Want

The Tigers have given up, and that could be good news for the Nationals. They might be convinced to disgorge a Cuban for us.

I wanted Aroldis Chapman, but we got Jonathan Papelbon. That's fine, really. But while Papelbon solves one of the problems I wanted, I still have a hankering for:

• Outfield help
• A Cuban with an inexplicable first name

Well looky here - the Tigers just put Yoenis Cespedes on the block.

This has even less of a chance of happening than the Chapman thing. I mean, you can't disrespect a veteran like Jayson by acquiring someone who plays his position but way better than he does. It's not about winning the World Series; it's about respect.

Speaking of respect, Drew Storen is all pissed off because he's not closer anymore.

I'm not going to make fun of him. Of course he's angry. I would be too, were I in his position. No one blames Storen for wanting to be the closer.

But look, human society is, like, a huge unwieldy pile of every individual's preferences, and they're not all going to fit together. All these things need to be balanced against one another. No one gets everything he wants; some desires, as reasonable as they may be, can't be fulfilled.

Drew Storen's problem doesn't matter to anyone but Drew Storen. It is impossible to care.

Sorry, dude. Except that I'm not sorry. I can't even care that much. Just keep your head down and do your job and you'll get your eight million or whatever dollars next year.

Burden

Here's an awkward question: Are we bad fans?

By "we," I mean "y'all." "All y'all," to be less specific. Not me - I'm definitely a bad fan. One of the worst. I only go to games when there's a Livan-related trinket available.

The evidence that Nats fans are bad at being Nats fans is mounting. Sure, it's all circumstantial, but we're not looking at whether the fan base is going to prison, only whether it has bragging rights over Cincinnati or Phoenix or wherever. The burden of proof on this one is light as a feather.

We call it the fan base to make it seem bigger, by the way. You don't want to call and say the fan is going to be there. We put "base" on the end of it.

Some blog intended to help the SEO of a site that's trying to sell you after-market tickets put together a hell of scientific study about fan base enthusiasm, factoring in attendance and ticket price and even diseases of the modern age like Facebook and Twitter engagement.

It's the .48 that gets me. You can't round up.

We're terrible at this stuff! Are you doing your part? Make sure to follow @Nationals on Twitter with both the real account with your name on it AND the one with the funny pseudonym you use to troll desperate semi-celebrities.

Then there was this story about TV ratings. Ratings for baseball are pretty great everywhere, and the good news is that around here they're well up from back when they were under nine thousaaaaaaaaand.

The bad news is, on a per capita ratings-type basis, we're getting outdrawn by damn near everyone. Even Baltimore! Have you seen what they're doing up there? Playing in an empty ballpark, Steve Pearce at second base, running out of Hawaiian shirts before I got there - it's been a complete debacle.

It looks a little better as a counting stat rather than a rate stat - 67,000 butts in their own seats per game - but still. We're 19th out of 30.

The attendance is actually pretty good. After a pretty rough start (2005: 8th out of 16) and rougher middle (2010: 14th out of 16), we're up to 4th. We're number four!

Based on the available facts, I conclude that Nats are not terrible at being Nats fans. Rather, they are rational actors who respond to incentives and whatever you call the opposite of incentives.

If you offer them Shake Shack and Livan bobblehead dolls, they go to the game. If you offer them Bob Carpenter, they switch over to Ancient Aliens.

PS Make sure to check this out, where Wm. Yurasko makes a pretty convincing case that Aroldis Chapman would be only the third-greatest Cuban in Nats history. He also has a line about Chapman's fastball vis-à-vis Jayson Werth's reckless and imprisonable disregard for all living things that I wish I'd thought of and which I now cannot rip off since I've made it clear that I know about it.

Utopia

That was a close one. We were a baby's head's breadth away from disaster.

If it weren't for Michael A. Taylor, a man with the body of a man and the head of a baby's head, driving in a couple runs in the 8th and then stealing second and scoring another one, we'd be in real trouble: headed to Pittsburgh to face a superior team while only one game ahead of the damn Mets, who refuse to acknowledge the Nationals as their betters and stop trying.

Note how his hand is too big for his head. Because it is a baby's head. The head of a baby.

Thanks to Taylor, we're living in some kind of Elysian Shangri-La-Ass Utopia: headed to Pittsburgh to face a superior team while two games ahead of the damn Mets.

So things could be better, and my prescription hasn't changed. We need some offense. We need Aroldis Chapman. We need to set up a GoKickMe so we can afford Aroldis Chapman.

