Slashes

Did anyone think to tell the Nationals that they were allowed to acquire players right up through yesterday? I meant to, but you know how it is. I had to read The Golden Bough to prepare for a 300-word blog post, so I never got around to it.

But yeah, just perusing the old MLB Trade Rumors here, I see that the Royals got themselves a Jonny Gomes. I quote:

Gomes has still slashed a productive .247/.412/.466 against opposing southpaws.

Isn't it terrible the things baseball makes you write? Look at what he "slashed" against "southpaws." I understand - you can only write "hit" and "left-hander" so many times before you get desperate for alternatives. "Second-sacker." "Senior circuit." It's gruesome.

Anyway, I wonder if Gomes would have been useful. More useful than the last time he was here, at least.

And here we find out that the Giants grabbed Alejandro De Aza. I wonder how much he slashed.

The free agent-to-be has slashed .292/.347/.484 over 178 plate appearances since that trade.

Good slashing.

As a left-handed outfielder whose greatest strength is defense, De Aza wouldn't have been the most useful thing for the Nats (although he might have saved that game last night if anyone had thought to get the immobile jailbird out of the left after they took the lead), but there are a couple things to recommend him.

1. If he came here and did well, that would be pretty embarrassing for the Orioles, who dropped him like he was Delmon Young. I know some of you are into embarrassing the O's.
2. He looks like Trinidad's own Trevor Sayers, the genius behind "Stamina Man," the song that starts playing in my head every time I think about Craig Stammen. In a roundabout way, De Aza could have filled the hole Stammen left in our hearts, if not the hole he left in our bullpen.

I wake up in the morning and I pray pray pray for an excuse to post this.

Finally, the Cubs acquired Austin Jackson, and here's something the Nats could have used. Thanks to a series of grandfatherly health issues, Denard Span will not be coming back. Maybe ever.

So we're back to Babyhead Taylor playing every day, and I'm still against that. Austin Jackson may not have a gaudy slash line - not even against portsiders in the junior circuit - but he's an alternative.

Plus his name is reversible. It works just as well as "Jackson Austin," and that gives you flexibility.

August 31 was the last time it made sense to grab the Nats by their labels and yell "DO SOMETHING." They didn't do something, so the most we can hope for in terms of reinforcements is Tyler Moore.

Saltalamacchiato

This isn't happening against top men. The Diamondbacks aren't any good. Jarrod Saltalamacchia ("jump the stain"?), who wasn't good enough to play for the Marlins, is clowning the Nationals.

But not as much as they're clowning themselves. You win championships by doing the little things. There is no littler thing than throwing the ball to first base. It's baseball's quantum. Aaron Barrett couldn't seem to handle it, though.

Other little things include not issuing a walk when the bases are loaded (they did that one twice) and not getting outpitched by Tyler Moore.

I've had this feeling for a while now that the Nats are doomed once the playoffs start because they're shoddy at fundamentals and have a manager who's always thinking three moves behind.

I'm not so concerned about that anymore, because now I don't think they'll make the playoffs at all.

I am this worried.

The Mets are two games ahead, they're about to play a bunch of patsies, and they seem to be propelled by Destiny, who is an idiot.

The Nats are two games behind, they can't beat also-rans at home, and they refuse to tell Jayson Werth to sit down and not play baseball.

Today I was reduced to checking if the Nats would at least get a Wild Card berth.

They're three and a half games out.

Reacquisitions

It's the All Star Break, so I guess it's incumbent on me to follow journalistic (or at least fact-checking) convention and sum up the Nationals at this moment.

Um, they're pretty good. Remember how awful they were in April? It really was astounding, but they've recovered from that.

It's awfully cool to have the presumptive Cy Young and the presumptive MVP playing on the same team. As long as that keeps happening ("that" having a two-part definition, the first part being that they're both playing, and the second part being that they're still good enough to win all the awards), there's a floor to how bad it can get. The Nats are lucky that under that floor is a crawlspace in which dwells the rest of the NL East.

