As I type this, the Nats have finally gotten out of a horrendous 4th inning where Matt Chico imploded in record time, walking 3 and giving up several multi-base hits to allow the Padres to inflate their lead to 4 (score being 5-1 San Diego). I know the Nats are bad, but these types of innings are painful to watch. Up until that point, things had been going fairly well for Washington. Chico was pitching pretty well (3 innings of solid pitching with a working change-up and thus, an effective fastball that kept batters off balance), and while the Nats weren't generating tons of runs, they were up 1-0. But now all that has been washed away.
Chico's meltdown happened right before my very eyes. One minute he was locating his pitches fine. He wasn't striking guys out (only got 1 K tonight, I believe), and was relying heavily on the defense to rein in those flyballs everyone was hitting, but the work was getting done. Then he walked a batter or two and you could sense the panic creeping in. Then he gave up a triple to Khalil Greene and critical mass was reached fairly quickly. A sacrifice fly, a pinch hit by Blum and a double by Marcus Giles and bang! we've got ourselves a 5-1 deficit.
************At this point I stopped writing and saved the rest for work today*************
I felt bad for Chico and not just because his mom was in the stands watching him (they interviewed her minutes before the meltdown). He's a young guy who's got a lot of potential, some of which has already been seen this season. But he's been thrown in the deep end without the swimmies. He's being asked to be a Major League starter on a young team with little hope of getting out of the cellar of the NL East. Some would argue that this would aleviate some pressure to perform as well as a veteran, but I would argue the opposite. On a team like the Nats, where the Two Ryans (Church and Zimmerman) are viewed as clubhouse leaders along with The Chief, it's far too easy to stand out without trying to. This is even more pronounced on the Nats, where the starting pitching has been the object of much debate and abuse and analysis. That makes any successes (read Jason Bergmann and Shawn Hill) more worthy of celebration and any failures that much worse.
That being said, I think the performances from Bergmann and Hill have been fantastic and prove that just because the baseball writers and "analysts" say it's so, does not always make it so. I also think that while Chico is a good AA or AAA pitcher, he's nowhere near ready for MLB baseball. He's barely made it to the 5th inning in most of his starts and he only gets there in spite of himself. It's a tough row to hoe, but it mightbe time to sit him down. If for no other reason than to get a guy in there who can get to the 6th or 7th reliably (I know, a tall order for the Nats) and give the bullpen some rest.
On a different note, looks like Jim Bowden is getting restless, despite The Plan supposedly coming along fine. Yesterday the Nats sent Chris Snelling to Oakland for Ryan Langerhans. Langerhans has not been hitting particularly well this season…OK, he’s been sucking it up as of late. But, as was noted by Capital Punishment yesterday, lots of players have been struggling and Snelling, as promising as he was, wasn’t being used very effectively. In fact, he wasn’t really being used at all other than in some pinch hitting and limited left field platooning. And with Casto up from Columbus and clearly the favorite to play LF, Snelling had little real chance of seeing anything beyond a platoon arrangement out there. This, in turn, would have made it tougher for him to get out of his batting troubles, which would have helped to keep him second fiddle to Casto, and thus the sick cycle continues.
As it stands, Snelling is going to Oakland and he’ll probably do very well there. If the A’s are actively seeking a player, you have to think they have some crazy plan for him ala Scott Hatteberg (who was traded to Cincy in 2005 and has subsequently had two of his best seasons, batting average and OPS-wise, ever). So who knows what Chris Snelling will do? I do know that he wasn’t going to get to do it as a National, which is a shame.
Langerhans, however, seems on the surface (I honestly don’t know that much about him) to be a good complement to the left field of Kasto and Company. There are rumors that Langaerhans is being thought of as a first baseman, but I’ll believe that when I see it. And in the outfield he will probably end up being the 5th outfielder behind Church, Kearns, Casto and Nook Logan. However, he can play left, right or center well, which is ultimately why the Nationals are going to pick up an outfielder at this point. Langerhans is not going to save the ball club with his bat but he might be able to save some runs with his glove. Especially if Matt Chico is on the mound.
And on that note, I think I will check out the offer on today’s Nationals Insider and see how grossly overpriced the Ryan Langerhans jerseys are. Honestly, I know MLB is a shameless merchandiser, but the guy’s been on the team for like 13 minutes and they’re already hawking his jersey like it’s worth the $79.99.
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