(Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images)

Since the beginning of the season, I've been watching the Washington Nationals play a very unique brand of baseball. Most of us wrote off last year's 59-102 debacle as a perfect storm, a confluence of off-years, green pitching and bad luck.

I mean, there is no way that the Nationals would repeat last year's .366 winning percent in 2009, right?

Right.

Heading into Friday's game with Atlanta, the Nationals are on pace to win just 48 games and are currently eight games ahead of Cleveland for the "honor" of securing the first pick in the MLB amateur draft for the second season in a row.

Wow. What an honor.

The Nationals are a much better team this year. Nick Johnson (.295-5-33) is healthy and outperforming the cabal of first baseman that the Nationals trotted out last season. Anderson Hernandez (.256-1-21) is playing far better than Felipe Lopez did a year ago.

Cristian Guzman (.318-3-18) continues to provide strong offense at short and Ryan Zimmerman (.296-13-44) is quickly making fans forget about his injury-riddled off year in 2008.

Adam Dunn (.260-20-56) and Josh Willingham (.288-9-18) are marked improvements over Ryan Langerhans and Austin Kearns.

And the pre-slump Elijah Dukes and the currently over-achieving Willie Harris in center have made it so very easy to forget about the since-departed Lastings Milledge. Only catcher hasn't been upgraded, and that's only because of Jesus Flores' injury.

And while we can moan and groan about the bullpen, it was just as bad last year.

In 2008, the starters that followed John Lannan were Tim Redding (10-11, 4.95), Odalis Perez (7-12, 4.34), Jason Bergman (2-11, 5.09) and Colin Balestar (3-7, 5.51).

Jordan Zimmermann, Shairon Martis, Ross Detwiler and Craig Stammen, though all green, have all shown flashes of brilliance and have pitched no worse than last year's cadre of the crappy. And Scott Olsen, even with his injury problems, was an upgrade from 2008.

And while the defense is still bad, at least it's not the very worst in the National League like last year. Currently, it's just the second worst.

So why have the Nationals gotten worse? Why have they gone from being an embarrassment to a laughing stock?

A few years back, I was a car salesman for our local General Motors dealership. Over the previous four years, I had been the top salesman each year. The other salesman were all career guys and the dealership made a lot of money.

One day, the owner retired and his son took over the business. He forced out the old-time sales managers and brought in a bunch of young, high-pressure guys. The sales staff didn't trust the new leadership, and with good reason. They were the prototypical jerks you hate to deal with when you try to buy a new car.

When things were difficult, we needed hugs and loves. What we got were swift kicks in the back side.

Within six months, my sales declined from 15 a month to seven. The other salespeople had similar drops in sales. We would have morning meetings where we'd be excoriated by the managers, threatened with our jobs, and made to feel totally worthless.

Eventually, the owner got wise and "retired" his son, got rid of the high pressure and returned the dealership to its former ways.

And our sales doubled.

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