There's That Sucking Sound Again

I’m seriously beginning to wonder where the Washington Nationals get off thinking they have what it takes to be in the major leagues.

The one area of the game where they’ve really excelled as a team is handing the opposition three-game winning streaks, which is incredibly generous, but not cool if you’re a Nationals fan. At times this season, it seems as though they Washington-Nationals/photo//090418/483/d8e22645422149ee874339672cda9adc/" target="_blank">can’t even spell their team’s name correctly, let alone swing a bat and field a baseball.

Hanging out in the dark, creepy basement of the National League East, the Nationals are sitting 6.5 games behind the division-leading Florida Marlins (whose bandwagon I’ve pretty much abandoned this week) with a 4-14 record.

Heading into Tuesday night’s game where 0-2 lefty John Lannan will face another 0-2 lefty, Cole Hamels and the Philadelphia Phillies, Washington is coming off a wild game from the day before which was highlighted by two Philly grand slams.

The Nats got all excited when they scored four times in the eighth inning to go up 11-7 Monday, just to see Raul Ibanez (the man who’s helping Cheesesteak Territory forget Pat Burrell) cap a six-run rally in the bottom half. Thanks a lot, Joel Hanrahan. Third blown save this season? That’ll do.

It doesn’t matter much when your team hits five bombs in the game if your pitchers are just going to erase the effort by surrendering 13 runs on 14 hits. Defensively, they led the NL with 123 errors last season, and have already committed 18 in 17 games this season. There were no errors during the game in question, I just wanted to point out that this is obviously not the track they’d like to be on.

Maybe they just miss D’Meat Hook? I know I do. Dmitri Young is beginning his rehab assignment with the AAA Syracuse Chiefs, which should last somewhere in the ballpark of 20 days. When he’s ready to come back, there might even be room on the roster for a 35-year-old bat boy since Nick Johnson doesn’t show any signs of cooling off in the near future.  

However, anything seems possible in D.C. these days. Cristian Guzman will return from his hamstring strain any day now, too. You know, he hit for the cycle once, and they need all the help they can get at this point. You think I’m joking.

So, why do they suck so bad? Well, let’s turn to the all-knowing Yahoo! Answers page for an explanation, where one user begs the very same question,

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“Why do the Nationals suck so bad?  Don’t say pitching because we don’t have any good hitters either! When we’re on if we get ANY balls in the air they get caught by the outfielders!”

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The one and only answer, voted best by Yahoo! users simply reads,

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“They don’t have any good players.”

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Fair enough, but I beg to differ, pal. In fact, there are two little glimmers of hope in this mangled D.C. mess. Ryan Zimmerman hit two of his team’s five long balls Monday, extending his hitting streak to a big league-best 16 games. Hang on to that guy. 

The other Zim(m), Jordan Zimmermann, shined again in his second major league start by allowing just one run in 5 1/3 innings against the New York Mets on Sunday to snap a 16-game losing streak away from Nationals Park. Zimm bounced back from a 30-pitch first inning in front of a crowd that was roughly 40 times the size of any he’d ever pitched in front of at Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Way to go, guys.

Anyway, I hope Manny Acta doesn’t get all salty again this season and start making random players cut their hair “to restore order” just because he’s balding and they only have four wins.  That would be a shame, since he’s going to get canned anyhow.

*Sooze is a Sports Jabber contributor.  You can view more of her work at Babes Love Baseball

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