It’s not that the Washington Nationals have slipped back into their old 2009 ways (they haven’t, at least not completely — and at least not yet), it’s that their sloppy defensive play of the last two days (and their successive losses to the forlorn Houston Astros), are a cautionary note for the future. The Nats are a poor defensive team and will need to improve their fielding performance if they hope to contend this year. We begin this sad tale on Tuesday, when the Nats blew a one-run seemingly in-the-bag win against the Astros, with an unusual error by Nats third sacker Ryan Zimmerman. The error put the Astros back in the game and led to a Matt Capps blown save that gave the Astros a 8-7 win. That Lance Berkman, whose checked swing on a Matt Capps offering should have been called a strike notwithstanding — the simple fact is that if the Pedro Feliz grounder had been fielded cleanly, Berkman (an intimidator, and Nats slayer) would not have come to the plate.

The Nats’ defensive woes were even more evident on Wednesday. In the midst of a sixth inning in-the-MASN-booth love fest between Bob Carpenter and Ray Knight over how Ian Desmond reminded them of the young Derek Jeter (Holy Cow!), the rangy rookie Nats shortstop committed two errors on one play: failing to step on second on a force and then throwing wide to first. The otherwise impressive Desmond (and it’s true, he’s a work in progress) bobbled a grounder from Berkman in the seventh. It was an unusually poor play, as Desmond seemed unsure whether to charge the ball, or play it back. “Berkman doesn’t really run that well,” Desmond explained. “I figured if I stayed back on it, I’d still be able to turn the double play. It kind of took a bad hop on me. Ate me up a little bit. I trust myself as a player. Tomorrow will be a new day, bounce back and everything will be fine.” Okay. But the defensive failures and the team’s high strikeout total (thirteen, against so-so Astros’ pitching) led to an indifferently played and disappointing 5-1 loss.

All of baseball was abuzz on Wednesday with the blown call of umpire Jim Joyce that cost Detroit Tigers starter Armando Galarraga a perfect game. The call came with two out in the ninth inning: an infield roller was scooped up and served to Galarraga covering first. The ball and Galarraga clearly beat a sprinting Indians hitter Jason Donald to the bag, but Joyce called Donald safe. Joyce maintained his stance — the infield hit was a single, transforming a perfect game into a one-hit shutout. But after the game, Joyce saw the replay and admitted that he’d made a mistake. “It was the biggest call of my career,” Joyce told reporters, “and I kicked it. I just cost that kid a perfect game.” The admission set off an explosion of commentary about the use of instant replay — but that debate isn’t likely to be resolved soon.

I was hoping that Tim Kurkjian (who seems to know this kind of stuff) could have added some perspective to the Joyce call, by citing the number of calls that had gone the other way; that is, that gave pitchers no-hitters and perfect games when they didn’t deserve them. There must have been at least some small numbers of such incidents, which is not to mention the widened strike zone that recently (and in at least two cases) gave Roy Halladay strike outs instead of walks. So it is: no perfect game is possible without such calls, just as no no-hitter can go into the books without some kind of fantastic play somewhere. It’s a given. Then too, as we might remember, Milt Pappas was one pitch away from a perfect game (on September 2, 1964) when umpire Bruce Froemming, after calling two strikes on the last batter, called the next four pitches (all strikes) balls. Pappas never forgave Froemming and told him, the next day, that he’d blown a chance to call a perfect game. Froemming — who, like Pappas, could be a nasty piece of work — just smiled. “Show me an umpire who ever called a game without making a mistake,” he said.