Well, the Nats lost again today and got swept for the second straight series. They’re on their longest losing streak since moving to DC, now at eight games; now that their disastrous 1-9 road trip is over, they get to face the Marlins on Friday. We’ll see how they do then, but right now, it’s not looking too good. The pitching’s been decent, but the defense is still leaky (should be looking up here, since having Guzman and Logan back helps) and the hitting’s been even worse (probably looking down here, since having Guzman and Logan back hurts).
It seems to me that the Nats have a number of guys who are overly aggressive at the plate, and they have those guys in the absolute worst spots in the batting order for that sort of behavior. Some of this is by necessity — who else is going to hit leadoff if not Lopez? And Nick Johnson, the most patient hitter they have, is hurt. However, having Guzman back only highlights the problem — the Nats have a number two hitter that hardly ever draws walks and very often swings at the first pitch he can get to. That sort of behavior doesn’t lead to very many baserunners, which means that Zimmerman (who’s forced to hit higher in the order than he should be at this point in his career) is often coming up with two outs and nobody on these days and the Nats are not getting the benefit of his emergence from his start-of-the-year slump.
I can’t remember more than two games that the Nats have scored more than six runs in a game, and in this day and age, that’s pretty sad. Until they can solve that, they’ll lose a ton more games than they should, considering how well the starters have been pitching. Their starters are getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.71 runs of support per game; even though they’ve lowered their ERA significantly since the horrid first week of the season, it’s still around 4 or so, so they’re losing a lot of 4-2 and 5-3 games. It’s gotta be pretty depressing to the pitching staff to know that the team’s pretty much out of the game if they get down 3-0.
Oh, well. At least a new stadium is coming, huh? Yeah, whatever. I’m as excited as the next guy to have a brand-spankin’-new ballpark to go to, but personally, I’d rather see some wins. A lot of them.