Problem or Problem Problem

Michael A. Taylor is killing us out there.

A leadoff man - it's likely you knew this - is supposed to get on base, and Taylor is doing that every fifth time he gets the chance. You don't want to read much into one at-bat, but when he struck out Monday night with the bases loaded - well, it hurt because it was so predictable.

He's not making up for his putrid batting line in other ways, either. Taylor is playing like his tiny head is full of tiny rocks.

In the seventh on Monday, with the Nats down by four, Taylor singled. Up next were Anthony Rendon (good) and Bryce Harper (great!). Taylor, ignoring or defying all statistical conclusions and generations of lived baseball experience, lit out for second base and got caught. So that was two rallies killed.

It's OK, though. I'm fine. We're fine. There are two reasons I'm not really worried about this.

1. The Taylor situation is temporary. Ben Revere's coming back someday (right?), and then we can sit Taylor on the bench and tell him to think about what he did.

2. Dusty Baker knows that this is not ideal. This happened last year when Denard Span ended his Nats career in August, and it's not clear that Matt Williams understood what a setback it was. I quote myself:

The other day Dan Kolko was relating a conversation he'd had with Matt Williams: Given that Span has tightened up now and we're slated for more Taylor than we'd expected, did Williams want to see Taylor do anything differently? 

 No, of course not, we are told Williams said. Don't change a thing. As this happened, Taylor's stats appeared in the background, complete with a .280-something on-base percentage.

Dusty, on the other hand, evinces a basic understanding of whether or not a baseball player is getting the job done.

“He’s been struggling some to get on base,” Baker said. “But he’s the best that we have to put in that spot right now without having to tear the rest of the lineup up.”

One can take issue with the importance of not tearing up the lineup, but that's not a big deal. Having a manager with even the barest minimum qualifications, on the other hand, is huge.

Right. Richtig. Correctamundo.

Being right is so much fun that I'm surprised I don't do it more often.

At the end of May, when we found out that Jayson Werth was going back to prison or the disabled list or whatever, I suggested that the Nationals would do best to acquire a major league hitter.

I actually felt pretty silly writing that post, since it was such an obvious take. Who could disagree? I was in one of those moods where I just want to churn out content even if it's pointless. It happens a couple times a decade.

The very same day, Mark Zuckerman of Nats Insider actually did disagree, for which I will always be grateful. Suddenly that post suddenly wasn't so pointless. Only that one, though.

Now I'm feeling more pointful than ever, because Zuckerman has subscribed to the Distinguished Senators School of What the Nationals Should Do, as pioneered by me at the end of May.

"Do the Nats need to acquire another bat?" Zuckerman wonders. It's like he stepped into some kinda pain in the ass spacetime vortex that bumped him back six weeks. Don't tell him what happens in June. He wants to be surprised.

His answer is yes, by the way. The Nationals do need to acquire another bat. Zuckerman has - without admitting it, I'm sorry to report - recanted his earlier foolishness and - also without admitting it - conceded that I was correct the whole time.

The fact that he was unaware of my correctness is no defense.

One other note from that Nats Insider piece:

Denard Span? He’s in Dallas today visiting a back specialist and quite worried he has a more serious ailment than everyone has believed since he first began experiencing back spasms a month ago.

"Everyone" can be forgiven for getting this one wrong, aside from the (presumably) trained medical professionals the team keeps around to handle exactly this kind of issue.

Have those guys gotten anything right this year?

Bold

That was grisly. The Nationals just got swept by a "should we fire our manager?"-level bad team. I have some notes. I'll bold the names so it looks like a gossip column or something.

- Kudos to Joey Votto for demolishing the offensive stereotype that Canadians are pleasant and polite.

- Kudos to Babyhead Michael Taylor for completely kicking ass all weekend after I spent my whole Friday saying he wasn't good enough to start. Eh, it's not like anyone read it anyway.

- On Friday, the Nats finally figured out what we've all known for a long time - that Stephen Strasburg is injured and should be put somewhere he can't do any harm to himself or to others. So they replaced  him in the second inning with Taylor Jordan, who sounds like a chick but pitched like a man. In the 6th, the Reds walked Babyhead with a man on second to bring up the pitcher.

Superstar manager Matt Williams had gotten four scoreless innings from the first guy out of the bullpen. This was clearly the point where you pinch-hit for him, give him a hearty bro-slap, and try to extend the lead. But nope! Williams let Jordan hit poorly for himself and blow the lead in the bottom of the inning.

- I wasn't paying super close attention on Saturday, but apparently Jose Lobaton messed up his hand and couldn't throw. Why in the hell did he finish the game? I know it was Ramos' day off, but if I've learned anything from Generation X film classics, sometimes you get called in on your day off.

- There were exactly two things I enjoyed about this series:

1. Did you see when Denard Span flung that homer back onto the field, turning it into a not-a-homer? The Great American Ballpark (ugh) starting shooting off fireworks as though Span hadn't flung it, and he looked at the source of the fireworks and shook his head. "Nah, I handled that. Not a homer." That was great.


2. Ray Knight doing color was a lot of fun. He was as bloodthirsty as Rob Dibble, and the MASN broadcast has been missing that kind of animal savagery. He wasn't afraid to call out the Nats for swinging at junk, and he provided some insidery strategic insights that F.P. Santangelo doesn't bother with. On the con side, he still feels the need to chuckle at the worst of Bob Carpenter's jokes, which F.P. has learned to ignore.

Normal

Denard's back! That's not an ironic exclamation point. My favorite thing about last year was Span and Rendon at the top of the lineup. Back in the day, I had a weird fascination with the top of the Marlins' lineup - they had Juan Pierre and Luis Castillo, and they just made so much sense together.

One was real fast and the other was only kinda fast. One drew all the walks and the other stole all the bases. It's exactly why I always preferred take a tag team made of opposites, like the Hart Foundation, to a team of interchangeable parts, like the Rockers.

Span and Rendon were similar but better last year. Remember how they were always on base and always scoring runs and stuff? And we won so many games! According to the most advanced sabermetrics they'll sell you without a permit, that's not a coincidence.

We're halfway to recreating that magic, plus we won some games this weekend and everything's back to normal.

Meanwhile, I'm going to miss Michael A. Taylor. They're doing the right thing by sending him to AAA. I mean, Span isn't going to supply the offense that Taylor has so far, but Taylor wouldn't have either.

And sure, we all fell in love with his unexpected power and his little tiny babyhead, but he definitely has some stuff to work on. Like how he kept not catching fly balls. Or how sometimes on his way to a fly ball, he'd take a route so circuitous that it spelled out "imnotreadyforthisplssendmetosyracusegodblessmichael" in the outfield grass.

Brightside

It's not all bad. Here's a list of all the things we can happy about. Yes, there are only four things we can be happy about.

• We have the same record as the Marlins, and according the staff of the Sun-Sentinel, the Marlins are going to be pretty good this year.
• Matt Williams shook up the lineup AND brought in Blake Treinen in the seventh inning. I mean, the Treinen thing certainly (spectacularly!) didn't work, but it proves that Williams was paying attention. I had been wondering about that.
• Denard Span is on his way back to solve a problem that we don't really have.
• It's an early game today, so we can just get it over with and then get on with our day.