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teammates not making anyone's ballot - really, what other Nat would you vote for unless you had a rooting interest that superseded any concern for the process?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?

Psephography

We're starting to get early results from the All Star voting, which reminded me that I'm boycotting it this year and probably forever.

They announced before the season that there wouldn't be any more paper ballots. This news, along with a neat reminder of why the internet is terrible, can be found in a piece by Ted Berg on "For the W!N," USA Today's attempt to show how hip and snarky it can be.

Bad news for people who aren’t reading this: Major League Baseball will eliminate its paper All-Star ballots in 2015...

Only people who don't know how to internet because reasons use paper ballots. For teh Epic W!N LOL!

This is terrible news for people who love paper chads but great news for inevitable Justin Bieber write-in campaigns.

OMG Justin Bieber amirite! Such chad very ballot wow. Something something bacon.

And moving to an online-only ballot might help the league keep it a bit more current, rather than frustrate fans with a list half-full of guys who are hurt or haven’t played regularly.

Look at the ballot, you meme-spewing halfwit. Jonathan Schoop has played nine games this year, and he's on there. Scooter Gennett is back in the minors, but you can still vote for him. Anthony Rendon is on the ballot.

So anyway, I'm sitting this election out. I love paper ballots. We all enjoy baseball, but let's not act like there's not a lot of downtime. Poking out a little piece of paper next to "A. Rendon" forty times is second only to drinking when it comes to filling that downtime. It's to the point where I don't even want to go to a game after voting ends. Part of that is because I try to avoid going outside in August, but the lack of ballots has something to do with it.

I don't like not having the paper ballot option, because signing up for things on the internet is creepy. I've given MLB my information enough times that it probably doesn't matter at this point (I weighed my options, and writing in Livan was worth it), but it's still not something to be encouraged.

Look at this privacy policy. It doesn't come out and say, "We need you to sign up for stuff so we can mine rich veins of data," but I can read between the lines.

White Suit Pressed

"I got my white suit pressed, out the cleaners."
-Dr. Octagon, Waiting Room

In addition to its official purpose, Memorial Day is an occasion to take your Boss Hogg suits out of storage and to take stock of your baseball team.

A classy fellow like Jefferson Davis Hogg would never wear white out of season, so The Dukes of Hazzard must have taken place entirely between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

My baseball team is really good, and I don't know how to handle it. The best team I ever blogged about went .500, and they weren't actually that good. There have been better Nats teams since then, but I was happy to enjoy them without trying to have an opinion about everything. This is an usual position for me to be in, and I'm learning that I can't take being this happy. But there's no reason for anyone, including me, to care about that.

The important thing is that the Nats are good, and it's not an illusion. They're in first place now, and there's no reason to think that it won't stay that way. They've reached this position in spite of a really heavy load of injuries, a number of disappointing performances, and an opening three weeks where they looked as bad as it's possible to look.

Anyway, here are some 28% of the way through the season awards.

• Most Valuable National: Bryce Harper is running away with this, to the point that he's the easy favorite for the actual NL MVP. He's a lock as long as he gets through the year without taking a swing at an umpire.

• Whatever the Nats-Specific Version of the Cy Young Should be Called: Max Scherzer is good at baseball, and I'm glad he finally got some wins. He was sitting on a really rough 1-3 record for a while there.

• Least Valuable National: Even if Stephen Strasburg isn't injured, it's getting to the point where you just make something up to get him out of there. Just tell everyone he's suffering from exhaustion, like when a famous person goes to rehab.

• Manager of the Year: Randy Knorr's steady hand guided the Nats through one of their darkest periods. It's no coincidence that the Nats are undefeated with Knorr calling the shots.

Spoilers

The Phillies are in town to get their whuppin'. I sound more confident about this than I feel - I'm actually expecting a letdown in this series. The Nationals, who are awesome, dropping a series to a pack of stumblebums like the Phillies would be ironically appropriate, like when Paris killed Achilles. Sorry about the spoilers.

I mean, it has to happen sooner or later. The Nats aren't going to win every series for the rest of the year.

Probably.

The Phillies somehow aren't in last place at the moment (see here for Ruben Amaro's probable reaction to that state of affairs). This is thanks to the Marlins, who responded to their team's struggles by hiring some random hillbilly to be their manager, which only seems to have made it worse.

It occurs to me that new Miami manager Dan Jennings is the Billy Carter of managers. Not in the sense that he has a famous brother, but in the sense that he's a random hillbilly who seems like he'd be up for shilling for questionable alcohol brands.

You probably know this from the Simpsons, but President Jimmy Carter's brother Billy parlayed his reputation as a drunken hayseed into his own brand of beer, Billy Beer. My heroes at Modern Drunkard Magazine report that after Billy Beer went the way of the Zima, Billy lent his celebrity imprimatur to a revolting concoction called Peanut Lolita. Peanut Lolita. If you've ever heard a creepier name for a drink, you made it up yourself and should be in jail.

Billy Carter drinking Peanut Lolita. If anyone knows of any other jobs where you get paid for looking like a dork and drinking straight out the bottle, please let me know where to send my résumé.

