Enhancement Talent

The Braves are a sad sight that we can now put behind us for a while. They're a lousy team, they're not trying, and they're about to pull off an awfully cynical relocation, but it was a hard-fought series nonetheless.

It's nothing to worry about. You don't want to be averaging three and a half runs a game, but the wins are the only thing that carries forward. The details of the performance are not predictive.

Our returning heroes (minus one center fielder) open the home schedule against the Miami Marlins, who were a real pain last year.

They had a 71-91 record, but managed 9-10 against the Nats, which is pretty good for a team that's not trying any harder than Atlanta. They had a couple guys in particular who made every game a trial.

First baseman Justin Bour looks like the first guy in your middle school who had a mustache, and he bullied the Nats like he was a couple years ahead of us, hormonally-speaking. He "slashed" MVP numbers against Washington (327/417/558), and I instinctively pulled my underwear out of my ass whenever I saw his face on the Jumbotron.

"Why are you hitting yourself, huh? You better not tell the assistant principal about this."

On the other end of the spectrum in every way imaginable is Ichiro, who's carrying on the baseball tradition that gave us Babe Ruth: Boston Brave, Ty Cobb: Philadelphia A, and Brad Wilkerson: Texas Ranger by playing out the string with Miami.

I say "playing" only our of respect to a baseball legend, because the scrawny bastard can't really play anymore. He hit .229 last year with what might actually have been negative power. Except that when he was up against my favorite team, he very nearly turned back into a real ballplayer - .286! Over 20% of his 2015 hits came against the Nats.

If you add up his MLB hits and his hits in Japan and throw in some spring trainings and extrapolate a couple full seasons against Washington, he's got to be damn near 5,000.