The Nationals seem to have slipped back — with their performance against the Redlegs in Cincinnati a reminder of just how terrible they were in April and May. Yesterday’s game was a case in point: the Nationals kept pace with the Reds, but only when they needed to, and ended up losing the third game of the three game series in the 14th inning. The loss came when Joey Votto took a Collin Balester offering deep to end the game in another Cincy walk-off.

How did the Nationals get swept in Cincinnati? Poor pitching, sloppy defense and no punch at the plate. That’s a sure combination for mediocrity — or worse. In his last start of the season, Jordan Zimmermann wasn’t able to get out of the fifth (giving up six hits and three earned runs), the defense behind him booted the ball twice, and the Nationals were 4-19 with runners in scoring position.

The same kind of lack of punch dominated the series for the Nats: they were outscored 15-10, though that was an improvement over the simply awful offensive output against the D-Backs the week before, when they were outscored 10-3. The problem is not just hitting (Ryan Zimmerman is hitting the ball well, as is Jayson Werth), it’s hitting when there are runs to be had. Ian Desmond left eight runners on base yesterday, and Danny Espinosa six. So it was that Washington outhit the Reds (which is actually saying something), but without any appreciable results.

The loss was Washington’s sixth in a row, and the team is now sliding well under .500, and in danger of passing Florida for last place honors. A last place finish would be a major disappointment, as it would undermine the noticed improvement in play — and personnel. It’s going to take some doing to return to dead-even: the Nationals take on the Atlanta Braves in Atlanta starting tomorrow.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: The fans of Cincinnati have to be among the most loyal of any in the majors. Nary a boo is heard for their struggling players — it’s almost as if their Redlegs are in first place. And there’s little question that Joey Votto is the fan favorite: consistently and vocally cheered. He’s the Ryan Zimmerman of Cincinnati. Even so (and in spite of their three game sweep against the Nationals), this is a team that needs more than a few pieces . . .

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Here’s the story in Cincinnati and, for Reds’ fans, it sounds all too familiar: a well-stocked, heavy hitting and young team just can’t seem to put it all together and struggles through a season of lost opportunities. That was the story in the “lost decade” after Cincinnati’s last world championship, and Reds fans fear it could be the story now.

The thing that has Reds’ fans depressed is that this might be the best Reds team that’s been fielded in the last decade or so — and perhaps better than last year’s Central Division winners. The Reds have an MVP at first base (Joey Votto), and All Star at second (Brandon Phillips) and another at third (Scott Rolen) and bunch of long ball swingers in the outfield — masher Jay Bruce (21 home runs), better-than-just-okay Jonny Gomes, uber fill-in Chris Heisey and behemoth Drew Stubbs.

That’s a lot of lumber and it shows: the Reds are first in the N.L. in runs scored, fourth in homers, fifth in batting average, and fourth in on base percentage. In spite of this, the team is struggling. They were shut out twice this week by the Pirates, scoring just four runs in four games. Everyone was slumping. When that happens to good teams, the skipper shifts gears by juggling the line-up and hopes that his pitching staff begins to produce. The problem in Cincinnati is that Dusty Baker doesn’t have much of a pitching staff — or, rather, Cincinnati pitching is all potential and no performance.

The lone exception to this has been Johnny Cueto, who turned in a stellar performance yesterday against the Bucs. Nothing-but-strikes righty Cueto, with the semi-Luis Tiant wind-up, threw for six innings and gave up only four hits — a vindication of a Reds’ front office that has waited for him to be a star. The undersized and underrated righty might now be ready. Finally.

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Jim Riggleman & Company have a lot to think about over the next few months, not the least of which is how to improve the Nats sloppy defense — first in the majors in errors — and what to do with Adam Dunn. The two are closely related, particularly given the questions being raised about Dunn’s prowess at first base. Ben Goessling (in “The Goessling Game“), focused on Dunn’s defense in his latest blog, noting that the Nationals “have made no secret of the fact that Dunn’s defense is the main thing they’re still evaluating when deciding whether to give the 30-year-old a contract extension.” But Goesseling praises Dunn for making the successful switch to first base, implying that his defensive play has been one of the surprises of the year: “To Dunn’s credit, he’s improved markedly at first base this season, becoming a slightly below-average fielder instead of an anemic one,” Goessling writes.

