VIERA, Fla. -- After Tuesday's game, Nationals manager Frank Robinson told the media he wasn't overly concerned about the team's 22-12 loss to the Marlins because most of the players who played in the game will not make the team out of Spring Training.

However, according to two sources, Robinson held a team meeting on Wednesday morning, scolding his players for the way they played on Tuesday. Robinson told his players they didn't play with enough energy, and he said that it didn't make any sense that they couldn't catch the ball and were making fundamental mistakes.

In that game, the Nationals committed four errors and made some mental mistakes. Outfielders often missed the cutoff man and had problems catching fly balls because of windy conditions. Infielders had a tough time turning double plays and missed pop flies, while the pitchers were unable to consistently throw strikes. Although his team scored 12 runs, Robinson didn't like the fact that his players were swinging at the first pitch.

"Frank told them that in his 50 years in baseball, he had never seen a game played the way they played it [on Tuesday]. He was very upset," according to one source at the meeting.

Robinson declined to comment on the meeting.

The Nationals played a little better on Wednesday against the Cardinals, but they still had problems catching the ball and lost, 7-4, in 10 innings. Ryan Zimmerman made two errors, while Marlon Byrd and Josh Labandeira made one each. Byrd made the biggest error of the game, allowing a hit by John Gall to go by him in center field, which enabled the go-ahead run to score.

There likely should have been a fifth error in the game when Kory Casto booted a grounder in the 10th inning, but the official scorer gave Cardinals second baseman Junior Spivey a two-run single.

There was a difference of opinion on how the Nationals performed on the field on Wednesday. After having a 10-minute meeting with Robinson, general manager Jim Bowden was visibly upset.

Bowden spoke about how embarrassed he was about the way the Nationals played the last three games and that there will be major player cuts in dramatic numbers on Friday morning. On Monday, Washington played split-squad games. One group was pounded by the Astros, 11-1, while another played to a 0-0 tie with the Dodgers.

"I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't have any criticism about effort. I don't have any criticism about the work ethic. I don't want to be embarrassed," Bowden said. "Pitching and defense is extremely important, and those are the things you could be embarrassed on, and I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't have to be embarrassed.

"We'll start to get serious here and give people opportunities. ... It's got to end, because we don't want to be embarrassed anymore. It's time to step it up to the next level. We'll get through the split squad [games on Thursday] and then we'll have massive cuts, and we go from there."

Robinson felt the effort was much better on Wednesday, but he didn't like the fact that the team still had problems catching the ball.

"The effort was there. I liked the way we played until the last inning. We were a little raggedy. Overall, I thought we played a good ballgame," Robinson said. "We didn't do much offensively. I thought the pitching was pretty good.

"If we make the plays on defense, it would have been different ballgame. We should be able to make those plays."

The Nationals have a record of 1-6-1 during the exhibition season. It doesn't help that a handful of his pitchers are either at the World Baseball Classic or injured, leaving Robinson to use mostly Minor Leaguers. Brian Lawrence is out for the season, while Ryan Drese is slowly preparing for the year after coming off shoulder surgery. Relievers Chad Cordero and Gary Majewski are representing the United States and Luis Ayala is representing Mexico in the World Baseball Classic.

Also, two of their better offensive players -- Brian Schneider and Alfonso Soriano -- are at the World Baseball Classic.