No, the Pirates were not wearing their grey uniforms tonight at PNC Park, but make no mistake: That was very much the road version of the team fumbling and flailing through a 9-2 loss to Washington.

Per the standard script ...

The starting pitching came up well short, Paul Maholm tagged for seven runs in 4 1/3 innings.

The offense did little, aside from Andrew McCutchen's 13th home run.

The baserunning saw another big gaffe.

And the defense saw, on one painful play in the Nationals' five-run fourth inning, yet another Lastings Milledge misread of a fly ball followed by catcher Chris Snyder failing to cling to a perfect relay home.

If all that sounds like a formula for winning, oh, 2.8 games per month, then that at least begins to explain the Pirates' 14-53 road record, if not why such performances have mostly been kept outside city limits.

Maholm's maddening pattern has been to have a couple of good starts, one lousy one, but he bucked that by going back-to-back on the lousy: Five days after giving up eight runs in 3 1/3 innings in Chicago, he gave up these seven runs on eight hits and two walks.

And almost all of this followed three no-hit innings with three strikeouts that would have led one to believe the other Maholm had shown up.

Washington's fourth opened with Ryan Zimmerman's bloop single to left, and Maholm never recovered. He walked Michael Morse and gave up a bunt single to Roger Berardina, loading the bases.

Next came that painful play.

Ivan Rodriguez screamed a liner into right, and Milledge backtracked while facing center field. He appeared to lose it at that point, and it hit behind him off the base of the Clemente Wall.

That was not the end of it: The outfield relay of Rodriguez's ball went to second baseman Neil Walker, who fired a strike to Snyder. But Snyder turned toward the runner a split-second early, and the ball ricocheted off his glove and to the backstop.

Washington's lead was 5-0 after that inning, 7-0 after Rodriguez chased Maholm the next inning with a two-run home run.

And the ugliest was saved for last: When Ronny Cedeno doubled with two aboard, one out in the eighth and the Nationals ahead by 9-1, the first runner scored easily, but Milledge was thrown out at the plate. Third base coach Tony Beasley waved both runners home, never stopping his windmill as Milledge sprinted by.

The Pirates lost their 90th game, ninth time for that in the past 14 seasons, and there still are 27 to go.

The attendance of 30,263 was the smallest in memory for a SkyBlast event.

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