So I'm trying to be positive - there's plenty of reason to be. But I can't shake the feeling that the Nats aren't quite good enough to win the whole thing, and that they're not going to get any better. The combination of best-in-the-league performances from two guys and surprising contributions from scrubs isn't sustainable.

I'm as pleased about Clint Robinson as anyone, but do we think his OPS+ is still going to be 112 at the end of the year? We do not.

I myself saw with my own eyes (otherwise I wouldn't have believed it) Tyler Moore win a game for us by hitting an RBI double.

It is possible, but it's not probable. Don't think it'll happen again.

The real problem here is that Nationals' management has every reason to stand pat. There's no reason to think they won't win 90 games and win the division. We've already heard about how they think they've spent quite enough money this year, and an unwillingness to load up on salary is going to make it difficult to upgrade in a significant way.

So expect to hear a lot about how all these dudes coming off the DL is just like updgrading the team via trading. Jayson Werth coming back - why, that's like trading for a brand new outfielder! Who hits .200!

That's not all, either. It's not out of the question that we could "reacquire" Anthony Rendon two or three more times this year. Just think what a difference that'll make.

Infested with Lice

So the Nats are lousy now. I was there on Tuesday night, when Tyler Moore hit cleanup. I'm glad I didn't pay for those tickets, because paying money for a professional baseball game and finding out Tyler Moore is hitting cleanup is like . . . well, it sucks.

I did pay like fourteen bucks for a sandwich, but it was really good. Plus I got a "commemorative coin," which is going to sit at the bottom of my junk drawer until the next time I need a little tiny screwdriver to adjust my glasses, at which point it will commemorate the time I got to watch Tyler Moore hit cleanup.

I noticed that when Casey Janssen came in to serve up some meatballs, the Blue Jays fans gave him a standing ovation. It's nice that someone loves him, because as far as I'm concerned he can just get the hell right out of here and never throw another pitch while wearing a hat with a W on it.

Stephen Strasburg has a strained "trapezius," which is just damn good writing. Seriously, a couple posts ago I was trying to think of a joke about the Nats inventing a body part to pretend that Strasburg injured just so they could make it so he doesn't pitch anymore. I couldn't come up with anything, so I gave up.

But the Nats invented the "trapezius." Isn't that great? I guess whoever came up with it was at the circus or something. That's hilarious. "Ow, my trapezius!"

The important thing is that he's out of the way, and now Taylor Jordan can take his place and . . . oh hell. I briefly forgot that the Nats are lousy now.

Replaycement

Jayson Werth has a broken wrist, and I just realized that Blogger puts a red underline under "Werth" when I type it but not under "Jayson." It just did it again! Weird.

It took a couple weeks for anyone to think to get Werth's wrist looked at, apparently. At the time, the man himself said, “I’m relieved . . . It’s still swollen. It was bad. About as bad as it could be without being broke.” And that's why you shouldn't necessarily trust medical diagnoses from dudes with bad grammar who just got out of jail.

This is the same medical staff that told us Anthony Rendon would only be out for a week or whatever. That was in March.

Anyway, it's time to consider our Werthless present and contemplate our Werthless future. Let's not forget that Werth was completely useless in his short time spent on the field this year. He couldn't hit or field, and the Nats should have been looking for alternatives even before the fateful wrist-plunk. We know he can't help us now; we have to consider that he might not be able to help in the future. A 36-year-old outfielder with a thrice-busted wrist isn't something you bet on.

The Nationals have a couple options here: they can stay the course, or they can look elsewhere. Consider, though, that the first option is just terrible. We're looking at Michael Taylor as an everyday outfielder. I know we all love Taylor - he got some big hits back when the Nats couldn't do anything right, and he looks like a little kid.

But he's not hitting. Remember when he stepped in for Bryce Harper and hit that grand slam against Arizona? That was May 13, and he hasn't done a damn thing since. That's closer to being literally true than you might think - he hasn't had an RBI or an extra-base hit since that homer. Two singles, one walk, and 12 strikeouts.

MLB Trade Rumors runs down our other options:

The Nationals have some other alternatives in house, including Tyler Moore, Clint Robinson and the rehabbing Nate McLouth.

