Roark struggles, defense falters and Nats pay price in 5-2 loss

As losses go - especially for a team that's been streaking and putting together so many impressive wins - Friday's 5-2 defeat to the Rangers was out of character for the Nationals.

Tanner Roark flirted with danger through six innings and a batter, allowing 11 hits and stranding 10 baserunners. His defense betrayed him, with two errors contributing to three unearned runs - or the difference in the game. By their own admission, the Nationals didn't look like themselves.

If it was second-day hangover, the after-effects of a cross-country flight at the end of a nine-game road trip that ended Wednesday, no one was saying that in a quiet clubhouse after the game. Though manager Dusty Baker thought out loud that the day-after could have muddled things for his team.

"Nobody's perfect by any means," said Roark. "We still have two more games against these guys. Let's win the series. That's the only thing that matters, winning and losing. We got two more against them."

Roark, pitching on the night a bobblehead likeness of himself was distributed at Nationals Park and against the organization that traded him to the Nats in 2010, did a good job of weathering the self-inflicted wounds and keeping his team within striking distance.

"We were probably just a little bit sluggish on defense today," second baseman Daniel Murphy said. "Probably made him throw some extra pitches that he didn't deserve. But I didn't think he was too much different. They had good at-bats. Just a little mini blip on the radar, if you want to call it that."

But when Rougned Odor led off the seventh by slamming a 2-0 pitch over the left field wall for a 5-1 lead, Baker had seen enough. He pulled the right-hander, who allowed five runs (two earned), walked two, fanned two, hit a batter and gave up two homers.

"He was battling, but we didn't have much going on offense against (Andrew) Cashner and then we were kind of flat earlier," Baker said. "Usually that second day from the West Coast is tougher than most days. We didn't play very well on defense. We gave them a couple runs and they capitalized on the errors we made. We usually don't make those. Wasn't a very good day at the ballpark."

With Cashner giving the Nats fits at the plate, the Rangers struck early, parlaying an infield hit and two well-struck singles to take a 1-0 lead in the third.

But the fifth and sixth were Roark's downfall. He shouldn't have had to face Jonathan Lucroy in the fifth, except for a tough error on first baseman Ryan Zimmerman, who couldn't glove a hot smash behind the bag by Shin-Soo Choo to start the inning. With two down, Lucroy mashed a hanging 2-0 slider deep to left for a 3-0 advantage. An inning later, an eerily similar script unfolded when leadoff man Joey Gallo reached on shortstop Trea Turner's bobble of his bouncer up the middle. Another infield single and a walk loaded the bases before Roark walked Nomar Mazara to force in a run and make it 4-0.

"You got to grind them out," Roark said. "The hitters pick you up whenever you're not doing well and I did a bad job tonight of not picking them up. I got to do a better job at that."

In the bottom of the sixth, the Nats got a run back when Zimmerman doubled with one out and scored on Anthony Rendon's two-out single. But Rendon was thrown out trying to advance to second and the home team's momentum screeched to a halt. Cashner took a cutoff throw from left and nabbed Rendon at second for the inning's final out. On the first at-bat of the seventh, Odor's blast negated the Washington run.

"There's not much you can do about it," Baker said. "Catch up on your sleep, which is a very short night tonight. It'll be tough tomorrow, but this team seems to respond well to tough situations."

The Nationals had no answers for Cashner, a one-time flamethrower who has seemingly learned how to pitch in the twilight of his career. He scattered six hits and allowed only one run, walking two and striking out four in seven innings.

"It was a different Cashner than we'd seen before," Baker said. "Before, he was just power, power, and more power. He was 91 (mph) with a sinker, 92, and then he'd pump it up to 97. He was pitching tonight. Better than we'd seen him in the past. We hadn't seen him in a while. The big play was when he was the cutoff man when he should have been backing up home plate. He got Anthony at second base, which he shouldn't have even been there. He should've been backing up. But it turned into a big out."

Murphy, who has seen a lot of Cashner over his career, agreed with Baker's assessment.

"It looked like he used his sinker a little bit more. Yeah, he used his sinker a little bit more and used the real live four-seam fastball as a putaway, whereas in my experience with him in the past the ball's been a little bit straighter," Murphy said. "But he really had command of that two-seamer tonight and was pounding the bottom of the zone as a testament to the ground balls we hit tonight."

The Nationals scored a run in the last of the ninth on, of all things, a catchable fly ball that fell between two outfielders. Pinch-hitter Stephen Drew's RBI single made it 5-2 and brought the potential tying run to the plate in the form of Turner, but Matt Bush got him to ground back to the mound for the game's final out.

Still adjusting to East Coast time after a week on the West Coast, the Nats will have precious few hours to contemplate what went wrong. Because of their annual fundraising gala Saturday night, tomorrow's middle game of the series will start at noon.

Asked if that was an inconvenience, Baker sidestepped the issue - sort of.

"We'll see tomorrow," he said. "It does something even to the manager. Your sleep is off and these guys they were fresh. You can tell they had a day off yesterday. They were watching us at home, well in the hotel probably, while we were playing (the Orioles). So we'll call off hitting tomorrow, see how we look tomorrow and see how we look the next day."