Wolves

We're all still furious at Marvin Hudson for throwing Bryce Harper out of the game for basically nothing, right? Even though we won? I've calmed some since it happened, but I spent some time last night musing on how much I would enjoy seeing major league umpire Marvin Hudson suspended or fired or torn asunder by wolves.

Cooler heads have since prevailed. I mean, at least he tried to help us out by getting Matt Williams out of there too.

What I do not find convincing is the argument that Harper shouldn't be removed from baseball games because people paid to see him. This line of thinking was all over the place last night, as exemplified in this ESPN piece that combines the idea with one of those Mastercard "priceless" jokes that would have been hackneyed ten years ago.

Washington Nationals ticket: $60.  

Bryce Harper jersey T-shirt: $30.  

The chance to see Marvin Hudson eject Harper in the third inning: Absolutely ridiculous.

It was ridiculous, but the first two lines do not contribute in any way to the ridiculousness. Harper deserved his ejection a week ago in Arizona, and the price of tickets or how many people wanted to see him had nothing to do with it. Would Harper's ejection last night have been hunky-dory if the fans had gotten in for free or if the stands had been empty? Does an outburst by Harper deserve more leeway than an identical blowup by, say, Tyler Moore, whom no one pays to see? I don't think we want an NBA-style caste system in baseball.

At most, the exorbitant price of a Bryce Harper jersey T-shirt should increase by one the number of ravening wolves unleashed on Marvin Hudson.

The Nationals did win, and the Mets of course lost. The Nats now have a day off to reflect on how they're in first place all by themselves, and the fact that it should have happened in April doesn't make it any less sweet.

The Mets, meanwhile, have a few hours before the Cardinals resume beating up on them to reflect on how nice it was to be in first for a while and how they're like Icarus. Icarus, you may recall, flew too close to the sun before his being absolutely terrible at flying kicked in and he died. Similarly, the Mets flew high for a while before they remembered that they're terrible at baseball and crashed back to earth.

The Mets Suck by  Jacob Peter Gowy (c. 1660)

HAHAHAHAHAH

AH HAH HAH HAHAHAHAHAH!

HA

*ahem*

WOOOOO HAH HAH HAH

WOO

Delayed

I was hoping to be able to slap together a quick post about how we're finally and for good in first place, but the Cardinals let us down last night. First they break Drew Storen, now this.

Did you see that game? The Mets always look idiotic, but they took it to a new level on Monday with those ridiculous Norman Schwarzkopf costumes. They looked like they were trick or treating in 1991. Except even sillier than that, since camo stops working when you put your hideous Met colors all over it and wear it with striped white pants.

"Trick or treat!"
"Oh, aren't you cute! What are you dressed as?"
"An asshole."

So it didn't happen last night, but it'll happen soon enough. Maybe tonight.

Bryce Harper won his second straight Player of the Week award, an honor that I guess is important enough to capitalize.

This isn't news to you, I'm sure, but he really is amazing to watch right now. Harper's at-bats alternate between clinical detachment, as he calmly watches a pitch an inch inside go past him, and sudden, brutal violence when he swings. It's actually kind of unsettling.

A typical Harper AB goes something like this:
Ball 1.
Ball 2.
JUMP SCARE!

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!

Apples, Spray Bottles, Bacon

Professor Bacon is back, and he brought a brand new Distinguished Senators feature with him: It's the Professor Bacon Bacon Blast of the Week!

I would like an apple

This week's Professor Bacon Bacon Blast of the Week award goes to "Babyhead" Michael Taylor for Wednesday's ninth inning grand slam against Arizona pitcher [look up who this is later] [actually, you know what? Don't bother]. I mean, we all know Bryce Harper would have done the same thing if he had better impulse control, but Professor Bacon doesn't care who dings the dingers as long as the dingers get dung.

Professor Bacon also wants to recommend this video. It's like he's trying to tell us something.

Having triumphed in the desert, the Nationals are off to sunny San Diego, where the locals play baseball in the middle of the night and sometimes wear camouflage uniforms so as to confound their enemies.

Will Ian Desmond commit three or four more errors? Will Bryce Harper punch an umpire in the throat? Will Alexi Amarista become the next Doug's Dude?

If you could let me know about any of those, that'd be great. I'm not staying up for this series.

UPDATE: It looks like mid-2000s relic Professor Bacon isn't compatible with mobile devices. I asked him about it, and he just kind of tilted his head at me. So I said, "You know, Apple products," and then he suggested that apple products sounded pretty tasty and maybe I should him feed him one.

This Year's Model

Apparently Stephen Strasburg is this year's Dan Haren. You know, the guy in the rotation where you say to yourself, "We should be good enough to get away with starting this guy, right?"

Of course, we weren't good enough to get away with starting Dan Haren in 2013, so last year we didn't have a Dan Haren. This seems to me to be the superior strategy.

What's wrong with Strasburg? Beats me. He seems to be attempting to develop a new form of batting practice where you throw 95 miles an hour fastballs right where Diamondbacks can hit them. If that was his intent, he was successful. His other pitches didn't work, I guess. I didn't stay up for it.

