The Nationals Report

How much money is it going to take to buy some wins here. Most people are probably going to go down the easy path and say things like...

• The Lerner's are cheap
• Fire Lenny Harris
• Fire Randy St. Claire
• Jim Bowden is mismanaging the team
• Manny Acta is mismanaging the team

Well not me folks. You can blast the organization all you want but the fact remains that none of those people play the game. Not one of them.

Everybody is looking at the middle of this lineup and saying WTF mate? Why can't these guys hit. The default answer from pretty much everyone is that its all Lenny Harris' fault. He's trying to make guys flip the ball the opposite way. I think those people overestimate the importance of a hitting coach. Hitting coaches don't make good offenses, good hitters do. Right now we're just not hitting well, and it has little to do with coaching. Ryan Zimmerman is obviously trying to do way to much right now. He's trying to be Atlas after hitting up Gold's Gym a few times, its not going to happen. Things started to look up for him last night though as he stopped check-swinging at the first pitch. If you're not going to swing at the first pitch, study the pitcher, who cares if its a strike, now you know what it looks like. And that's exactly what he did last night. As for Nick Johnson, he got off to a hot start, went into a lull (not nearly as bad as Z-man or Kearns') and finally got a hold of one last night. Right now I think it's really a case of one guys struggles spreading. If you know Kearns isn't going to get a hit, you don't have to give Nick Johnson good pitches. And I think we've seen that, Johnson is regularly getting ahead on the first two pitches but struggling to put the ball in play on those hitter's counts. I'm never the kind of guy to be gloom and doom and I don't think this type of hitting will continue all year, the players are just too good. And all the coaching in the world can't take away your talent.

I'm going to leave the pitching staff alone right now. They are what they are and we have to live with it. (Lannan's my boy)

If you go back a couple posts you will see me waxing poetic about the great defense that our team had been putting on display through the first two weeks of the season. Well the day Wily Mo Pena came back into the lineup, that all went to hell. I think he drugging the water cooler with suck-ness. For a guy so large, WMP moves extremely well. But, all the speed in the world can't make up for taking bad routes. Also, his running stride seems very bouncy and I think it may be causing him to look focus of ball when it's in the air. I dunno maybe I'm just imagining things. One thing I'm not imagining though is his awfulness in the field. And its spreading evidence by Belliard's gaffe last night. I actually like Belliard as a fielder as he turns double plays lightning quick. My only knock on him is that he plays it Mr. Casual a little too often. To make up for his lack of range, he's always got one foot in the grass. This gives him plenty of time to work with balls hit straight at him. In my opinion too much time. It lulls him into a false sense of security that he can just take this play off. For a team like ours, we can't afford to be taking anything for granted.

*soapbox done*

Take heart Nats fans, things are never as good or as bad as they seem. We are (numerically speaking) the worst team in baseball right now but I haven't lost faith. If you remember, many baseball pundits predicted the NL East would be the toughest division in baseball this year, and that's pretty much what we're seeing.

There's still 146 yet to play, and we can't lose em all!