We'll see what happens. I'm just going to sit here pushing myself back into the sofa cushions as I watch my nightmares come true.

The Charoldis Fund

On Monday I laid out a mathematical case that the Nationals should acquire Reds closer Aroldis Chapman. The math included numbers such as "101," "103," and even "106." Those numbers are irrefutable.

The counter-argument contains some much larger numbers, such as "176 million" and "210 million." This argument consists of the Nationals payroll and the money promised to Max Scherzer to induce him to throw his no-hitters for Washington.

The counter-argument is not being made publicly, but unfortunately it's being made by the only people whose opinion matters - the pack of Lerners that signs the checks.

It was revealed last month that the Lerners think they've spent quite enough on this team, and any mid-season improvements are going to have be more or less free, which means they more or less aren't going to happen.

The Nationals’ owners, despite being among the wealthiest in the sport, are reluctant to add payroll in the middle of a season, according to major-league sources.

So that's that.

Or is it?

We're living in the future, and while we don't have flying cars or colonies on Mars or double ties, we do have crowdfunding. If you can get a whole bunch of people to pitch in a few bucks apiece, pretty soon you have Chapman money.

This futuristic method of fleecing suckers has already accomplished so much. Among other things, a whole bunch of people pitching in a few dollars apiece have:

1. Saved the Icelandic goats, evidently the stars of an episode of Game of Thrones, from non-dragon-related extinction.
2. Sent apparent musician Amanda Palmer a million dollars so she could make a record and pay musicians in hugs.
3. Allowed Who's Your Caddy? executive producer Chris Roberts to escape his high-flying Hollywood career so he could follow his dream of making Wing Commander again but this time spending $80 million dollars to do it.

These are the winners in the new crowd-funded economy. One of them throws a hundred miles an hour, one of them is a goat, and the other two robbed drama club kids and nerds.

I'm very nearly serious about this. What if the Nationals made it known that, gee, we almost have a trade worked out for a high impact player who can put us over the top, but we need just a little more money. Click here to donate and make it happen!

Are there rules against this? I'm sure they aren't allowed to mention the specifics of what you'd be paying for. They probably couldn't even do something crafty like using pseudonyms - you know, "Charoldis Apman" or whatever.

That, however, can be solved very neatly by leaking information to friendly writers. "Sources say the Nats are close to acquring a reliever whose name rhymes with 'Chardolis Apman'" - that's the whole reason Ken Rosenthal exists.

It's not like shame would hold them back. They're willing to charge damn near 300 dollars (American!) for an Ian Desmond jersey. Setting up a GoKickMe or whatever to raise bullpen money is far less objectionable.

Even Bolsinger

The Nationals lost two of three to the Dodgers over the weekend, and it has me worried.

I saw about half of those three games on Saturday. There's nothing I love more than a single admission one-and-a-half-header, so after the lights went out on Friday I made sure to get myself a seat in the very hottest part of the stadium, rendering me a deep mahogany color. Blog game George Hamilton.

The narrative seems to be that the Nats ran into a "gauntlet of aces," so who can blame them for losing? The Dodgers threw reigning MVP Clayton Kershaw, unpleasant weirdo Zack Greinke, and even Mike Bolsinger at us - we should be happy we won one of them!

Which, I mean, yeah, it's tough to hit Kershaw and Greinke, just as it's tough to watch Kershaw's Subway commercial or (I'm guessing) have a conversation with Greinke.

I. Like. To. Eat. A. Sandwich. With. A. Steady. Diet. Of. Fastballs. Oh God I'm so lonely

But what do we think is going to happen when we get to the playoffs? Hitting tough pitchers is how you win a World Series, dammit. The opposition isn't going to be running Jerome Williams out there in October.

If you can't score runs off good pitchers, you lose. My evidence for this is the 2014 postseason, in which the Nationals couldn't even score runs off the remains of Tim Hudson and Jake Peavy, and they lost.

So this series loss is not something to brush off as bad starting rotation timing. The playoffs are nothing but bad timing. They don't let the Bolsingers pitch in October; you have to hit the good ones.

This winds up being a happy corollary to my Aroldis Chapman longings. As I baked in the right field sun, I was musing on how odd it was that the Nats were starting Clint Robinson against Kershaw. I don't mean to pick on Robinson, really. He's a great story! And he's producing, which is more than you can say for some of the jockjaws on this team. Of all the people who have ever played baseball, he's definitely one of the twenty best who are currently on Washington's active roster. He's a glittering gem of a baseball professional.