The big question, of course, is injury. Wait, that's not a question. "Is he injured?" There. Matt Williams thinks he isn't, and that makes me think he is. I figure one more start before they realize it, and then we can go back to the good old days of Tanner Roark in the rotation.

We'll be fine either way, but it's really a shame that just as Bryce Harper transforms into Mickey Mantle, Stephen Strasburg turns into Dan Haren.

I wish I had stayed up if only to see the debut of our new lefty set-up man, outfielder Clint Robinson. I love it when position players pitch, especially when they manage to strike out an actual player (in this case, funnypage prettyboy Aaron Hill).

You broke Luann's heart, you son of a bitch. I'm glad you got K'd by an outfielder.

Robinson was winging the fastball up there at about 80, which is so slow that Fangraphs decided that half of them were changeups. That may not be sustainable, but he was getting better results than the guy throwing 95.

Tonight on MASN: Nationals vs. [Opponent]

“I have yet to understand the value of Arizona. I have yet to understand why God brought me here.”

-Cappadonna, never catering to none

It's a shame the victory lap had to start two time zones away against a bunch of guys I'd never heard of playing for a team I often forget exists.

Seriously, the Diamondbacks' starting lineup was like something from an unlicensed video game. I vaguely remember Aaron Hill from Toronto and from his appearances as an unattainable dreamboat in Luann.

Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Aaron Hill

And I guess I remember Paul Goldschmidt, but that's only because he led the league in homers a couple years ago, and I'd never heard of him then. I still couldn't pick him out of a lineup, especially if they put Mark DeRosa in there to fool me. I only know who he is because I don't know who he is.

But hey, eleven runs are still eleven runs even if you score them in the middle of nowhere against nobodies. And there's nothing to help you unwind after a long trip like winning a baseball game in which the outcome is never once, not even for a moment, in doubt.

Victory Lap

I don't know about you guys, but I am officially No Longer Worried.

Marlins? Taken care of.
Braves? Very much taken care of.
Mets? Well, that's just a matter of time.

Let's face it - back when the Nationals were tied with the Phillies for last place, it wasn't the Marlins, Braves, and Mets against whom they were competing. It was themselves.

It's almost as though the Nats were taking us on a tour of baseball history. On offense, the Nats recreated the magical year of 1968, when the Yippies ran wild, Apollo Something or Other orbited the Moon, and baseball players couldn't hit baseballs.

On defense they took us even further into the past by mimicking the forgotten, probably mustachioed gentlemen playing the game in 1868. Back then, they'd hadn't thought to bring gloves with them on the fielding job, and and a cleanly-handled base ball was as much of a novelty as an electric street light. Certain Nationals took this time-travel role-playing even further, fielding their positions as though they'd had an arm blown off at Antietam.

The last four series proved that the Nationals have dropped the Mr. Peabody and Sherman act and returned to the present day. The Mets will soon be swatted out of the way, and everything's going to be just fine.

Consider the rest of the season a 130-game victory lap.

Livan: Now More Than Ever

Today is the last day to write in Livan in the Franchise Four vote. I'm not expecting everyone to show the dedication that I did - I did actually write him in for every one of the nine teams he played for (I had completely forgotten that he was on the Rockies, and I bet they'd like to), along with Greatest Living Players and MLB Pioneers.

I didn't write him in for the Negro Leaguers vote. Outta respect.

While I don't expect anyone else to go through that rigmarole (much less to find the url for each team and paste them into nine consecutive words in a sentence that you've gone back and lengthened just so you have nine words for the urls), I do think it is the duty of every Nats fan to:

• Vote for Ryan Zimmerman
• Write in Livan
• Or at least someone who played for the Nats - Keith Osik or Levale Speigner or someone

Every vote that doesn't go to Dutch or Livan (or Deivi Cruz or whomever) goes to some damn Expo. I mean, Tim Raines is the poor man's Rickey and that makes him pretty great, but I'm not exactly burning to see him honored at the All Star Game in place of someone - anyone - who played in DC.

Write in ¡Livan!

This is the Urn

Bryce Harper hit three home runs on Wednesday, and that's something I'm in favor of.

It was the high point of what has so far been a Great Leap Forward for Harper, as he attempts to transform his offense through rapid industrialization and collectivization. I'm guessing that's how batting coach Rick Schu phrased it, anyway.

Translation: "Bryce Harper's bat is like a steel I-beam!" Note 106.7 FM The Fan broadcast tower in the background.

It's working so far. Harper's walking a ton and cranking lots of dingers. He's also striking out a lot, but this is now and we don't care anymore. His swing's better, he's not jerking his head around, and he hasn't yet KO'd himself on a wall.

So, is this it? We've been waiting ever since Harper was drafted for the big, MVP-caliber season. People have been disappointed so far, and while that disappointment isn't the most logical thing, it's understandable. He hasn't played a full season, never hit 30 homers, never been in an MVP race. Frankly, he got swagger-jacked by Mike Trout, who came up for good at about the same time and has been much, much, much better. Much.

But hell, Harper's younger than Trout, and according to advanced statistical projection systems, he always will be. He came into the season as still the youngest player in the National League, and it's his fourth season. There's plenty of time for Harper to do what we all expect him to.

