The Washington Nationals succumbed to their own lack of production, falling to the Florida Marlins 1-0 on Sunday in Miami. The loss squandered the team’s opportunity to back the stellar pitching of starter Craig Stammen, who held the Marlins to one run in six innings of work. The inconsistent Stammen, who seems to be on-again and off-again, put in one of his best pitching performances of the year, keeping the ball down in the zone against the befuddled Marlins’ hitters. Stammen threw 98 pitches, 62 of them for strikes. His only trouble came in the 5th, when he gave up successive doubles. Joel Peralta finished out the game, providing his by-now usual in-the-strike-zone relief effort. But as was the case on Saturday, Nationals’ hitters could not seem to solve Florida’s pitching: Washington rapped out eight hits, but their celebrated middle of the line-up heavyweights were a combined 2-9, stranding an embarrassing 11 runners. The Nats now head to Cincinnati to face the surging Reds. Duck.

Those Are The Headlines, Now For The Details: MASN play-by-play man, Bob Carpenter, informed his viewing audience on Sunday that he’d been told by Marlins’ beat reporters that ex-Florida manager Fredi Gonzalez was “absolutely not” fired because of his troubles with Hanley Ramirez. According to Carpenter’s discussions, Gonzalez was fired because Marlins’ owner Jeff Loria knew that Fredi was headed to Atlanta to take over for the dearly departing Bobby Cox at the end of the season. So (we are led to believe) Loria thought for a minute and decided ‘why not make a change now?’ Moreover, Carpenter added, the reason that Bobby Valentine (lined up to be the new Marlins’ manager), wasn’t hired is because he insisted in bringing his own set of coaches to Miami — while Loria wanted him to retain the Gonzalez crew. The deal fell through.

I don’t doubt that Carpenter was told by the Miami press that Fredi Gonzalez was not (“absolutely not,” as Carpenter emphasized) fired for benching Hanley Ramirez (as we speculated, here), and I don’t doubt for a minute that Marlins beat reporters actually believe that. And, in fact, it may well be that Gonzalez wasn’t fired over the Ramirez incident. That’s quite possible. But we (we here at CFG) will insist on this: anyone who believes that Gonzalez was fired (suddenly, surprisingly, and summarily) because he planned to go to Atlanta (news to me) during the off season is simply buying Jeff Loria’s line. Or defending Hanley Ramirez. Or something. That said, the other part of the story (that Valentine wasn’t hired because he wouldn’t retain the Marlins coaching staff), makes sense. But it’s the only part of the story that does . . .

We’ve had a bit of this lately. When Omar Infante was named to the All Star team, fans were a more than a little puzzled. But not the “MLB Network” cheering section, or the guys at “Baseball Tonight,” who spent their time telling us what a great player Omar is — despite not having the requisite number of at-bats to be taken seriously. Infante shoved aside Joey Votto, Ryan Zimmerman, Dan Uggla, Rickie Weeks and Adam Dunn (whose home run totals led the NL), who actually play every game. Infante doesn’t. He’s a utility man, pinch hitter and filler. When he got the call from Atlanta GM Frank Wren that he’d made the team, he expected the worst: that he’d been traded — to Toronto. Never mind: the guys at BT and MLB Network were in the bag for Infante, telling all of us morons what a terrific ballplayer he is. Listen, Tim Kurkjian is right, no one should blame Infante for getting picked, but please, please, don’t try to sell us the line that Omar Infante (good family man, nice guy and all that) is a really good player who deserved it. If that was really true (if Infante deserved to be on that field instead of — say –  Adam Dunn), there wouldn’t have been any controversy . . .