The season isn't even a quarter of the way done yet, but the Nationals appear to have found the team that will give them as much trouble as anyone in the National League -- the Florida Marlins, who are turning into the kind of young team the Nationals aspire to be.

Florida beat Washington for the sixth time in seven games on Friday night, giving the Nationals trouble with their free-swinging lineup. Tim Redding, who turned in one of his worst performances of the year against Florida last month, again got in trouble trying to work around the Marlins' talented young hitters.

He gave up his third hit of the year -- in five at-bats -- to Hanley Ramirez in the fourth inning, when Ramirez "basically called my bluff" in guessing Redding wouldn't throw an off-speed pitch on a 1-2 count. That double scored the Marlins' first run of the night, and Ramirez's walk set up Redding's second disastrous sixth inning of the year against Florida.

"Getting into the sixth inning and getting the leadoff guy on seems to be a repeating track with me right now," Redding said. "At the end of the day, when I go back and I'm going through the game in my head, it's one of the glaring things that's always coming up."

MARLINS 7, NATIONALS 3: Florida took a 1-0 lead in the first inning, added two more in the fourth and blew the game open with a four-run sixth Friday. All that was plenty for starter Ricky Nolasco, who allowed just one run on four hits in six innings while striking out six.

The Nationals had several chances to catch the Marlins, but left the bases loaded twice.

Jorge Cantu went 2-for-4 with two RBIs for Florida. Cristian Guzman, Lastings Milledge and Nick Johnson all had two hits for the Nationals, but Washington's third through fifth hitters were stranded in scoring position three times.

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