I'm just glad it's happening now before he bolts for somewhere else with a $500 million contract, and I hope he stays well clear of walls.

These Days

Tuesday's game was very Nationalsy. It was the distillation of the Washington Nationals in These Times.

There were injuries, defensive screwups, and the inability of the players to make their bats contact baseballs in such a way that they (the players) were able to reach safely the bases strewn across the infield.

Mat Latos did it to us again. Mat Latos.

Big, booming offense wasn't part of the plan this year, I realize. When Mike Rizzo rolled this team, he put all the points could into Starting Pitching. The problem is that a starter can't do it on his own - even Kerry Wood in 1998 needed some help from his fielders, and Rizzo didn't put any points into Defense (or Constitution, Dexterity, or Charisma, for that matter).

When Defense lets down Starting Pitching, you need some kinda Offense. More, at any rate, than "One Run against Mat Latos" Offense.

The real star of the Washington Nationals in These Times, though, is manager Matt Williams, who should be fired. Or maybe demoted to AAA to work on his managing.

A good manager puts his players in situations where they are likely to succeed. A bad manager has Dan Uggla bunt. It's not entirely clear to me why Dan Uggla is hanging around this team, but I know it's not for bunting. His last sac bunt came in 2009, and that's still true even after Williams had him try it again, because it sure didn't work.

I also thought pinch-hitting with Doug Fister was pretty dopey, but I'm not going to act like I didn't squeal with delight when it worked. It's like the universe is rewarding him for all that charity work he's doing with Doug's Dingers.

UPDATE: Bob Carpenter just now, on Tom Koehler: "28 years of old..."

We're Rolling We're Rolling We're Rolling We're Rolling-uh

Imagine how confused the Phillies were. "This . . . this can't be possible," Ruben Amaro muttered as he scanned the National League East standings. "We took every precaution; our calculations were exact. We even signed Jeff Francoeur. The experts said there was no way we weren't finishing last!"

I don't know why the Phillies are so desperate to finish last, and I don't much care. I will say that their plight reminds me of the mid-1990s, when the Phils weren't trying very hard to win and we were supposed to pretend that Philadelphia was a "small market." I remember standing around in my giant baggy pants listening to Soul Coughing and trying really hard to ignore that Philly had, like, three times as many people as Atlanta.

Amaro no longer has to worry that he should have tried harder to give away Chase Utley: the Nats are no longer in last place, and the Phillies can settle in there for the long haul.

Meanwhile, in the higher reaches of the division, the Mets got taken down a peg just like I wished for. They're still in first, but they know it won't last. Previously unbeaten at home and with a winning record against their superiors (i.e., us), they are now very much beaten at home and with a losing record against their superiors. Ha ha.

Now the Marlins come in with their weirdly Nationals-esque narrative. Terrible at the start of the season, they're currently on some kinda hot streak. If we can win this series, we'll be at least in third place and maybe even over .500. If that happens, I won't be talking so much about firing Matt Williams, although I will still be thinking it every moment I'm awake.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get me a Livan bobblehead.

Update: Success! Looks just like him.

First Mistake

I get the feeling that this weekend is going to be great, but I'm going to miss it all. It's already started, actually - I barely saw Thursday's game. I have a horse race to prepare for and a brisket to smoke. Some things (e.g., brisket) are more important than watching the Mets get their upcommence.

The Mets getting brought down a peg is still really important, though. Look at the them strutting around with their idiot colors and their silly name. "Duhhhh we're in first place," they say. "And we read on Distinguished Senators that the Nationals are terrible and won't ever catch us."

Reading Distinguished Senators was your first mistake, The Mets. Well, except for picking your name and your colors. I guess those were first. And there were probably some roster mistakes early on. Maybe Casey Stengel wasn't the right guy for that job, either.

But anyway, reading Distinguished Senators was a recent mistake, The Mets. You're in first place now, but it's a fluke and you know it. The Nats are only five games back, they're better than you, and Matt Williams can't hold them back forever (right?). As you sift through the rubble of another wasted season, you may look back fondly on April. It's all you'll have left.

Lucky Number

That's how it's supposed to go: They are a bad team, and we are a good team.

The Braves gave up on this season before it started (right before it started). They're the Philadelphia Phillies of baseball.

Thus they are exactly the kind of team - and as someone paying attention in the 90s, this is still amazing to me - that you have to stomp all over if you want to win a little flag at the end of the year.

And the Nats did. And that's good. And Jordan Zimmermann's good-but-not-great pitching performance combined with his three-RBI day at the plate . . . well, he's like some kind of grim-faced, normal-shaped Livan.

For whom there's still time to vote, by the way.

Leders of Men

I wrote the lede on the way to the ballpark last night, let me tell you. I had some less than cheery things to say when the Nats where down 10-2. Some of it was pretty good, but the Nats won so I couldn't use it, and now it's lost in time like tears in rain. I want more life, Uggla.

My favorite part was when I called the Nats a stupid crappy team of crappy stupids.

