Arbitratiomancy

Did you hear the news that Bryce Harper knows how much he'll be making in 2018? Did you read anything into it?

It's none of my business, but I think you should resist that impulse.

I understand it, really. What could be more important to a Nats fan than Bryce Harper's long-term plans? And when there's something that important that you have no control over, you start looking everywhere for hints.

It's like when some cavemen really needed it to rain. Like, if it didn't they would die, which might even be more important than signing Harper. Anthropologists tell us it went like this:

Cave Man #1: "Dude, if it doesn't rain we're going to die. You think it's gonna rain?"
Cave Man #2: "Beats me."
CM1: "Come on, what do you think?"
CM2: "Man, I don't know. Leave me alone. I'm trying to draw that time I stabbed an aurochs on this wall over here."
CM1: "Sure, but do you think it's going to rain?"
CM2: "OK, fine. Look. You know there are always clouds when it rains? Clearly whoever makes the rain come likes clouds. Now get out of here."
CM1: "THAT'S IT! I'm going to find something that looks like a cloud to kill. Then it'll rain!"
Sheep: "Well, shit."

This majestic beast got hella stabbed.

Feel free to predict the future from the flight of birds or whatever, but the birds don't have anything to tell you.

When I said nothing could be more important to a Nats fan than Harper, I was thinking long-term. In the here and now, holy crap something has to happen with this bullpen.

We all knew going in that the Nats considered blowing two leads a week to be an unavoidable but acceptable result of the construction of this year's roster. It even made sense to me, but that was before the games started, when it was easier to be philosophical.

This has turned out to be difficult to watch.

I don't have a point here or anything. I'm just mad.