Nats bullpen struggles again in 7-4 loss to Braves

ATLANTA - Who would have thought the knockout punch Friday night would come from a light-hitting former Nationals catcher?

Kurt Suzuki's two-run shot capped a comeback for the Braves as they downed the Nationals 7-4. The Nationals have now lost three in a row, matching their longest such streak of the season.

The Suzuki blast highlighted a three-run eighth for Atlanta, and the Braves scored four unanswered runs to earn their 17th win. All the runs in the eighth came off of reliever Enny Romero.

That is the way of the Nationals' struggling bullpen this season.

Manager Dusty Baker knew his bullpen was tired from the last couple of games in Pittsburgh. He had Matt Grace finish the sixth. Shawn Kelley, despite two walks, managed to get through the seventh. But Romero got roughed up in the eighth.

Baker said he had few choices in the bullpen after the Pirates rolled the relievers earlier in the week.

"Not enough. You pick them," Baker acknowledged. "Right now, we're kind of limping. We didn't really want to go to (Matt) Albers. He's thrown like five out of six, or whatever the number is.

"Didn't want to go to (Koda) Glover that early because he's the closer tonight. And didn't like the matchup with (Oliver) Pérez."

In the bottom of the eighth with one out, Brandon Phillips walked against Romero. Phillips stole his second base of the night to get into scoring position.

A Nick Markakis RBI single scored Phillips with the go-ahead run. The throw from Bryce Harper was just a bit late and up the line, and Matt Wieters couldn't hold on to it to bring it back to tag Phillips.

"The key was walking Brandon Phillips late," Baker said. "Then Markakis, who usually doesn't hit lefties as well. But if you can't get your secondary pitches over, then they're sitting on your fastball. And that was kind of the bullpen."

Starter Gio Gonzalez made some big pitches again, keeping the Nationals in the game.

He was able to go 5 2/3 innings but had to throw 116 pitches. Gonzalez worked a double play to help him get out of the third. A groundout by Ender Inciarte with a man on second finished the fourth. With two men in scoring position in the fifth, Gonzalez struck out Johan Camargo and Jace Peterson.

Gonzalez, visibly frustrated with the team loss, said he could empathize with what Romero is going through right now as he struggles for consistency. Gonzalez said he believes Romero has the right people around him to build back his confidence.

"I mean that's a situation where it's a learning curve for him, too," Gonzalez said. "In baseball world, we're learning, I'm to this day still learning. I think in his situation, we believe in him so much I think he has a lot of guys behind him that are going to help him, direct him to the right way.

"It's a little rough patch, you move over, learn from it, turn the page and this is the growing part, and as soon as he gets it going, he's going to be lights-out Enny. That's who he is. This guy throws hard, he's not going to have a problem."

Romero, through a Nationals spokesperson, declined comment.

The Nationals managed to find a way to collect hits off of knuckleballer R.A. Dickey: Daniel Murphy smacked his eighth homer, Trea Turner added an RBI single and Harper's hot liner down the right field line was called a fielding error that scored two runs.

The Nationals built 3-2 and 4-3 leads.

But this book has been read and this record has been played before. The bullpen struggled to get through the seventh and eighth innings clean.

Baker does have Max Scherzer going in game two, but does he feel he would make a move to help the bullpen for Saturday?

"No, not tomorrow. But we need some help, period," Baker said. "But who's going to give me some help? We just got to - No. 1, we got to score more runs. Each of the last three games we lost, they're hitting us like we should be hitting them. Especially some guys hitting the ball on us out of the ballpark that are hot.

"It's a bad series of events, the last three out of four games. You can't bring it back because there's not a whole lot you can do right now. We're trying just about everything you can do. We just have to come out and play better tomorrow."