So yeah, how about that comeback? That's not something a stupid crappy team of crappy stupids would do! You'd have to be a real pessimist to notice that it took a whole week's worth of offense to edge past a pretty lousy team. And I'm not one of those people, so let's focus on the bright side:

1. That A.J. Cole fit right in, didn't he?
2. We won!
3. No more Reed Johnson.
4. We have not lost two-thirds of our games. We were really close there.
5. This might be all the sporting event color commentary I've listened to talking, but a win like this means something, Carp. These guys are going to go out there and they're going to know that the other guys will pick them up and they're playing as a team and they have momentum and good defense is contagious. Sports commentators tend to believe in magic, but what if magic is real? In which case I guess you spell it magick or something? I don't know. If you own a statue of a dragon curled around a crystal ball, please let me know the conventions on this.

Meanwhile, just up the road the piece, the Orioles are looking to build some heat for their little-anticipated and much-delayed series with the White Sox by booking an empty arena match. Are they still going to do the crab shuffle? Will we hear reggaeton bouncing off the empty seats every time an O's infielder comes to bat?

Regardless, my prediction is that it ends with Adam Jones lowering a forklift onto Chris Sale.

Looking Up

This is just going to keep happening, huh? Last night's Orioles game was more entertaining.

It wasn't free, either. We used to have two guys who were hitting, but Andrelton Simmons took care of Yunel Escobar, so we're down to one, and we're looking up at the Phillies.

So I guess we're just going to have to wait for tonight for the season to turn around. See you then.

"One second there, hoss. Before we wrap up, I want to introduce you all to the newest Doug's Dude.

Doug's Dingers is expanding its efforts to help guys who have chick names. Take a bow, Kelly Johnson!"

"Thanks for the dinger, Doug! So you guys have pretty much given up on catching the Mets at this point, huh?"

"Ha ha! You bet, Kelly. We're just terrible."

Nonsense

Where do you start with this nonsense? This weekend was the perfect opportunity to make up for past mistakes. Did you see the pitching the Marlins were rolling out against us? It was too much for us.

Mat Latos has been a disaster this year, but the Nats managed to knock three full runs off his ERA.

At least you'd heard of Latos. Tom "I Could Have Put Any Name Here and You Wouldn't Know the Difference" Koehler was sporting a 6.75 before he faced the Nats' Attempted Murderers' Row. Now he's at 4.50 - that's good enough for an All Star spot in the late 90s.

We actually adjusted Dan Haren up a little bit, but leaving Haren with a sub-4 ERA isn't something a good team does.

It was all very typical. No one hit, and no one played defense. I saw a bit of the postgame show on Saturday, and Ray Knight was furious. Johnny Holliday is a pro's pro, but I could sense some discomfort from the other side of the desk. "Do I hit the button?" he wondered, assuming there's some kind of "go to commercial in case Ray Knight melts down" button.

Knight was pointing out that the hitters weren't making any adjustments; just going up there and having the same crappy at bats over and over. That sure sounds like a coaching problem, and it sure sounds like we should kill an admiral.

Ray Knight's pissed, Stephen Strasburg's pissed, and I'm pissed. I just checked to see if we have a game tonight, and I was actually disappointed that we do. I need a day off. I thought this was supposed to be fun.

Last place. Tied with the Phillies.

Put a Byng on Him

The narrative of Thursday's game is emerging as I type this, and so far the shape it's taking is "Nats Fail to Capitalize with Men on Base."

That's true, but my takeaway is "None of These Dudes Can Catch a Ball or Throw a Ball or Do One Damn Thing Right."

It seems that each Nat thinks each of his teammates is eight feet tall. "I don't need to catch that ball - one of my eight foot teammates will lay out and get it!"

Or, "No time to lose! I have to throw this here baseball to second base! Based on how tall this fellow Washington National is, it should be safe to get it about seven feet in the air. There's no way Mark Reynolds will scamper home after this!"

So that was terrible, and Max Scherzer has to be wondering what he got himself into, and I think it's time to fire Matt Williams.

This team looks like it skipped spring training, and while Williams probably isn't 100% responsible for that, he's closer to three digits of responsibility than anyone else.

Maybe it won't help, but maybe it will. Sometimes you have to kill an admiral pour encourager les autres, you know what I'm saying?

Doug's Dingers

The Cardinals had no difficulty with Doug Fister last night. Imagine my surprise when Doug himself stopped by to share some exciting news with us, news that partially explains last night's game.

"Hi, Nats fans. This is Doug Fister from your Washington Nationals. I've always thought it was important to give back to the community and to give back to the game. That's why I've started Doug's Dingers, a charity dedicated to providing home runs to the tragically underdingered.

It's easy to forget about the tiny infielders who field our ground balls and carry our luggage onto the charter, but they're just as important to baseball as anyone! Doug's Dingers is all about recognizing the little guys. It can be something as small as remembering their names or as big as grooving one for them in the first inning.

But enough from me! Let's hear from the real heroes. I call them Doug's Dudes."

"Hi everyone! This is Kolten Wong! From Hawaii! I really can't hit at all, but thanks to Doug's Dingers, I have a home run!

Hello big arbitration award and goodbye to sleeping in a drawer at Matt Holliday's house!

Thanks, Doug!"

