Seeking to put the ghosts of last year’s Division Series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals behind them, the Washington Nationals are instead staring an April sweep in the face, as Adam Wainwright and Edward Mujica combined on a five-hit shutout to power the Cardinals to a 2-0 win at Nationals Park Tuesday.

Nine more strikeouts from the batting order, four more runners left in scoring position, another strong, wasted start by Ross Detwiler — it has been a familiar refrain for the Nationals thus far in the early going of 2013, the result of which is a 10-10 record that feels much worse than it is. Perhaps the most telling reaction came from Nationals manager Davey Johnson in his post-game remarks.

“I’m usually pretty patient, but I’m getting to my rope’s end,” Johnson said, as reported by CSN’s Mark Zuckerman. “The effort’s there, but we’re just not getting it done. We’ve got the players who can get it done, we’re just not getting it done. It’s time to get a little mad.”

Whether or not April is too soon to be getting mad is a moot point. It’s clear that the Nationals are not comfortable right now, in any phase of their game, and the results are showing. On Tuesday night, Wainwright was both the trigger for and the benefactor of the Nationals woes.

Roger Bernadina makes the face most Nationals fans are wearing these days after a sixth-inning strikeout leaves him 0-for-16 on the season. (Image: Evan Habeeb, USA Today)

It was Wainwright on the hill for the Cardinals in Game 5 of last season’s playoff series between the clubs — the veteran left in the third inning with the Nats holding a 6-0 lead. Tuesday’s outing could not have been more disparate, as Wainwright pitched into the ninth inning with remarkable efficiency, twice throwing fewer than six pitches in an inning to retire the over-eager Nationals hitters. He did issue his first walk of the season, a subtle pitch-around to Bryce Harper in the sixth inning that loaded the bases, but the next batter, Adam LaRoche, remained mired in a deep funk, fanning for one of his four strikeouts on the night. LaRoche is now 0-for his last 10, with seven whiffs, and may find himself seated on Wednesday with the Nationals playing a day game against a left-handed pitcher.

It was Harper who gave the Nationals hope in the ninth inning, leading off with a double for his second hit of the game. But after Wainwright punched out LaRoche again, Mujica came on to get Ian Desmond and pinch-hitter Chad Tracy, stranding Harper exactly where he had been all inning.

Detwiler, starting for the Nationals on the mound, fell to 1-1 in his least effective start of the year — but even that was pretty solid, which only speaks for how well the left-hander has thrown this season. Detwiler worked his way in and out of trouble throughout the early innings, helped immensely by four double plays turned by the Nats infield. The only early inning without a double play, the fourth, was the only time the Cardinals could break through.

Detwiler surrendered four straight hits to start the fourth — a single to Shane Robinson, an RBI double by Allen Craig, a single by Matt Holliday and an RBI single by Carlos Beltran. Even though Detwiler escaped the rest of the inning unscathed, it was clear at that point, given both Wainwright’s sharpness and Washington’s struggles, that the Cardinals would have to do something very generous to give this game away.

Now, the Nats are facing back-to-back home sweeps, after the Atlanta Braves did the honor last weekend. Washington will send Stephen Strasburg (1-3, 2.96 ERA) to the mound against the Cardinals and Jaime Garcia (1-1, 3.22) in a 1:05 PM get-away day matinee.

Held to just three hits on the day, the Washington Nationals won Game 4 of the National League Division Series anyway, getting a pair of home runs and tremendous pitching to beat the St. Louis Cardinals 2-1 and force a deciding Game 5. The first of the homers, a solo shot by Adam LaRoche in the second inning, woke up a Nationals crowd that had been waiting to burst. The second, a walkoff winner by Jayson Werth in the ninth inning, will be talked about for a long time.

Jayson Werth battled through a 13-pitch at-bat before walking off a hero and forcing a Game 5 in the National League Division Series. (Image: Joy R. Abasalon, Getty Images)

Facing Cardinals hurler Lance Lynn leading off the ninth, Werth made the 18-game winner throw 13 pitches in a marvelous at-bat that combined a good batting eye with some wonderful bat control and ended with a missile into the St. Louis bullpen. Here is a pitch-by-pitch breakdown of Werth’s masterpiece (all pitch data supplied by MLB GameDay):

1. Fastball, 95 mph: Lynn starts the at-bat with a fastball at the knees that Werth looks at for strike one.

2. Fastball, 94: Almost the same pitch in a similar spot, maybe slightly higher. Another taken strike and Werth is now down 0-2.

3. Curveball, 81: Lynn tries to make Werth fish for an offpseed pitch, skipping a curve in the left-handed batters box. Werth doesn’t bite and it’s 1-2.

