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.

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?

Hygiene

I don't have anything to say about baseball, but I always have an opinion about watching baseball.

The highlight of the weekend's action was watching the crack MASN camera team bring the catcher narrative to life for us. On Sunday, Ivan Rodriguez picked up one of his late, agonizing hits on the way to 3,000, and the announcers took the opportunity to talk about how maybe Pudge is being pushed to greater heights by competition from Wilson Ramos.

The view on my television immediately shifted to Mr. Ramos himself, enjoying the game while hanging over the Mo Vaughn barrier in front of the dugout. What follows is a list of Ramos' actions while the camera was on him:

1. Pick left ear with left pinkie.
2. Examine left pinkie.
3. Pick right ear with right pinkie.
4. Examine right pinkie.
5. Make a face.
6. Brush off right pinkie on Nationals sweatshirt.

I don't know a whole lot about television production; certainly not as much as the guys who told Jim Riggleman to make really awkward hand gestures while he previews bad managerial decisions in front of a green screen. But I probably would have said something like "CLOSEUP ON JAYSON WERTH! NOW!" right after #1 in that list.

I also noticed that Bob Carpenter is still doing that thing he does. You know, the thing where the Nats screw up really bad, prompting Carpenter to mention the screwup as briefly as possible and then obsessively mention a much less damaging gaffe the opponent committed.

The first time I recall this happening was back in 2009. Elijah Dukes had evaded a flyball like it was a DUI checkpoint - this was back when the Nats couldn't catch anything - and Sunny Bob steadfastly maintained that David Wright was the bad guy.

It happened again on Saturday. Jonathan Sanchez walked approximately everyone, and the Nats responded by scoring only one damn run. I wasn't paying real close attention, so my only info was coming from Carpenter. Listening to him talk, you'd think Sanchez had walked in about fourteen runs. I was honestly shocked when I looked up to see a 1 on the scoreboard.

At least Dibble would have called him on it. I think Santangelo just mumbled something about "country hardball" as we went to break and winced through that Riggleman commercial again.