

None of those issues, however, can or should take priority at the moment over the most glaring problem facing this club: a starting rotation that shockingly has morphed from the roster's biggest strength to its biggest weakness.

Aside from Max Scherzer, the Nationals simply can't count on anyone who starts a game these days. And that includes Jefry Rodriguez, who opened tonight's game against the Pirates in disastrous fashion and left his teammates in a major hole.

After watching their rookie fill-in starter surrender six runs in his first two innings, the Nats faced an uphill battle the rest of the way. They made it halfway back, and brought the tying run to the plate in the ninth, but couldn't complete the rally and walked out of PNC Park with a 6-3 loss.

"First inning, they just hit him. Can't do nothing about that," manager Davey Martinez said. "And then he settled down a little bit, but they scored a couple more runs and we just fell behind. We scratched and clawed there and couldn't make up those runs."

The good vibes from a three-game winning streak over the Marlins have now been tempered by back-to-back losses to Miami and Pittsburgh, each of them featuring a laborious outing from their starter. As such, the Nationals again find themselves the owners of a .500 record at 45-45, hoping the tide will turn back in a positive direction Tuesday night.

More than anything, the Nationals needed innings from Rodriguez tonight after watching their starters combine for only 21 innings over the last five days. That made the opening of this game so disconcerting for the visitors' dugout.

Four batters in, Rodriguez had yet to record an out. The Pirates strung together four consecutive hits, the first three batters coming around to score.

"I feel like they made good adjustments," the rookie hurler said, via interpeter Octavio Martinez. "I maintained the ball down, and they were making good adjustments."

Regardless, this was not exactly what Davey Martinez had in mind from Rodriguez. And it only got worse.

The bottom of the second featured three more baserunners, all of them coming around to score via a pair of big hits. Corey Dickerson's triple past a diving Adam Eaton in right-center brought home the Pirates' fourth run of the night. Gregory Polanco's towering homer that nearly cleared the right field bleachers brought home their fifth and sixth and left Rodriguez as the owner of an 8.10 ERA in the major leagues, a stark contrast from the 3.31 mark he owned in 13 starts for Double-A Harrisburg.

"The biggest difference I notice is just a small mistake here, they make you pay for it," Rodriguez said. "In Double-A, sometimes you can get away with it. Locating a pitch, you can stay out of it. But here, they let you know."

More concerning than the results tonight, Rodriguez's pitch count stood at 53 after two innings, leaving his outing on precarious footing. To his credit, the young starter did manage to settle down somewhat after that and complete five innings before he was pulled with his pitch count a far less unnerving 90.

But the Nationals still needed to go to their bullpen early, yet again. No announcements were made after the game, but Martinez made it clear his team needs to bring in a fresh relief arm ASAP, even if it means sending Rodriguez down and finding someone else to make his next start Saturday against the Mets.

"After this I'll sit down with (general manager Mike Rizzo) and see what we're going to do," Martinez said. "But we definitely need to do something, because those guys are getting run out there every day. Like I said, some of these guys are having to pitch multiple innings a lot, and they won't survive the whole year doing that."

In the meantime, the Nationals are left to try to come from behind after their starters leave them in an early hole.

They tried to do it tonight by chipping away, scoring one run a piece in the second, fifth and sixth innings, the final two via big blasts from two of their biggest bats.

Juan Soto, whose batting average had dipped below .300 for the first time since May 25 after a couple of outs to begin his evening, got things back on track with an absolute laser over the right field wall. The kid's ninth homer in 45 big league games was hit with authority and momentarily left the crowd of 14,073 in hushed awe.

A similar reaction was afford to Bryce Harper after his 443-foot blast to straightaway center field in the top of the sixth. Harper's best swing in some time produced a hit that cleared the shrubbery in front of the batter's eye, gave him 22 home runs in 89 games played this season and brought the Nationals to within three runs of the Pirates.

But that's as close as they got. The only noise the Nationals made again until the ninth were a pair of confrontations with plate umpire Gabe Morales. Eaton had a gripe over a called strike and let Morales know it, which ultimately led to catcher Francisco Cervelli going jaw to jaw with Eaton and prompting both benches and bullpens to empty for no good reason.

"I wasn't real happy with the call, as you could probably tell," Eaton said. "And (Cervelli) goes to walk away, kind of making a bigger deal than it really was. I don't know why you've got to walk away there and kind of isolate us and make it a bigger deal than it was. I simply said: 'Where the heck are you going?' He didn't like that. That's his prerogative. But again, I don't know why in the world you've got to leave. The baseball's going to start in five seconds if you just stay there. And now you're making a bigger deal than what it is."

One inning later, Soto got upset at Morales for not granting time out as a pitch was being delivered. When the 19-year-old struck out one pitch later, he stared down Morales and required an ushering away by third base coach Bob Henley to avoid doing something really stupid.

"He's a young kid, and he's got a good eye," Martinez said. "That's all I can say. Today was unfortunate. He thought he called timeout, and he didn't get it by Gabe, and the guy threw a strike. I told him: 'Hey, you've got to make sure to put your hand up and stay in the box, because sometimes they won't give it to you.'"