"Ha ha! No problem, Kolten. Any time.

Kolten Wong is exactly the kind of heartbreakingly underpowered ballplayer we're trying to help here at Doug's Dingers.

Let's hear from another Doug's Dude, Matt Carpenter. How have I helped you, lil' fella?"

"What? I mean, for one thing, I'm 6'3". Plus I'm awesome at baseball. What kind of charity is this?"

"Come on, Matt! Tell the people how thanks to Doug's Dingers, you no longer have to tell groupies that you're Chris Carpenter's little brother."

"Or Bob Carpenter's."

"Gross!"

Brains

Last night (and maybe you saw this) Ian Desmond strode to the plate with the bases loaded and one out in the ninth. It was a tie game thanks to a blown save as predictable as a sunrise.

A single would win the game. So would a fly ball to the outfield, a balk, a walk, a wild pitch, a passed ball, a forfeit by the Cardinals, an error, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting.

The important thing is that Desmond needed to get the ball to the outfield. Not only did he not do it, he completely didn't do it. After he dove at that first slider like a dying eagle, everyone - from me to Ian Desmond - knew he wasn't going to make any but the gentlest contact.

He struck out, of course, but it's OK because we won, and Desmond really did play some good defense in that game, and if we have to choose between a shortstop who can hit but not carry out even the most basic of his fielding tasks or a shortstop who's the other way around, the latter option is not necessarily the worse. That was a really long sentence, but I ain't changing it.

This isn't really about Desmond; it's about my perception of Ian Desmond. Owing to some kinda combination of confirmation bias, Dunning-Kruger effect, selective memory, manifest destiny, the ablative absolute, the phantom time hypothesis, and Moore's law, I have this idea that Desmond strikes out every time he comes to the plate with men on base. "Here comes Desmond to kill another rally," I say to myself. And then he does it. Every time!

But actually no. I did some actual reporting or at least fact-checking, and my impression was pretty much the opposite of true. Desmond hits better with men on base, and his strikeout rate drops significantly (I was about to say it drops noticeably, but I certainly didn't notice it). The lesson here is don't trust your eyes. Or at least don't trust my eyes, not that there was any great danger of that.

The nifty thing about this is that when Desmond leaves at the end of the season, I won't miss him even though I should. So I'd like to thank my brain for preemptively cushioning that blow. Thanks, brain!

Sunday Starters

The Nationals are being sued by a religion.

Well, not really. What happened was some Seventh Day Adventist ushers got fired because they couldn't work Friday or Saturday games, so they filed a lawsuit.

It's a knotty problem, you know? I try to stay clear of these kinds of issues. I'm interested in pissing off only people I'm interested in pissing off, and that does not include people with strong opinions on when the Sabbath is or what you should or shouldn't do on it.

My advice in these matter is to read the Antigone and try not be like either of the main characters.

My takeaway from all this is that it's gotten a lot more difficult to complain about the Nationals. That's where the misleading first line of this very post came from. It might not have been actually "true" in the conventional sense, but I have developed certain habits following this team for ten years, and among them is the tendency to assume the worst at all times.

It used to serve me well - everything really was awful. Even when I thought something was going to be pretty good, Austin Kearns would run in out of right field and break its leg.

It got to the point that blogging was too easy, especially after I got my template going. If this lawsuit had happened in 2006, I would have just filled it in like this:

"Bodes, having already [something about Cristian Guzman or Jose Guillen] and [something about Smiley Gonzalez], has topped himself by trampling on the rights of a religious minority. Blargh I hate everything here's Professor Bacon."

In 2015, the Nats being sued for persecuting the faithful like a bunch of baseball Diocletians seems more like just something that happened rather than another example of the organization's thorough-going incompetence and malevolence.

On balance it's an improvement, but it does make the blogging more difficult.

Normal

Denard's back! That's not an ironic exclamation point. My favorite thing about last year was Span and Rendon at the top of the lineup. Back in the day, I had a weird fascination with the top of the Marlins' lineup - they had Juan Pierre and Luis Castillo, and they just made so much sense together.

One was real fast and the other was only kinda fast. One drew all the walks and the other stole all the bases. It's exactly why I always preferred take a tag team made of opposites, like the Hart Foundation, to a team of interchangeable parts, like the Rockers.

Span and Rendon were similar but better last year. Remember how they were always on base and always scoring runs and stuff? And we won so many games! According to the most advanced sabermetrics they'll sell you without a permit, that's not a coincidence.

We're halfway to recreating that magic, plus we won some games this weekend and everything's back to normal.

Meanwhile, I'm going to miss Michael A. Taylor. They're doing the right thing by sending him to AAA. I mean, Span isn't going to supply the offense that Taylor has so far, but Taylor wouldn't have either.

And sure, we all fell in love with his unexpected power and his little tiny babyhead, but he definitely has some stuff to work on. Like how he kept not catching fly balls. Or how sometimes on his way to a fly ball, he'd take a route so circuitous that it spelled out "imnotreadyforthisplssendmetosyracusegodblessmichael" in the outfield grass.

This Is Rickey Calling on Behalf of Giant Foam Rickey

Instead of presidents or pierogis or whatever, the A's have racing A's.

