More on Taylor, plus hearing from Uggla and Ramos on opener

Nationals manager Matt Williams spoke after the opening day loss to the Mets on Michael A. Taylor's first game and the play at the right-center field wall when he got very close to making a huge catch late in the game.

"Yeah, almost made that play up against the wall," Williams said. "Mike's got lots of talent. He's dynamic in every aspect. He can run. He plays good defense. He's got power. The key for him is to swing at strikes and get in good hitting counts and let his bat go to work.

"He had a chance. It's a difficult play. Ball's hit well. He timed it perfectly up against the wall. He was just short."

Williams was impressed with Taylor's work in the leadoff spot to begin the last of the first inning versus veteran Bartolo Colon. Taylor was able to slap a single to the outfield, the second game in a row he led off with a base hit.

"Today he battled with (a) two-strike count first time up and singled," Williams said. "I like where he's at. I like the way he's playing. He'll get better and better as he goes."

Second baseman Dan Uggla felt he could have been louder in order to wave off shortstop Ian Desmond on a critical pop-up in the sixth that led to a two-run game-changing rally for the Mets.

Talking about the first game, Uggla admitted to being a little bit jittery in the first few innings of opening day and credited Colon.

"It was OK," Uggla said. "Opening day ... everybody's always a little anxious and everything like that. Bartolo did a great job keeping us off balance. He's got some tricky stuff up there, but for the most part I thought we battled. We didn't get as many hits and runs as we would like to today. But there were some positives that we are going to take from today."

Catcher Wilson Ramos said starter Max Scherzer wasn't rattled when he got into a couple of jams on Monday. And there were very few times he got into jams.

"It's very important after you walk one guy, he wasn't crazy all of the game with the other hitters," Ramos said. "It was very important for him. We was on the same page, not shaking me off too much. That's very important for me. I was feeling great behind the plate with him. We'll see what happens next start."

Scherzer had a no-hitter through five innings. It was a string of 14 consecutive no-hit innings by the Nationals at home in regular season games dating to Jordan Zimmermann's season-ending no-hitter against the Marlins last year.

Did that get Ramos excited that something special might happen?

"Yeah, I was very excited to be behind the plate that game with him" Ramos said. "Couple of errors changed the game. But that happens in this game. We got more games coming."

Ramos believes that Scherzer's experience will be an important asset for starters Zimmermann, Gio Gonzalez, Stephen Strasburg and Doug Fister.

"He's one of the guys with a lot of experience in this game," Ramos said. "He can help this team a lot. I am 100 percent sure the other four guys will talk with him a lot during the season. (He'll) tell them to be aggressive and help each other. It's very good to have this guy on this team."

The Nationals scored only one run on Bryce Harper's homer and managed just two other hits, leaving only four men on base.

"We need to be more patient at the plate and try to concentrate more in bringing runners in," Ramos said. "But that's the first game. We have more games coming (and) we got to work better."