WASHINGTON -- A couple of Pirates fans could be seen in the fading orange seats behind home plate at Robert F. Rustbucket Memorial Stadium last night, perhaps because they were more likely to see a win on the road against this club, or perhaps because they've simply never seen a Major League Baseball game in the nation's capital and wanted to correct that.

So yeah; they went 0 for 2.

Haraz N. Ghanbari, Associated Press Zach Duke throws against the Washington Nationals last night and struggled again, giving up five runs in six innings. Click photo for larger image.

Maybe it was just a quirky episode in which the Pirates performed perceptibly worse, if barely, than even the Washington Nationals as the poor Nats continue to subsist far from the margins of professional competence, but when you get a pitching matchup like the one the National League presented in the middle game of a series that somehow has avoided a crush of national media, you just wonder inevitably about the overall quality of the, uh, workmanship.

You wonder, too, whether Bryan Bullington or John Van Benschoten will be the starting pitcher for the Pirates in Tuesday's home fray against the Texas Rangers, because if Zach Duke takes his normal turn again after last night, long after he has ceased to exhibit even the approximate quality of a major-league starter, something's not right.

Duke left after six more severely uphill innings, the last one only the third 1-2-3 inning in his past 17, and the only inning that included a pitch that was swung on and missed by any member of the worst hitting team in, ahem, Major League Baseball. In the bottom of the second, as the Nationals set about the business of building a 5-1 lead against the Pirates' fast-fading lefty, Nook Logan lashed a single to right that was of decidedly trivial consequence, except that it was the 100th hit of the season against Duke in just 67 innings.

One hundred hits in 67 innings. Even for a guy who allowed more hits than anyone in the league last year (255), that's ridiculous. There's no longer any point in discussing Duke's mechanics. His release point, his positioning over the rubber, his flagging ability to hide the ball sufficiently are all worthy topics to be discussed and acted upon at Indianapolis. You can't pitch into the middle of June in this game while the National League is hitting .348 against you.

Can you? In the starting rotation?

Three of the first five hitters Duke faced last night lined hits, the third a ringing double by Austin Kearns that did Duke the favor of hopping over the wall to keep Cristian Guzman at third, saving him another earned run. First time through the Washington order, Duke allowed five hits.

So here was the situation facing Pirates manager Jim Tracy: On a night when his highly road-worthy offense (40 runs in the previous five road games) was facing a 32-year-old non-entity named Micah Bowie, whose career earned run average as a starter was 8.75, his club couldn't compete with Duke on the mound.

"Zach was better than what his numbers indicated," Tracy said 20 minutes after Salomon Torres wild-pitched home the winning run in a ballgame that virtually begged to end with a mistake. "I think he needed a double-play ball in that fifth inning, and he got it."

The blow-by-blow will show that shortstop Jack Wilson made an error on a double-play ball that Ryan Church swatted in the fifth, an error that would have gotten Duke out of the inning unscathed, but the Pirates' defense actually worked wonders just to keep Duke around as long as he lasted. Wilson, first baseman Adam LaRoche and third baseman Jose Bautista all made stellar plays in the fourth after Logan launched a one-out double, the third double against Duke. On the pitch after Wilson's error in the fifth, Dmitri Young scalded a two-run single to center that made the score 5-1.

Bowie couldn't make it through the sixth, having issued his fourth and fifth walks to start the inning, an opportunity the Pirates ignored with typical consistency. But Bowie needn't apologize for himself. He's in this awful Nationals rotation because four-fifths of it is currently on the disabled list.

Duke was the Pirates' opening-day starter.

In his past five starts, he has allowed 45 hits and 26 runs. He struck out one batter last night, eight in May.

"It's true the ball is in play a lot," Tracy said. "You have to make plays for him."

It's not like there's no evident solution.

Bullington is 9-2 with Indianapolis. His ERA is 2.75. Van Benschoten is 6-3 with a 2.61 ERA.

Either will do fine for next Tuesday. It's well past time.