Left to right: Who Cares, Who Cares, RICKEY!

That's all well and good, but one of them is Rickey Henderson. How in the hell is Rickey ever going to lose a footrace to Dennis Eckersley? I guess I can suspend my disbelief to the point that it's plausible for William Howard Taft to beat Abe Lincoln, but let's be real here: This shouldn't be a contest. Ever.

Giant foam Rickey beats giant foam Eckersley every time. Real Rickey beats real Eckersley every time. Giant foam Rickey beats real Eckersley every time. The only way Rickey loses that race is if they pay him like Mike Gallego, in which case he'll run like Gallego. Pay Rickey!

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.

Brightside

It's not all bad. Here's a list of all the things we can happy about. Yes, there are only four things we can be happy about.

• We have the same record as the Marlins, and according the staff of the Sun-Sentinel, the Marlins are going to be pretty good this year.
• Matt Williams shook up the lineup AND brought in Blake Treinen in the seventh inning. I mean, the Treinen thing certainly (spectacularly!) didn't work, but it proves that Williams was paying attention. I had been wondering about that.
• Denard Span is on his way back to solve a problem that we don't really have.
• It's an early game today, so we can just get it over with and then get on with our day.

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.

The Real Victim

If only these guys could hear how sad they're making F.P., I bet they'd play better. It's just heart-breaking.

The Art of Storytelling

So here's the thing when you're dealing with a screenplay. Suppose you've written one, an inspiring true story of a young man who escapes from an oppressive regime, wins the World Series, gains 200 pounds, and becomes hero to millions.

Naturally, a bidding war ensues. The winner, rather than just filming the thing and preserving your vision, sends it around to be "punched up." Like, they send it to David Mamet for more swears or whatever. It hurts, seeing your vision adulterated like that, but it's the kind of compromise you have to make if you want to get things done.

The Nationals are currently relying on the following script:
Act 1: A National hits a solo home run
Act 2: The Nats white knuckle it until the ninth and hope the other team doesn't manage to score, like, two runs
Act 3: The other team scores, like, two runs
~Fin~

I don't like it, and I bet you don't either. Clearly it's time for Jayson Werth to take on the David Mamet role and punch up this script with some swears, by which I mean dingers. Or least hits. Something, for God's sake.

The Nats get their chance to punch up the script this afternoon against Red Sox starter Rick Porcello. The important thing here - and I don't think I can overemphasize this - that Rick Porcello's name is Italian for Rick Piglet. Rick Piglet!

Further Voting

I did the Mets too.

And here are the Marlins.

Up next: Diamondbacks, Greatest Living Players, Rockies, MLB Pioneers.

Write In ¡Livan!

It's time to vote for the Franchise Four, the fun, official activity that reminds us that this franchise doesn't have any history to speak of! Each team has eight candidates, and you get to choose four.

Except for Nats fans, who get to pick Ryan Zimmerman and three Expos.

At least it's an opportunity for education. I didn't even know who Steve Rogers was until yesterday, even though he might be the most 80s-looking ballplayer in major league history.

So I give credit to MLB for raising awareness of dudes who played in Canada 30 years ago and for having the intellectual discipline to go with the actual best players in franchise history rather than trying to appeal to their current paying customers.

I will point out, however, that the candidates list has a glaring, gelatinous omission. There's a pear-shaped hole in the ballot, but together we can fill it. #WriteIn¡Livan!

Click to enlarge the official Distinguished Senators ballot

Delay

The game was delayed, so I resorted to watching Austin Powers for a little bit. Remember the part where Powers and Elizabeth Hurley are talking about all the stuff he missed while he was frozen? One of the things she mentions is "the first female British prime minister."

(This isn't my main point, but this is a British person talking to an ostensibly British person, so saying "British prime minister" is kind of clunky. Who's your favorite American president?)

Later, when Powers is being tempted by the fembots and trying not to let his spyboner distract him from his mission, there's a "think about baseball" gag - Austin shouts "Maggie Thatcher naked on a cold day!" twice.

But he had never even heard of Margaret Thatcher until half an hour before that happened. I suppose it's possible that Elizabeth Hurley showed him a picture, and he found her so revolting that she instantly became his go-to debonerfication aid, but I don't find that convincing.

So then I did watch the game and holy crap did you see Ryan Zimmerman catch that bunt? That was awesome! He dove for that thing like a Secret Service agent leaping in front of a bullet.

Like the first game, it went according to plan. The pitching was good, the real players were good, and the ragtag bunch of misfits standing in for the other real players didn't do a whole lot. And we won! Not only did we win, in fact, but we beat a pitcher who looks like the next Tim Lincecum.

By which I mean that he literally looks like Tim Lincecum.

Correction

Reader(s),

It has come to our attention that yesterday's post ("Tonight's the night" 4/6/15) was not up to our journalistic or at least fact-checking standards. A list of the two worst infractions follows.

1. The event referred to did not take place at "night," at least not in any time zone that matters. A better title would have been "Toafternoon's the afternoon."
2. "The night" carries with it a connotation of excitement, fun, and good results. Given the events of yesterday afternoon, a different term should have been used.