Did you shudder? I shuddered.

Clearly, this isn't acceptable for a team that's trying to win a World Series before everyone hits free agency. The iron is hot, the sun is in the correct position for hay-making, and the rosebuds are gatherable.

I'm worried the Nats are going to half-ass this, expecting that Werth is going to come back and be good enough to justify starting. I don't think that's likely, and I want to see them do something big and find a long-term solution.

Either way, they need to do something soon. The Nats are not generating a lot of offense at the moment, and it'll catch up to them at some point. Time to start kicking the tires on a gently-used Brewer or something.

Attrition

That was some road trip, huh? The Nationals blasted their way to the Pacific like a dyslexic William Tecumseh Sherman, and now they're a half a game out of first.

As in any successful march to sea, there were casualties, and I'm actually kind of worried about this.

Jayson Werth got plunked on the wrist by fancifully-named bad pitcher Odrisamer Despaigne and hasn't played since. He was shockingly understanding about the HBP for a guy who just got out of prison. I was expecting the old broken-lunch-tray-to-the-throat.

We're not losing much with Werth out (especially if that contract is appropriately insured). Werth being out bothers me only as a matter of depth. Getting Babyhead Taylor in there every day is actually an improvement, but it makes the bench shorter and means we have to see Tyler Moore more than is ideal (i.e., at all even once).

Doug Fister, meanwhile, so exerted himself in his charitable endeavors that he has "tightness" in his "forearm," which all too often translates into "surgery" in his "Tommy John."

This is a problem. We were supposed to get The Rotation of Five Aces (Under a Definition of "Ace" Expansive Enough to Include Gio Gonzalez). What we actually have is One Ace (Scherzer is so awesome. He's like the Bryce Harper of baseball players) and four guys who might be hurt and whose velocity is down and who just generally aren't as good as they were supposed to be.

We're holding steady for now, but what happens when three of these guys go on the DL and one of the survivors is Gio Gonzalez and there's no one left in the bullpen because they're all starting?

In other National League East news, the Marlins just got beat bad enough by the Braves that they fired their manager, Mike Redmond.

The Marlins seem to have realized that hiring an inexperienced, recently-retired player to manage your ballclub is not the best way to win a whole bunch of baseball games.

Why am I mentioning this in a blog about the Washington Nationals? Ha ha ha I can't imagine why!

Rock Bottom

This is rock bottom, right? I have to think that after a humiliating butt-whipping like that, highlighted by no one catching any baseballs, things were tense in the locker room. Maybe some personal issues that had been simmering for years boiled over, like Tyler Moore took a swing at Jose Lobaton because of the time they were at the mall together and Lobaton ran into some of his friends from Tampa and ditched Tyler.

Artist's conception of the Nationals hitting rock bottom at the hands of the Red Sox as John Farrell looks on

And then after they pull Moore off of the backup catcher, a grizzled veteran stands up. Slowly, since he's all covered in ice packs because he's so grizzled. I'm thinking Craig Stammen.

So Stammen says something about how it hasn't always been easy playing for the Nationals. He's had to deal with leather pants, fireworks going off course and exploding the fire chief, and even the FBI poking around. But none of that was as humiliating as Mookie Betts stealing second and then just helping himself to third because there wasn't anyone there. Does this team even have any coaches, Stammen wonders aloud.

But look, Stammen says, visibly restraining his emotions, this could be our last chance, and I'm not going to sit here and watch you guys blow it by being completely terrible all the time. It's time for us to band together and learn about teamwork! It doesn't matter if you're about to be a free agent and can't wait to get out of here, or if you look like a little kid, or even if you're Dan Uggla. Together, we can do this!

And then everyone says "Yeah!" and Lobaton and Moore hug and then the song kicks in and we get a montage where the Nats win twenty in a row, interspersed with hilarious lighthearted pranks and capped off by a scene where it's the World Series and we're playing Boston and we redeem ourselves by not letting Mookie Betts pants us and we win!

So that's something to look forward to, and it all starts tonight.