Delicious Soft Serve

I wonder if the Nats are overqualified for the wrong game.

I heard Mark Zuckerman on the sports talk radio today, and he made a point about Adam Eaton: Eaton's the kind of guy who wins difficult at-bats, and that's vital in the playoffs.

I know Michael A. Taylor has his virtues - defense, cheerful demeanor, his batting helmets don't take up much room - but grinding out plate appearances against tough pitchers isn't one of them.

This enterprising fan has acquired one of Taylor's tiny batting helmets and filled it with delicious soft serve.

The Nationals haven't done all that well in the playoffs, and we can't blame it all on Drew Storen. They also have terrible at-bats against great pitchers like Clayton Kershaw and the shambling, visibly decomposing corpse of Jake Peavy.

It's not hard to imagine this offense clubbing the hell out of everyone until it matters and then going dark against the likes of 55-year-old Tim Hudson.

And then there's the bullpen situation. I realize it's only May, but the relief corps has been not only bad but also unavailable. I barely know who Koda Glover is, but the fact that some dude with a 90 ERA+ is so vital to our plans that we need to worry that he's injured . . . it's not good.

Even if the Nats win the division by 20 games, we're going to need reinforcement unless we want to be remembered as the poor man's 90s Braves.

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?

Haruspicy

That was a fun weekend. It's fun to score runs, it's fun to throw an almost-perfect game, and it's really fun to kill another team's momentum. I'm not sure I have the numbers exactly right and I don't care, but the Pirates had won eight in a row until they stumbled into town just like a sacred cow.

That happened to the Nats in Cincinnati at the end of May, and things hadn't been quite right since.

Are they quite right now? That remains to be seen. We're back in first place, but that has as much to do with the cruddiness of our rivals as our own quality. Between them, the Nats and the Mets have let Atlanta get to within two games of first place.

All the Braves have done to deserve that is not implode like the rest of the division. They haven't had their second baseman standing in the middle of the diamond yelling at their befuddled coaching staff, and they haven't hired some random hillbilly to be their manager. That's good enough for almost first place in the National League East.

So, you know, we'll have to see. I know that's not a satisfying answer, but I have the luxury of giving unsatisfactory answers since I don't do this for a living. I had the radio on yesterday, and someone was asking Mark Zuckerman if the Pirates series was a turning point, like the big comeback against the Braves.

The obvious quibble there is that if the Braves comeback were a turning point, we wouldn't be asking if this is another one. Did all that momentum or whatever only last a month? And now, like, the Nats beat up on the Pirates so bad that it refilled their spirit meter, so they're good until August?

But Zuckerman had to pretend there was something to that idea, because that's his job. You have to imagine that the ups and downs of a baseball season are telling a story, and that the last chapter can help you predict what's going to happen next.

That's not how it works in real life - Chekhov's gun probably isn't going to go off. If you're trying to figure out what's going to happen tomorrow based on what happened yesterday, you might as well open up a sheep and see what it looks like in there.

Replaycement Postscript

In this morning's post, I argued against a position that I wasn't sure anyone had actually taken. We need to replace Jayson Werth, I said, because:

1. The Nats are going for it this year
2. Werth was terrible before he got injured
3. Werth will likely be terrible when he's not injured anymore
4. The Nats' in-house options are not good enough

Now Mark Zuckerman at teh Insider has taken the opposite position.

And they’ve established they can win without him already this season. Since Werth last played May 15, the Nationals have gone 9-2. 

So the notion that general manager Mike Rizzo needs to go out and acquire another left fielder to take Werth’s place is a bit misguided.

What could be more definitive than a sample of eleven games? Eleven games, by the way, in which the Nats did not score very many runs and were carried by Bryce Harper.

For one thing, Werth isn’t out for the season. He will be coming back, and Rizzo isn’t the type who usually gets pressured into picking up a player to fill in for only 2 1/2 months.

If this team really cares about winning, he'll be coming back as a pinch hitter.

Werth also remains under contract for two more seasons after 2015, owed $21 million in 2016 and again in 2017. He’s not going anywhere.

