Well, this isn't exactly how any of us saw the first two series of the season playing out. The first five games have been full of costly errors, lousy hitting, average relief pitching, excellent starting pitching, and a few questionable decisions. The hitting has been by far the biggest issue through the first give game into the season. At points its almost been unwatchable. It's like I'm re-watching the Nationals play the Giants in the playoffs last year. Bottom line, you can't win baseball games 1-0 or 2-1 every night, and that's what the Nationals are trying to do right now.
I understand that the lineup is missing its 1 through 3 hitters, but the guys who are in the lineup because of injuries are still expected to be Major League hitters. None of us have seen that so far. Michael Taylor has been the best of the bunch and he's a rookie so he is the player I expected the least production out of. Don't get me wrong, we've seen Taylor struggle, (he's struck out 7 times in just 21 at bats) but he's also shown flashes of how good he can be. Second base has been a black hole where Dan Uggla and Danny Espinosa have combined to go 3 for 18 to start the season. One of those hits came from Espinosa who was curiously hitting left handed last night, which is odd because everybody was under the assumption that he was strictly hitting right handed now. Regardless, 3 for 18 isn't going to cut it and neither is the 2 for 16 that we've seen out of the left fielders. The major culprit there is Tyler Moore, who I'm rooting for, but 0 for 10 is abysmal.
At a time where we needed our star players to show up, they've gone missing, just like last October. Ryan Zimmerman, although he's played a good first base so far, is 2 for 19 from the clean up spot. Just as bad, Ian Desmond is 3 for 18. The difference between the two is Zimmerman is playing solid defense, Desmond is making costly error after costly error. If it weren't for bad defense, the Nationals would most likely have at least one, maybe two more wins under their belt. The poor starting rotation through their first time through the rotation has a 1.99 ERA. They're 1-3 on the year.
Quick side rant regarding the game on Friday against the Phillies: In a 1-0 game in the bottom of the 7th inning, Gio was still pitching. I'm fine with that, but Gio proceeded to walk two and then hit a batter, so he left with the bases loaded and one out. First of all, we all know that Gio has some control issues. He pitched a gem, but when you send him back out there for the 7th inning in a 1-0 game, you need one or two of your best relievers warming up in the pen to come in if Gio runs into trouble. Aaron Barrett and Matt Thornton should have been warming up. Instead, Matt Williams let Gio pitch into trouble and he's left in one batter too late (possibly two depending on how short of a string you want to have). As soon as Gio walked that second batter though, he was done. He never should have even been in the game to hit Andres Blanco and load the bases. Second problem, it's still a 1-0 game. We hadn't given up the lead yet and double play gets you out of the inning with a 1-0 lead. So who comes in? Xavier Cedeno. What? If you needed a lefty in that situation don't you think Thornton is your guy? He's your best left handed reliever. You also could have gone with Barrett who is a ground ball and strike out pitcher. Instead, Cedeno comes in, promptly gives up a two run single and then hits Ben Revere. What an outing. Another wasted quality start and Gio is charged with 3 runs that probably should have never happened.
Dan Kolko pointed out last night that scoring throughout the league has been down through the first five games of the year, down almost a full run from last year. That's great and all, but on average teams were still scoring nearly 4 runs per game this year. The Nationals have scored 9 runs TOTAL, which is lowest in the Major Leagues and they're hitting .183 as a team, again, lowest in the Majors. Those stat lines are eerily similar to those of last October when the Nats hit .164 and scored 9 runs in 4 games. It's a very small sample size, so we can't get too worked up about it, but at the same time, the Nationals schedule was very favorable early in the season. The Nationals have proceeded to drop the first two series because they can't score and now are staring at a sweep to the projected last place and possibly worst team in baseball, the Phillies.
Going into Boston at 1-5 or 2-4 isn't how we wanted this to start, but its the position we're in now. Nothing you can do about it. We have to start hitting though or this could get really ugly. As I said when we signed Scherzer, it doesn't matter how great your starting pitching is unless you can score some runs. Our starting pitching has been as good as advertised, but I don't care if we have 5 guys that are as good as Clayton Kershaw in our rotation, we aren't going to win games 1-0 every day. Werth is expected back sometime this week, which will be a huge boost. The schedule gets tougher though with 6 of the next 10 against the Red Sox and then the Cardinals. Now is as good a time as any to start hitting and working counts. Let's get a win today and then worry about trying to win a series in Boston.
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