Are You Not Entertained?

Man, how about that Rangers/Blue Jays fight, huh? My favorite part was when Rougned Odor punched Jose Batista right in his damn face.

Moments before this picture was taken, those glasses and that helmet were actually on that guy's head.

Is that bad? Should I not have enjoyed that? Here's a Craig Calcaterra piece that suggests that I shouldn't have without managing to say much of anything.

These takes [takes expressing the idea that the fight was rad] have one thing in common: for them to make coherent sense, players have to play roles to satisfy an audience rather than be actual human beings with feelings.

Here I run into a problem with empathy. Unless it's sympathy - I've never been able to keep those straight. I'm aware that baseball players are human beings who hurt when Rougned Odor punches them in the jaw, but can I actually care?

There are over 7 billion people in the world. How upset can you get about how many of them getting punched before that's the only thing you have time for?

Speaking only of baseball, I can barely bring myself to care about the 26 guys I'm supposed to (that's the Nats active roster plus Dusty Baker and Matt LeCroy minus Jayson Werth). Maybe it's just that my brain isn't big enough to maintain that kind of Monkeysphere, but Jose Batista's feelings aren't important enough to me that I'm not going to enjoy a fight in which he gets turned into a bobblehead doll by a tiny violent lunatic infielder.

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.

Strategic Losses

As we reported first here at Distinguished Senators, the season is over and the Nats won. Just put up that NL East pennant right now. Our gonfalon bubble is unprickable.

Because the rest of the division is engaged in a dispirited slapfight for second place, our beloved, triumphant Nationals can afford the occasional strategic loss.

Jonathan Papelbon blew the save on Sunday, and that's OK. It didn't happen to somebody that anyone likes, Papelbon can handle it, and it gave our unfortunate friends in Philadelphia something to be happy about. He showed real perspective when asked about it. “We’re in first place and we won the [gosh darn] series, man. You know?”

So it's not too upsetting that the Nats failed to complete a sweep of the Phillies, since that game three loss threw into relief the only problem this team has: the save would not have been blown if Jayson Werth were still capable of playing baseball.

The Phillies won when somebody (who cares?) hit a double over Werth's head. Babyhead would have caught it. Den Dekker would have caught it. Any number of the offseason free agents who weren't interested in playing for the Nats would have had a shot.

Ian Desmond probably wouldn't have gotten it.

The hope here is that we gave up a loss, but in return made Dusty Baker aware that he shouldn't leave his worst player out there in the later innings. Maybe - this is a long shot, I know - this will prompt Dusty to consider that he shouldn't be playing his worst player at all.

That's how a loss becomes a win.

Former Nationals Update!

Helpful commenter "Anonymous" sends along with that Austin Kearns is a volunteer coach at Lexington Christian Academy. It's nice that he's staying busy, and I hope he doesn't break anyone's femur.

I have also discovered that Kory Casto has been inducted into the North Marion High School Hall of Fame. I was always pretty hard on Casto, but that was only because he was taking playing time away from Chris Snelling. Plus I think he was pranking us with how to spell his name.

GG Ez

It's safe to say we've got this one wrapped up.

The Nationals just completed a four game sweep of the Braves, capping it with a game in which they ran Matt den Dekker and some guy named Heisey out there (I have no idea who this is. Did he win a contest or something?) and still took the Walgreens W.

Combine that with the a gritty 1-1 draw with the Marlins and a previous sweep of the hapless-but-only-because-they-keep-playing-us Braves, and the Nats are at 7-1 and in a dominant position in the division.

The National League East in 2016 has turned out to be surprisingly similar to the Franco-Prussian War. Everyone was expecting a real fight, but it was over instantly. We're sitting here in mid-April listening to a captive Napoleon III explain himself as we prepare to besiege Paris and inspire a musical.

Terry Collins (left) tries to figure out where it all went wrong as Dusty Baker (right, kickass helmet) looks on.

It's possible - MAYBE - that I'm being premature. Last year, I declared on May 11 that the rest of the season was merely a victory lap. That turned out not to be correct. But, look, I failed to take certain factors into account. One of those factors has found his natural level as Arizona's third base coach, and the other one's getting booed (already!) in Toronto.

Since those two can't make this sure thing any less than sure, we're set. Is there anyone to worry about? This division includes three teams that aren't even trying. I don't need to tell you about Atlanta. The Phillies have been tanking for a while now, and the Nats get to enjoy that starting tomorrow. The Marlins play uncharacteristically tough against the Nats, but that's not enough to stop this from happening.

The Mets? Yeah, they won last year. Won the division, went all the way to the World's Series of Base Ball, and forced me to root for the AL team for first time ever.

It was a fluke. They're a one-year wonder. The Mets are not the protagonist of this story; they were there in 2015 only to show how far the Nats had sunk. "Look what the Matt Williams did to you," said Baseball. "You have been bested by the Mets." Just as it took an FBI investigation to get Jim Bowden fired, so it took allowing the damn Mets into the penthouse to get Matt Williams out of here.

2016 has arrived, and they're already panicking. Their manager proclaimed an April 13 game against the Marlins to be a must-win, and that's as stupid as it is untrue. They did win that game, but it doesn't matter, because the Mets are only even going to finish second because they're the only one of the Nats' competitors deluded enough to think that they have a chance.

Good game. Easy.

Penny Wise

This managerial situation is amazing. The Lerners seem not to realize that talented people expect to be paid for their services, and thus have embarrassed the hell out of us all once again. I would agree to manage the Nats on a one year, $1.6 million contract. The problem is that no one who should be managing would accept that.

It has probably worked out for the best. Managerial performance is even harder to predict than it is analyze, but we may well be better off with Dusty Baker. With the exception of headline writers, of course, for whom being teased with Bud Black must have been very trying.

Even if everything's OK this time, you have wonder to what extent the Lerners' parsimony and lack of appreciation for the manager role has held this team back. They have never paid top dollar for a manager, relying on people either too new or too old to command big salaries.

Like Matt Williams.

Let's say, hypothetically, the Nats were the team that poached Joe Maddon away from the Rays. Williams gets the Rick Renteria treatment.  With Maddon installed and the Lerners millions of dollars poorer, things would have played out quite differently. Would Jayson Werth have spent his season undercutting the manger? Would one of the closers have sulked himself into uselessness? Would the other closer have tried to strangle the Bryce Harper?

Probably not, but that's why Joe Maddon costs five million dollars.

"Hey now, fellas. No choking in the dugout."