Nats' lead in wild card shrinks again after 4-2 loss (updated)

ST. LOUIS - Chip Hale insisted he would manage this game just like Davey Martinez, believing that he wanted to keep things as similar as possible tonight, even as the Nationals skipper watched from back home in Washington while recovering from a minor procedure after experiencing chest pain.

Beyond that, Hale just believes he and Martinez are on the same wavelength when it comes to managing this team through a tight ballgame.

The key decisions Hale made tonight - pulling Stephen Strasburg after 99 pitches in five innings, using Sean Doolittle to face three batters in the seventh but then pulling him in favor of Hunter Strickland - made sense in the moment. But just because a move makes sense doesn't always mean it'll work, as Hale and the Nationals found out.

Marcell Ozuna's two-out, two-run double off Strickland in the bottom of the seventh broke a deadlocked game and ultimately propelled the Cardinals to a 4-2 victory that leaves the Nats' wild card lead in its most precarious state in a long time.

The Brewers, who have now won 10 of 11, have crept to within 1 1/2 games of the Nationals for a spot in the Oct. 1 winner-take-all game. The Cubs, who have won five in a row, are now within 1/2-game of the Nats for the right to host the wild card.

"We played the same when we were 19-31 as we are when we were three games up, or whatever we were," first baseman Ryan Zimmerman said. "We have, what, (13) games left? So go out and play those games and see what happens. You can't control anything, so there's no reason to think about it."

At this point, the Nationals are going to need to kick this thing back into high gear, and soon, if they want to make it to October. They've now lost 9 of 14, with a daunting schedule still ahead over the final two weeks of the regular season.

"We're playing a lot of good teams," Hale said. "I think our schedule down the stretch has been really, really tough, and we're battling, and the teams we're playing are battling the same way. We just have to do a little better in the execution. ... The little things are really going to count at this point of the season."

Tonight's game indeed was decided by the execution of some little things in the bottom of the seventh, with Hale forced to decide which members of his beleaguered bullpen to put on the mound in a critical spot, the game tied 2-2. He began with Doolittle, who showed off a couple of impressive off-speed pitches, striking out José Martínez on a changeup and Kolten Wong on a slider. But in between those came a walk of Dexter Fowler.

"That was kind of the spot in the order we really wanted to see him, working against those guys," Hale said. "He did a great job against Martínez, who's a really good hitter off the bench. To turn Fowler around, and then to get the lefty. Then we just felt like he pitched yesterday (in a 7-0 win). That was enough for tonight."

With a tough right-handed batter up in the form of Paul Goldschmidt, Hale pulled the lefty in favor of Strickland, a move that looked right on paper. Strickland, though, fell victim to the same problem everyone on the Nationals staff had tonight: He was unable to put away St. Louis batters who had a knack for extending at-bats to the extreme.

Strickland, after allowing Fowler to steal second base, would walk Goldschmidt. He then uncorked a low pitch that squirted away from catcher Yan Gomes, allowing both runners to move into scoring position. That proved critical when Ozuna ripped a liner just inside the left field line, the ball skipping up and over the short fence for a ground-rule double. Because the runners were on second and third, both scored. If not for the wild pitch, only one would've crossed the plate.

"All of it, it's all bad," Strickland said, dissecting the sequence. "There's no positive in that outcome for me personally. But I guess first and foremost is that walk, because that's the guy I've got to get out. That's the guy I was brought in for, and I can't give him a free base."

The Cardinals thus took a 4-2 lead and held it, with their bullpen shutting down the Nationals in the eighth and ninth to wrap this one up.

It didn't take long to realize this would be a slog of a night for Strasburg, who barely made it out of the first inning in one piece. The Cardinals worked him as well as any lineup has this season. They only plated two runs (via Ozuna's 412-foot blast to left-center) but they made him throw a whopping 38 pitches, with batters fouling off 11 of them.

"Obviously, first inning was a debacle," Strasburg said. "One bad pitch and a couple free passes and jacked my pitch count up. And had to kind of put the nail in the coffin a little bit and keep pounding away."

To his credit, Strasburg restricted the damage to those two quick runs, though he continued to labor through the majority of his evening. The Cardinals continued to battle through long at-bats, ultimately fouling off 25 of his 99 total pitches.

"That's how the Cardinals have always been," Strasburg said. "They've always been a team that's going to grind on you, and they're going to put together good at-bats. I knew what I was in for coming into tonight, and I wasn't going to let that affect what I wanted to do. If they foul a pitch off, as long as they're not knocking somebody out in the stands I'm going to keep doing the same thing."

By the end of the fifth, it was decision time for Hale. Strasburg had made it through a quick inning, but was it quick enough to merit a chance to re-take the mound for another?

In the end, the fill-in skipper decided not to push the right-hander any further. He pulled Strasburg, in the process quashing any last-ditch hope he had of a 20-win season.

"Obviously, five innings, and it was a struggle," Hale said. "But he did it. Hot night. Sweating a lot out there. The ball was wet. I was really proud of him. To get to that spot again, like we talked about before the game: He gave us a chance to win it."

The Nationals had tied the game 2-2 at that point, finally getting something going at the plate against Dakota Hudson, who cruised through his first three innings with ease.

A two-out rally in the fourth loaded the bases for Victor Robles, who ripped the first pitch he saw to left field to bring home one run. Bob Henley was hoping it would bring home another, waving Asdrúbal Cabrera around third. Ozuna's throw to the plate was on target and on time, though, so Cabrera was out to end the inning.

The Nats would plate the tying run one inning later, thanks to another big blast in a big spot from their MVP candidate. Anthony Rendon launched a pitch from Hudson to left, making this a 2-2 game on his 34th homer and 119th RBI of a remarkable season.

The game was now in the hands of the Nationals bullpen, though, and a temporary manager who needed to try to push the right buttons to emerge victorious, all while the permanent manager was back home recovering from an unexpected health scare.

"I'm sure he was watching the game, if he's up," Hale said of Martinez. "He's been through a battery of tests. Hopefully, he's feeling good."