After a horrible road trip to San Diego and Milwaukee, and Chicago that resulted in 8 losses out of nine games, the Nats seemed like a different team tonight. Unfortunately I only got to see the first three innings of the game because my girlfriend and I went to a restaurant/bar in the hope of relaxing with some live music and a chill atmosphere. Long story short, it was NOT that kind of place and we ended up going all the way out to Canton to go to a low key Starbucks nearby. Bummer, but she’s auditioning for the Baltimore Opera Chorus tomorrow morning so relaxation was of prime importance.
Anyway, I missed the Nats’ 6-0 victory over the Marlins! I can’t believe it. I got to see the first inning where the bats came alive. I only wish I had been able to see the rest of the game. No worries as I’ll get to see the whole thing tomorrow…let’s just hope they can pull out two wins in a row!
I have to say, this was the most pleased I have been with the entire Nats performance all season. As Bob Carpenter and Don Sutton were apt to point out, the Nats have only been blown out a few times (once by the Fish, so take that Southern Florida Expansion Team #2 ). For the most part they’ve been competitive in their losses, which doesn’t change their record, of course. And it was mainly the surprisingly good pitching and decent defense that kept them in the games. God knows they weren’t scoring runs (averaging 2.5 runs per game is not the definition of an offensive juggernaught).
But tonight it all came together for one glorious game. As Gus Simsky says in Kevin Costner Baseball Movie #459 (a.k.a. For Love of the Game, an underrated baseball film, actually), “Right now, we don’t stink…We’re the best team in baseball right now, tonight.” OK, so maybe the best team in baseball is going too far, but Shawn Hill had an embryonic no-hitter going when he left the game with a sore elbow. So, in a very, very technical way, for about an hour, the Nationals might have been the best team in baseball. But probably not. They were the best team on the field at RFK tonight and that’s what counts. Let’s just hope that there’s no bad news on Hill’s elbow tomorrow. I mean, I know Jerome Williams is coming back for Tuesday’s game against the Braves (am I the only one not looking forward to that game?). But really, that is cold comfort to me, especially with Patterson on the 15 Day DL (has he been hit by a falling piece of space debris yet? That’s the only freak injury left for him, I think), I’ll wait before pinning my hopes on a pitcher who was 0-4 with a 6.11 ERA before going on the DL and then having just one outing at Columbus. Call me crazy.
And 15 hits? Insane! The Nats scored more runs in tonight’s game than in their last three games combined. Z Man went 1-3 with an RBI, raising his BA to a respectable .257. OPS is still sluggish, but it’ll come up. I have faith. All in all, a great night.
On a more macro level (yeah, I totally work in Finance), there’s a terrific set of posts on Nats320 where SBF sat down and talked with Stan Kasten about the team and the future, etc. I’m not sure how SBF gets such insane access to players and staff alike, but I’m sure it has something to do with being a season ticket holder and being completely insane when it comes to the Nats. I applaud that unbridled enthusiasm, for sure. He’s in many ways the euphoric doppelganger to the author of Capitol Punishment. Both are Nats fans in their own rights, but are on very different ends of the fandom spectrum. Anyway, check out the post.
On another macro note, it seems that Mitchell Page, the Nats now former hitting coach, is taking a leave of absence for personal reasons. I have no basis for speculating whether this had anything to do with the team’s deplorable batting thus far in the season. The official front office line is that the two are unrelated. And certainly, there’s little correlation between the Nats appointing their new hitting coach, Lenny Harris and the team’s performance this evening, despite the opining of Carpenter and Sutton to the contrary. The guy was promoted three hours before the game. If he can do that in three hours, the Nats should score roughly 68 runs tomorrow night and around 1.3 million by the end of the season. I’ll check back tomorrow and see if we’re on track.
Regardless of the reason, we all hope for the best with Page’s problems, of course. But I also hope that Harris can find some way to maintain a little bit of this offensive momentum for the time being until the bats start up on their own. We’ll see
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