Strasburg supports bullpen despite another late meltdown

The Nationals bullpen again was unable to hold a lead in the late going in an 11-10 setback to the Braves to open their series Monday night at Nationals Park.

Atlanta slammed five home runs, including one each in the eighth and ninth frames to rally from a 9-6 deficit. Tyler Flowers' three-run shot off of Matt Albers in the ninth was the deciding blast.

The Nationals have matched a season high with four losses in a row and their lead in the National League East is now 8 1/2 games thanks to the Mets' 6-1 win over the Cubs.

Trea Turner, Brian Goodwin and Bryce Harper all homered for the Nationals, who pounded out 17 hits but left 10 men on base and relinquished leads of 4-3 and 9-6.

Stephen Strasburg had a tough night, lasting five innings, his shortest stint of the season. He allowed six runs on seven hits with one walk and 10 strikeouts. He had surrendered six homers in his first 12 starts this season, then gave up three against the Braves, including back-to-back homers to Nick Markakis and Matt Kemp in the first inning. Adams hit a three-run homer off Strasburg in the third.

"They are an all-or-nothing team," Strasburg said. "They've been playing fairly good baseball from what I understand lately. The pitch to Markakis, I felt like I located pretty well. He normally fouls that one off, but he got to it. Same thing with Kemp. The one pitch I really didn't execute well was to Adams. Those are going to happen."

But the story of the night was the five runs the Braves scored in the eighth and ninth innings to send the Nats to another loss.

Albers, who had been one of the more reliable bullpen arms recently, faltered in the ninth when he walked two and then allowed the Flowers' three-run shot. Manager Dusty Baker had little to say about the implosion.

"You saw what I saw," Baker said. "When you see a guy that throws strikes walk two and then they hit a homer. He's been our most dependable guy out there. We couldn't keep 'em in the ballpark."

But this trend of blowing late leads is becoming too commonplace for a team that expects to go deep in the postseason. The bullpen has allowed late runs in three straight losses.

"There's no answers right now," Baker said. "I would say score more runs, but we scored more runs. Stras usually doesn't give up homers like that. When you're in a bad a streak, you just gotta fight. We just gotta keep on fighting."

Strasburg had the best solution for what the bullpen is going through: Get the 25-man roster together to support the struggling relievers and not turn on them.

"It's tough. We have a lot of young guys in the bullpen right now," Strasburg said. "I think everybody in here, we're all pulling for them, we all believe in them. I just hope that they worry about what goes on in the clubhouse and not what really what's said outside the clubhouse. I've been around long enough to know that the way it works is they build you up to bring you down. It's easy to kick a guy when he's down. I'm just going to try to be a great teammate to them and support them through thick and thin."

One solution that many believe could help is to leave the starters in even if they aren't pitching as well as they did at the beginning of the start, so the time the bullpen is needed later in a game is shortened.

But Strasburg disagrees. He said you can't force yourself to pitch longer in a game by planning for it.

"Trying to go deep in the game, you can't really explain how to do that," Strasburg said. "You got to simplify things out there. As a starter, you have to be in on each pitch. Hopefully, if you do it enough times you're going to be deep in a game. Going into to a start, trying to say, 'I got to go deep', no, that kind of takes you off your game plan."

Albers, who allowed three runs on one hit with two walks and a strikeout in 2/3 of an inning, said the relievers need to just keep working on moving forward.

"We just got to keep grinding. Luckily, we're doing well right now as a team," Albers said. "So were just trying to pick up our end of the bargain. just keep each other positive really. (We are) going to go through tough stretches. (We) have a lot of veterans down there who've had big league success, so we know we can do it. Just got to keep fighting, keep grinding."