4. Fastball, 96: Still staying away, Lynn just misses off the plate and slightly up. Werth has evened the count at 2-2.

5. Fastball, 97: A good heater in on Werth’s hands that he fists away foul. Hard pitch to make contact with.

6. Fastball, 97: This one was kind of grooved, center cut, maybe a little in, but the speed made it tricky for Werth. Perhaps looking for the offspeed pitch, Werth takes a defensive hack and fouls another one off.

7. Fastball, 97: Painting the outside corner, no doubt would have been a called third strike by home plate umpire Jim Joyce given the wide and erratic strike zone he employed during the game. Not a pitch Werth could drive, flicked foul in a nice piece of hitting.

8. Fastball, 96: Another good pitcher’s pitch by Lynn, just off the outside corner, and again Werth spoils it. This one almost stayed in play for Cardinals first baseman Allen Craig, but landed in the Washington dugout.

9. Curveball, 82: Started down and broke further down, this was never going to be a strike but Werth still reached out and got a piece of it. It almost looked as if he was doing it just because he could. This is the point when Werth’s teammates had a hunch something good was about to happen. Closer Drew Storen recounted to MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo the time when Werth hit a walk-off against Storen and the Nats when Werth was with the Phillies.

“That’s exactly what I did, and he spoiled it,” DiComo quotes Storen as saying to teammate Tyler Clippard as they watched from the Nationals dugout. “He’s going to come back with a fastball and [Werth] is going to get him.”

But not yet …

10. Fastball, 96: Exact same pitch as in number 5, boring in on the hands and Werth again sends it foul.

11. Curveball, 79: The game was almost up here. Lynn threw a splendid curveball that just missed the outside corner. Werth took it, but given Joyce’s strike zone, it would not have been surprising at all to see Werth rung up. If the pitch had been a fastball, we might still be playing. Instead, the count goes full.

12. Fastball, 97: The same spot as pitch number 7, just off the outside corner. Another foul.

13. Fastball, 96: Right down the middle. Werth spoiled the pitcher’s pitches while waiting for something he could drive, and this was it. The result: A line-drive homer that banged off the back wall of the St. Louis bullpen and sent 44,392 red-clad fans home happy.

It seems incomprehensible that the team with the best record in baseball is having trouble fulfilling all three tenets of this saying, and yet here, we are, after three games of the National League Division Series and the Washington Nationals are 27 outs from packing up the equipment for good.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about it is it’s not like the Nationals aren’t getting guys on, and they’re doing a decent job of getting em over as well. The sticking point has been getting em in, Exhibit A as to why it’s the St. Louis Cardinals who are on the verge of advancing in this series.

Granted, the Washington pitching staff hasn’t exactly been lights out in this series, especially in the two losses, having surrendered 18 runs on 27 hits — including 14 extra-base knocks. But you can’t outpitch a zero, which is what the Nationals put on the board against Chris Carpenter and the Cardinals in Game 3, and that was just the continuation of a trend that started in Game 1.

Kurt Suzuki and his Nationals teammates have to up their clutch quotient if they want to stay off the golf course for the winter. (Image: Joy R. Absalon, Getty Images)

On the whole, the numbers are ugly. In the three games thus far, Washington has left 30 men on base. The team’s batting average with runners in scoring position is .125 (3-for-24). The team has put the leadoff man on in an inning 12 times over the three games, and failed to plate him in eight of those innings, which is slightly below average. Add it up and you have an offense that appears to be gripping the bat handle too hard in bigger situations.

Aside from Ian Desmond, who has been stellar from the get-go, nearly every Washington hitter has been afflicted with a case of “RISP-itis.” The potential turning points in all three games stand out:

• Jayson Werth had a chance to put a crooked number on the board in the second inning of Game 1, with one run already in and the bases loaded, but grounded out to end the threat.
• Facing a similar situation in the sixth inning with Washington down 2-1, Werth fanned.
• On two separate occasions in Game 2, Washington had runners on first and second with one out and did nothing.
• Michael Morse didn’t get it done in Game 3, leaving men on first and third in the first inning and flying out with the sacks juiced in the fifth.

Add in the general poor hitting performances by Bryce Harper, Adam LaRoche, Danny Espinosa and Kurt Suzuki and what you end up with is a recipe for an early exit. The good news — ok, the not horrible news — is there’s still plenty of baseball potentially left, and the Nationals need look no further than the other NLDS to see an example of what can be done.

The San Francisco Giants scored just four runs on 12 hits through the first three games of their series against the Cincinnati Reds and were frankly lucky to not have been swept. But Game 4 produced an eight-run, 11-hit uprising that featured three home runs, and the Giants aren’t exactly the 1927 Yankees. So there is plenty of opportunity there for the Nationals to come back in this series. They just have to take advantage of it.