The third game at Nationals Park sure was a blow out…for the Marlins. With a final score of 10-4, the Nats didn’t even come close. Attendance was still an issue tonight with another small crowd; the official count was 23,340. There were a couple of sections completely empty and that’s not too encouraging.

Jason Bergmann is a hard one to figure out. Again he cruised through four scoreless innings, but just fell apart in the top of the 5th. He gave up seven earned runs that inning, including two homers. It was tough to watch. We were surprised Manny kept him in as long as he did. The outing seemed similar to his last performance in Philadelphia when he pitched four solid innings but also fell apart in the 5th. Why does he seem to be hitting a wall? Tonight he threw 78 pitches, 53 of them strikes.

Relief work came from Hanrahan who gave up a homer to Mike Jacobs (his second of the game) Ray King, and Jesus Colome.

Bergmann’s performance wasn’t helped by our offense. Thanks to an error on the Marlins, Nick Johnson scored off of Lo Duca’s hit in the second. Cristian Guzman hit his second home run of the season in the 5th — a solo shot to left field. He is leading the Nats batting .325. Where is the improved offense the Nationals boasted about? The spaciousness of RFK was often used as an excuse last season. The new park was supposed to bring better numbers for most of the guys. The hits just aren’t coming yet. We need guys like Austin Kearns and Ronnie Belliard to hit with some consistency.

The bench is suffering also. We saw pinch hits from Aaron Boone, who drew a walk, and Rob Mackowiak who struck out. Johnny Estrada also batted tonight, and struck out quickly. Switch hitter Estrada is still recovering from his elbow injury so he won’t catch for awhile, but will pinch hit as a sub for Dmitri. Looks like Jesus Flores will remain on the roster for awhile, at least until Estrada is fully recovered and can act as Lo Duca’s back up.

Anyone starting to think this is like last April? Things need to start clicking quickly because a six game skid like this is pretty ugly.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Game Recaps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.