Haruspicy

That was a fun weekend. It's fun to score runs, it's fun to throw an almost-perfect game, and it's really fun to kill another team's momentum. I'm not sure I have the numbers exactly right and I don't care, but the Pirates had won eight in a row until they stumbled into town just like a sacred cow.

That happened to the Nats in Cincinnati at the end of May, and things hadn't been quite right since.

Are they quite right now? That remains to be seen. We're back in first place, but that has as much to do with the cruddiness of our rivals as our own quality. Between them, the Nats and the Mets have let Atlanta get to within two games of first place.

All the Braves have done to deserve that is not implode like the rest of the division. They haven't had their second baseman standing in the middle of the diamond yelling at their befuddled coaching staff, and they haven't hired some random hillbilly to be their manager. That's good enough for almost first place in the National League East.

So, you know, we'll have to see. I know that's not a satisfying answer, but I have the luxury of giving unsatisfactory answers since I don't do this for a living. I had the radio on yesterday, and someone was asking Mark Zuckerman if the Pirates series was a turning point, like the big comeback against the Braves.

The obvious quibble there is that if the Braves comeback were a turning point, we wouldn't be asking if this is another one. Did all that momentum or whatever only last a month? And now, like, the Nats beat up on the Pirates so bad that it refilled their spirit meter, so they're good until August?

But Zuckerman had to pretend there was something to that idea, because that's his job. You have to imagine that the ups and downs of a baseball season are telling a story, and that the last chapter can help you predict what's going to happen next.

That's not how it works in real life - Chekhov's gun probably isn't going to go off. If you're trying to figure out what's going to happen tomorrow based on what happened yesterday, you might as well open up a sheep and see what it looks like in there.