Goessling isn’t the only one praising Dunn. Over at SI, Joe Sheehan provides a list of players who are among the worst defensive players in the game (Yuniesky Betancourt, Brad Hawpe, Hanley Ramirez, Andre Eithier and Ryan Braun), while noting that Dunn “has adapted well” to being moved from the outfield to first base “showing good hands if limited range.” Dunn’s successful shift is unusual, Sheehan writes: “It’s rare that a player can move to first base and increase his value, but Dunn has done so.” So if Goessling and Sheehan are impressed with Dunn — and if the big guy from Texas is ripping the cover off the ball (and he is) — what’s the problem? Well, the problem seems to be Friday night in Philadelphia, when Dunn’s lack of range hurt him in getting to a ball stroked down the right field line and where the big man’s size limited his stretch to snag a ball thrown by Ian Desmond. The Goessling-Sheehan notes on Dunn are now the subject of some attention on the web (as MLB Trade Rumors runs through the Nats’ first base options) and increased questions over the utility of “defensive stats.”

So  . . . how concerned should the Nats be with Adam Dunn’s defense? Dunn has made seven errors in 116 games playing first for the Nats, a statistic that actually reflects the common judgment that Dunn is a below average first baseman. Derrick Lee has made six errors (in 106 games), while Joey Votto has just four in 112 games. Lee and Votto ought to be considered the class of the league (Lee is tall, agile with lots of range; Votto is young and tough with great leaping ability), but the best in baseball (at least according to this single, and admittedly limited, “errors and chances” measure) might well be Friars’ first sacker Adrian Gonzalez who seems to have everything — agility, range, height and experience. Gonzalez has just five errors in 118 games, and he’s there, day-in and day-out. Which is not to mention Albert Pujols (with just three errors), who has everything that Gonzalez has (but perhaps not as much agility), or James Loney (a Gonzalez without the range, it seems to me) — with an astonishingly nearly perfect three errors in 122 games.

So the critics are right: Adam Dunn is an average to below-average first baseman: he ranks below Derrick Lee, Joey Votto, Adrian Gonzalez and James Loney, is on a par with Atlanta’s gimpy and aging Troy Glaus, but is a ton better than either Arizona’s Adam LaRoche (10 errors in 112 games) or Philadelphia’s Ryan Howard — whose defensive gaffes are legendary (11 errors in 101 games). The problem with all of this is that defensive stats don’t really tell us a lot, which is why Sabermetricians have struggled to come up with better ways of measuring defensive prowess. But, as Tim Marchman noted recently, the statistical models are controversial, contradictory, and often fly in the face of common sense. In truth, it’s nearly impossible to compare Dunn’s defense to Pujols’ or Loney’s or anyone elses, because only Dunn offers a glove to Ian Desmond — whose lack of experience regularly (viz. Friday night in Philly), makes Dunn look like Adam LaRoche (whose own shortstop, Stephen Drew, throws baseballs as naturally as the rest of us eat chicken).

That’s not to say that fans of Adam Dunn should ignore his defensive woes, or refuse to admit them. It’s only to note that, when it comes to Dunn (and anyone else playing in the field), defensive stats will either only confirm what we already know (do we really need a raft of stats to tell us that Adam Dunn lacks range, experience and agility), or will stand as a confusing single data point in an overall picture (Colin Wyers over at Baseball Prospectus points this out, and pretty convincingly). Which leads us back to where we started — with this single question: do Adam Dunn’s offensive stats (his home run, OBP and RBI totals) compensate enough for his defensive woes to make Riggleman and Rizzo think about signing him for a few more years? The answer, as always, depends on the option — of whether Dunn’s prospective replacement will improve the Nats defense so markedly that they can live without the 40 or so home runs that the Texan will hit.

Ben Goessling says that the Nats are thinking along these lines, by considering Carlos Pena as a useful replacement for Dunn at first. Pena has the same kind of pop (39 home runs last year, 46 in 2007), and while he’s more experienced and more agile at first, it’s hard to argue that he’s actually better defensively (10 errors in 133 games in 2009). Perhaps more importantly, it’s hard to argue that Pena’s more resilent. The savvy Tampa first sacker sat out most of 2005 and nearly all of 2006 with injuries, is known to be plagued by an inexplicable June injury bug — and has been hit with broken fingers, pulled hamstrings and swollen foots. And Adam Dunn? The last time that Adam Dunn had any kind of injury at all (knock wood, right now, and knock it hard) was 2003. Over the course of the last seven seasons, Dunn has played in (count ‘em) 161, 160, 160, 152, 158, 158 and 159 games. That’s the real stat, the one that matters. In comparison, in that same stretch, Carlos Pena played in 131, 142, 79, 18 (18!), 148, 139 and 135 games. Nearly a full season less. Maybe Pena is better at first. Maybe. But it’s hard to make an error when you’re sitting on the bench.