If this team really cares about winning, they won't let sunk costs stop them from getting the team into championship shape.

Zuckerman then goes on to describe the Taylor/Moore/Robinson crap chimera that's getting Werth's playing time. He acknowledges that they're not any good before showing us the bright side.

Take Werth’s stats out of the mix, and the Nationals’ remaining left fielders have been just as productive, even more so in some cases: a .215 batting average, .271 on-base percentage, .329 slugging percentage and .600 OPS. Still below-average, but the guy they had for most of the season’s first six weeks was producing at below-average levels to begin with.

So on the one hand, Werth is going to come back so we can't fill his spot. On the other hand, Werth was playing so badly that we don't lose by playing scrubs in his place. If the second part is true (it is), then the first one doesn't make any sense.

There are a lot of silly assumptions here, like that since the Nats have been winning so far while getting nothing from left field, they're bound to continue winning if left remains a black hole. Or that the rest of the lineup is such a murderers' row that we can punt on LF anyway.

When it comes to the people actually making the decisions, I'm worried that bit about "$21 million in 2016 and again in 2017" is going to loom larger than it does in either my or Zuckerman's analysis.

Do They Like Him? Do They Like-Like Him?

More All Star voting news! Mark Zuckerman at teh Insider reports that our very own Bryce Harper has more votes than anyone else.

Harper has received 1,116,582 votes to date, edging out Cardinals third baseman [and Doug's Dude] Matt Carpenter (1,113,060) as the league’s top vote-getter and well ahead of all other NL outfielders.

That's good news. I'm not sure I completely agree with Zuckerman's conclusion, though.

No other Nationals position players rank in the top five right now, which is testament to Harper’s immense appeal around the country, not only in D.C.

Harper's getting all the votes; the other Nats are polling like Fat Elvis; that must mean America Loves Bryce!

I have my reservations about the "immense appeal" theory, assuming that Zuckerman is referring to something more than the respect a player earns from out of towners by being great - something closer to affection. I'd suggest that Harper leads all NL players in All Star voting merely because he's leading all NL players in being good at baseball. No appeal required.

And as far as his teammates not making anyone's ballot - really, what other Nat would you vote for unless you had a rooting interest that superseded any concern for the process? They won't let us vote for Scherzer. I guess Wilson Ramos has case, but it's a "he should be in the top five" case rather than "he should be winning." Other than that, our best candidate is Danny Espinosa, and he's not even on the ballot.

Nobody's voting for Ian Desmond, right?

I Wake Up Every Morning and I Craig Craig Craig

It looks my Nats comeback fever dream is going to need a new grizzled veteran, since Craig Stammen is on the disabled list with "forearm tightness."

"Forearm tightness" is the baseball equivalent of Clemenza telling you, "Oh, Paulie . . . won't see him no more." It's bad. Like, leave the ligament take the cannoli bad.

This might be my last chance for this to make any kind of sense, so I'm going to share the song that goes through my head every single time I hear "Craig Stammen." It's hell being me.

Craig can give you stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina

This is a bad development, obviously, even though the work that would have been done by Stammen(a) has been handed over to a Heart-Warming Story. I've been a big fan of Stammen ever since 2009, when while he wasn't actually very good, he was the only dude on the whole damn roster who would throw two strikes in a row. I guess that was the Daniel Cabrera year.

This situation brought up a tangential issue: Where am I supposed to get my news? The official website is 50% ads and 100% useless. Bill Ladson's blog is somehow less up do date than mine. I used to rely on the Washington Post's Nationals Journal, but all of a sudden they want me to pay actual, real life money to read their internet blog about a baseball team.

And I'm all, "Sorry, man, but I'm from the internet, and I don't pay two dollars and fifty cents (American!) for baseball news. You jockjaws still got Chico Harlan over there? Oh for real? Yeah, I'm not paying you."

For now I'm relying on Mark Zuckerman at Nats Insider combined with however much of Bob Carpenter I can stand to listen to before I hit mute.