Nats fall behind early, drop series opener 6-4

BALTIMORE - If the next four nights represent the Nationals' toughest test of the season to date, they didn't exactly pass Part One.

Gio Gonzalez served up three home runs during a nightmare first inning, and the Nats never recovered during a 6-4 loss to the Orioles in the opener of this year's Battle of the Beltways.

Gonzalez was rocked from the moment he took the mound at Camden Yards, digging his team into a deep hole. The league's most productive lineup, meanwhile, wasn't buoyed enough by the return of Bryce Harper after a three-day absence with a sore groin, stymied for seven innings by right-hander Kevin Gausman before a ninth-inning rally fell short.

A crowd of 23,525 twice rose to applaud Matt Wieters in the catcher's first game back in Baltimore as a visiting player, but the lovefest didn't last long. The orange-clad fans cheered louder when J.J. Hardy robbed Wieters of a base hit in the top of the third.

Wieters did provide a jolt with an RBI double in the top of the ninth, leaving runners on second and third with one out against Brad Brach. But Brian Goodwin grounded out to first, and Trea Turner (pinch-running for Wieters) and Adam Lind got caught in no-man's land on the bases and ran themselves into the final out of the game.

In the first of four straight games between interleague rivals with now identical records, the Nationals looked flat. It didn't help that had to play nearly the entire game from behind.

Gonzalez entered with a 1.64 ERA but the knowledge that he got away with a seven-walk start five nights ago in a win over the Diamondbacks. Whether a fear of falling into that same trap played a role or not, he found far too much of the plate in the bottom of the first and paid the price for it.

Gonzalez served up his first homer of the game on his fourth pitch, with Joey Rickard taking him deep to left.

Three batters later, Gonzalez tried to get Mark Trumbo to chase a high fastball up and out of the zone. It's the kind of pitch Wieters frequently calls with two strikes, and it has been effective in his first month-plus with the Nationals. But Wieters, of course, was an Oriole the previous eight seasons, and so it's possible Trumbo had reason to anticipate a pitch like that.

Regardless, the Baltimore slugger somehow managed to get on top of a fastball above his shoulders and drive it to left for the evening's second home run.

After a walk to Chris Davis, Gonzalez made another mistake, leaving his first pitch to Trey Mancini over the plate and watching it soar toward the bullpens in left-center. Six batters, three home runs, a 4-0 deficit for the Nationals.

Gonzalez was able to settle down after that, and though he allowed two more runs, they were made possible by Anthony Rendon's throwing error on what could have been an inning-ending double play in the fourth.

Still, this was easily Gonzalez's worst start of the season, raising his ERA a full point to 2.64.

That wouldn't necessarily always be a problem at Camden Yards, where six runs can be had in rapid fire. But the Nationals struggled all night to figure out Gausman, who cruised through seven innings.

The Baltimore right-hander retired the first 10 batters he faced before Jayson Werth blooped a single to center. The Nationals finally scored in the fifth thanks to doubles by Rendon and Michael A. Taylor, then added another in the sixth on Werth's double and Harper's RBI single. But that was the extent of their offense against Gausman on this night.

Harper did deliver an opposite-field homer off sidearm reliever Darren O'Day in the top of the eighth, but that merely trimmed the deficit to three runs.