So if all of this is true, what’s all the hubbub about Adam Dunn? And why, now, are we suddenly hearing about Carlos Pena? The answer might be that the Nats really do want to get better defensively — and they think the way to do that is to replace their 40 homers a year guy with a player (like Pena) with a puzzling history of nagging injuries. Or maybe, just maybe, all of the complaints about Dunn’s fielding have nothing to do with his defense at all. After all, there seems to be a trend here, and it has more to do with the bottom line than booted balls — and should be perceptible to anyone who pays close attention: when the Washington Nationals’ front office starts talking about replacing Dunn’s below-average glove at first base, what they’re really talking about is replacing his big salary in the accountant’s book.

Ryan Zimmerman has been on a tear: he is 6-9 over his last two games and, on Tuesday night, he hit a walk off homer against the San Diego Padres to seal a hard-fought 6-5 victory at Nationals Park. The Zimmerman surge has come just at the right time; not only did it provide a nail-biting win over the NL West leading Friars, it may well have boosted Zimmerman’s All Star chances in a last-minute fan vote. Zimmerman is trailing Cincinnati slugger Joey Votto in a close contest for the final All Star spot. Zimmerman’s sudden rediscovery of his swing is good news for Nats fans, who were beginning to worry that Zim’s month-long slump would sink the Nats in the key home match-ups that face the team in the run-up to the All Star break. “I’ve been struggling the last three weeks, four weeks. It’s frustrating,” Zimmerman said after the game. “Nobody wants to do that. I’ve been working with Rick a little bit, and it’s finally starting to get where I want to be, so it’s good.”

Zimmerman’s bottom-of-the-ninth heroics were the talk of the ball club following the needed win over the Padres, as was the stellar outing the team received from Livan Hernandez, who threw seven innings of masterful ball in searching for his seventh win. But the 8th inning proved tough for the Nats, whose relievers have struggled of late: Tyler Clippard came on in relief and gave up two hits, as the Padres knotted the score at five. After wowing opposing hitters, and Nats fans, through the first three months of the season, Clippard has been shaky:  “I’ve been throwing the right pitches — maybe not executing them all the time,” Clippard said. “But tonight, I just felt like I made poor decisions. I felt like I should have thrown some things differently. It wasn’t the case, and I didn’t get the job done.” The Nats improved to 37-47 on the year, and face the Padres again tonight.

The Wisdom of Section 1-2-9: “There something wrong with Stammen,” one of the section’s more well-informed fans said on Sunday. There was silence then, for two innings. “When you get a guy who’s good one outing and bad the next, it’s usually mental.” And then more silence until this — “how do you tweek a guy’s head?” Another fan, a known Stammen partisan, was supportive. “He’s a Maddux in the making,” he said. “You’ll see.” There were furtive looks and not a few eye rolls. “Yeah, but which one? Greg or Mike?” When Stammen walked off the field there was a smattering of applause and the man in the row in front shrugged his shoulders. “Mike. Mike Maddux.”

A successful Nyjer Morgan bunt brought this comment: “He’s been trying to take them down the third base line for three months, now suddenly he’s figured it out — he’s racing the ball to first. About time.” The comment brought nods and then, support, for the struggling center fielder: “Did you see that catch the other day?” Not all has been forgiven when it comes to Morgan, but nearly so. “Maybe he can play short” — which brought guffaws. The remembered circus catch in center has raised Morgan’s value — at least among section commenters. “Riggleman is defending him, on the basis of last year,” another fan said. A fan two seats down was unimpressed. “Yeah, I saw that.” In the eighth inning, as the Nats struggled to come back against the Mets, the talk turned to trades. “We’d have to give up some prime prospects for Dan Haren, but it’d be worth it.” And the response: “Think of it — Strasburg, Haren, Marquis, Hernandez, Zimmermann. That’s a pretty good starting five.” What about Olsen? a fan asked. The answer came, too quickly: “What about him?”