But you have to think that any manager - even Matt Williams! - would rather not play Robinson, who is a marginal major leaguer who bats left-handed, against Kershaw, who is the best left-handed pitcher, no matter how dry and clinical his Subway commercials come off.

I can't even blame Williams for this one, though. The only other option in left was Matt den Dekker, who also bats lefty. Personally, I would have given den Dekker the start in the second game on Saturday, since about 40 minutes previously he'd won the first game of the day by den Dekking one into the upper den Dekk, but whatever. Williams had no choice but to pencil in a marginal lefty hitter against Kershaw.

The Reds aren't selling only pitchers. Remember Marlon Byrd? He hits right-handed, he's making more money than the Reds want to spend, and he was a National as recently as 2006. All of that screams "throw-in in a Chapman trade" to me.

Ten years ago, he saved us from starting Endy Chavez every day. He can save us again.

Seriously, a Robinson/Byrd platoon in left field every day goes a long way toward solving Priority Number One for the low cost of about three million dollars. It ain't my money.

Artist's conception of what it would look like if Marlon Byrd played for the Nats again. 

"Chapman" Means "Peddler." "Aroldis" Doesn't Mean Anything.

The Reds have given up, and that could be good news for the Nationals. It won't them from stop beating the hell out of the Nats all the time, but they might be convinced to disgorge a Cuban for us.

They've made it clear that they wish to be done paying Johnny Cueto and Mike Leake, but we don't need either of them. We got so many starters. Joe Ross isn't in AAA if he's in an organization that needs starters.

What we need is Cincinnati's slow-walking, smooth-talking, triple-digit-fastball-throwing closer, Mr. Aroldis Chapman.

The important thing here is the numbers on the left. They all start with a 1 and have three digits.

I know what you're saying - We have a closer! Drew Storen isn't the kind of guy you trust to close a game you really, really care about, but he's a proven closer.

I'm totally with you on that. The bullpen is, in my opinion and why would I have anything other than my opinion on this here blog, this team's third-highest priority.

Priority number one is offensive production from left field/first base. We're hamstrung here because Jayson Werth and Ryan Zimmerman are 1. Going to come back sooner or later and 2. Have too much seniority to replace.

Do you remember when they called up Zimmerman and made him play shortstop because they didn't want to insult Vinny Fricking Castilla? It's been ten years, and I'm still holding a grudge. It's not the same people making the decisions these days, but some of the ideas linger. They're not going to make Werth park his jailbird ass on the bench just because they have someone who can hit to play left. Therefore, what point is there in acquiring someone who can hit to play left?

Priority number two won't be addressed because it would be really weird to fire a manager at this point in the season, even if he's Matt Williams. I think even I might be against it. Tony La Russa isn't walking through that door.

So that leaves us with priority number three: the bullpen, and that's why I want Aroldis Chapman to become the second-greatest Cuban in the history of the Washington Nationals.

You can work around having two closers. Let them take turns. Get the platoon advantage. Tell Storen to deal with it because the other guy is way better. Just do it. I don't care what it costs.

I ask the Nationals: Do you want a World Series, or do you want us to think you want a World Series?

Wouldn't it be nice to see this at Nationals Park? Feed your bullpen. Feed it.

Items

The Nationals aren't very good. Maybe you noticed! They keep losing baseball games. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming they know they shouldn't do that.

Recent developments may offer us a way out.

Item: The Nats have talked to the Cincinnati Reds about Aroldis Chapman. They won't get him, but wouldn't that be great? Chapman throws harder than two Livans put together, and that's part of the reason that getting him won't be inexpensive.

Even though this probably isn't going to happen, it is a sign that Nats management realizes that this is the time to go all in and make sure they win the division. The bullpen could definitely use shoring up, although my priority would be left field. Chapman, though, is good enough that you don't really worry about that. Get him.

Item: The Padres just fired manager Bud Black. I don't stay up late enough to watch a lot of Padres games. Actually, what makes me think I'd watch Padres games if I were up at three in the morning? I need to stop making excuses for why I don't watch Padres games. Gotta be true to myself. About Padres games.

Anyway, I can't speak from personal observation, but Bud Black seems to be a well-regarded manager, even though that can't possibly be his real name. He must have gotten started in a punk band, right? The point is that he's available, and he's apparently pretty good.

Which works out great, because my list of areas where the Nats need improvement goes like this:

1. Left field
2. Bullpen
3. Whatever it is Bud Black does