What the hell can you say?  It was Jose Fernandez.

That’s my general thought today, after a loss that could have been a win.  We wasted another great start from Matt Harvey?  What the hell can you say?  It was Jose Fernandez.

Our offense seemed to take a complete leave of its hitting sense, swinging at unhittable slider after unhittable slider?  What the hell can you say?  It was Jose Fernandez.

We got only one runner beyond second base, and failed to drive that runner home?  What the hell can you say?  It was Jose Fernandez.

We won the series and got another quality outing from Harvey out of it.  We hit well, in the two games we played that weren’t pitched by the freak with the slider who doesn’t lose at home, and we played three mostly quality games, a few days after we’d been written off as too injury-plagued to compete.

Sure, we should have won today, but you can’t win everyday; you can’t even win every game that you really should.  That’s an elementary lesson of baseball, one that we all learn within days or weeks of picking up the game, and one that is constantly reinforced.

So we lost.  Conforto hit well, Harvey pitched well, everyone fielded well, but we lost.  We did everything we could; it was simply unavoidable.

So we move on — namely, we move on to Pittsburgh, where Neil Walker prepares for his triumphant homecoming even as Jon Niese prepares to nervously face his old team, whose fans can’t possibly remember him all that kindly.  Meanwhile, we’ve got Matz, due for seven good starts after his bad one, ready to claim his eighth win and advance further toward his Rookie of the Year award.

In short, we lost, so we move on.

What the hell else can you say?