Lindomania

I was able to watch the season opener, having been laid up with a fortuitously-timed cold.

I know what you're thinking, but this was the real thing. I wanted to go to work. In the spirit of the Wrestlemania season, this is a shoot cold. I'm not working anyone.

So we can all agree that the one game we're all paying super-close attention to is the one that sets the tone for the rest of the season, right? Even though it's 50/50 if Adam Lind is even on the roster in September?

Things I liked:

1. Yay we win!
2. Blake Treinen hella closed!
3. Strasburg was rad as hell!
4. Bryce Harper hit a home run and so did some other guy so we won!

Things I'm worried about:

I have two issues with the lineup, which is all the issues the issues with the lineup.

1. This is not a good defensive team. Daniel Murphy is still shipping up to second base; Jayson Werth is one year closer to being a full-on inexplicably-adored mummy; Adam Eaton in center is not something a team with a center fielder would do.
2. This is not a good offensive team. I "analyze" a team's offense by how far down the lineup I go before I find a batter less interesting than whatever lunatic ancient alien/Nostradamus show is on the History channel. The Nats made it all the way down to Dutch Zimmerman hitting in the fifth position. That's not great.

It'll get better once Rendon returns from whatever seemingly tiny injury is keeping him out, but we're down a Wilson Ramos. No one likes Matt Wieters more than I do, but let's not pretend that he can hit.

Meanwhile

I'm going to talk about the Orioles for a minute, since the only Nats news right now is about Bryce Harper's gluteus assimus, and this is a family-friendly space (but only recently - don't read the archives, kids).

I know most of you hate the O's, but I don't and neither does beloved mascot Professor Bacon. He likes them so much that sometimes he changes colors to Orioles orange and makes me call him Professor Old Baycon. He even squeals in a Hairspray accent.

"Feed me an apple from down'ere, hon."

Barry Svrluga wrote a really nifty piece in the Post about the O's playing out the string. The players, "displaying the kind of steadfast delusion only ballplayers can," are at least claiming they're still in it, but they're not.

And it's only going to get worse for Baltimore, since about half of these guys are free agents at the end of the season. It's too bad. I kinda like the O's, and I really like meaningful baseball programming on MASN.

A couple notes on our orange friends:

1. Ownership is still terrible. If you're in the AL East, this is the time to go for it. The Red Sox are lousy, and the Yankees are only pretty good. For the other denizens of the division, this is an opening. The Blue Jays realized this, so they upgraded in the offseason and then at the trade deadline acquired probably 10% of all the non-Nats players in baseball that I know the names of.

The Orioles, meanwhile, came off a 96 win season in a wide-open division and did . . . nothing. Well, not nothing. They got Travis Snyder, who, it turns out, didn't quite make up for losing Nelson Cruz and Nick Markakis.

It's bad enough that Peter Angelos is evil; he's cheap, too.

2. Buck Showalter is really good at his job. I mean, yeah, it didn't work so much this year, but getting last year's team to 96 wins is an argument for sainthood.

It wasn't that strong a team to begin with, and then a hundred things went wrong. Chris Davis was terrible and then suspended. Manny Machado played half a season, and Matt Wieters played, like, 15% of one. The closer couldn't close.

Yet somehow he was able to get this ragtag bunch of misfits to a division title. Here's a man who knew just when to use Delmon Young, who got an 877 OPS out of Alejandro De Aza and 930 from Steve Pearce. When he realized Tommy Hunter couldn't close, he booted him out of there and tried one who could.

It didn't last. Delmon Young turned back into Delmon Young, and the number 3 starters became number 5 starters. That doesn't take anything from 2014, though. It was a heck of a managerial performance. You could even call it masterful.