In conclusion, yesterday's post should have been titled "Toafternoon's some garbage featuring Dan Uggla." We regret the error, and we will leave the post with its original, incorrect title as a reminder of our failures.

Yours,

Distinguished Senators

Tonight's the night

Nah. They Just Got Confused About Which Team He Was On

The Philly fans just cheered the hell out of Jayson Werth. I don't think it was just because he's totally dreamy.

Could it be that the conventional wisdom of the sports section is wrong?

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.

Happy Birthday Rome

Rick Ankiel continues to impress. Not as a ballplayer, because he's been awful, but as a story. Not only is he in many important ways just like a dinosaur, he appears to be just a heck of a nice guy.

During his first trip back to St. Louis as an opposing player, Ankiel thanked Cardinals fans with an advertisement in the city’s main newspaper.

“Many Thanks to Cardinals’ fans and the City of St. Louis for your support and cheers over the years,” the ad read, with a picture of Ankiel smiling. “It was a privilege and an honor.”

So that's nice, and he even played pretty OK during that series, so we shouldn't mistake his kindness for weakness.

Did you notice how all during the Brewers series Santangelo was whining about all the shifts? The complaints just kind of zipped into one side of my head only to escape from the other side without sticking to anything, but they did increase awareness of all those shifts. Turns out the Brewers are trying something pretty interesting.

The Brewers use spray charts to set their defense, and in many cases, that means defensive shifts that put infielders in odd places. It's common for most teams to position three infielders on the right side to play defense against power-hitting lefties such as David Ortiz, Adam Dunn or Jim Thome.
But thanks to information in spray charts that indicate where a batter is likely to hit a ground ball, the Brewers are taking infield shifts to a different level, sometimes to the extreme. For example, the Brewers' infield shifted against the Nationals' right-handed batters Jayson Werth, Michael Morse, rookie catcher Wilson Ramos and Rick Ankiel, a lefty.

I'll be interested to see if this winds up helping. As the data available to teams become more detailed, we could see some seriously crazy stuff. Only two of the dudes out there are restricted in where they have to be on defense. A maniacally charismatic manager could maybe find seven strong men without well-developed regards for their own safety and have them stand right in front of the plate. I'd think about that for the major league minimum.

Important news in the field of blogging equipment: Costco is apparently selling giant jugs of good-quality bourbon for basically nothing. Now, I live in a police state (as far as liquor blogging paraphernalia goes) bordering another police state. BUT! Say I put up an add on this thing and clicked on it from as many computers as I could get to. Could I write off gas for a road trip to Delaware on my taxes? Something to think about.

Lunch

You hear about this Rob Dibble controversy? It's about the silliest thing ever, but it gives me an opportunity to take a snarling walk down memory lane.

Rob Dibble was fired from his analyst job after Stephen Strasburg's season-ending injury prompted him to make some of those feral "walk it off, rookie!" noises that you may remember from when Ryan Church ran into a wall.

He recently claimed that Strasburg's dad was so incensed that he emailed the Nats, and that's what prompted the pink slip. Stan Kasten, formerly the guy in charge of apologizing for Jim Bowden, disputes that and hopes Dibble "gets whatever help he needs."

This argument is so trivial that it doesn't matter who's actually correct. Therefore, I'm siding with Dibble.

I know the guy's easy to hate; I've certainly taken shots at him. But Dibble's done some good. He provided a necessary counterweight to Bob Carpenter's cult recruiter cheerfulness. Remember the time he went all Dada and told you to bring a lunch? He wasn't here long, but he left memories that will endure forever. Some of them are even good.

Stan Kasten, on the hand, never did a thing for us. This is a guy who couldn't get rid of Jim Bowden without the help of the FBI. And when the Smiley Gonzalez scandal finally did break, Kasten bravely stood up and blamed everyone in the world but himself.

For all the talk about Kasten bringing the lessons of the Braves dynasty to Washington, the best thing about the Kasten Era was that we lost 100 games only twice.

Beat the Mets

I got to say - I don't expect much from this team, but I do expect a certain level of competence against the Mets. So good work and keep it up.

PS. Ok, I'm annoyed, and MASN has a damn problem.

I was watching MASN and wondering when the O's game was going to come on. That's when I heard the Manny Ramirez news, from Johnny Holliday and Ray Knight. They said: "Manny Ramirez is retiring." I thought to myself, "Huh, ain't that a thing?" and took another pull from my Jim Beam rye on the rocks.

An hour later, I get on my trusty personal computer and find out that Manny Ramirez is retiring . . . because he's facing a 100 damn game suspension for drugs.

I got no inkling of this from MASN. Knight said something about how Manny was maybe too involved in the steroids controversy, so they didn't completely avoid that aspect, but they certainly avoided the substantive part of it.

This is a dereliction of duty as far as I'm concerned. For once in my life, I relied on MASN to keep me hipped to the baseball news. They failed totally. "Manny Ramirez retires" is at best half the news.

Reversal

I guess it wasn't about getting Desmond out of the leadoff spot after all.

Ian Desmond will return to the leadoff spot tonight rather than swapping places with Danny Espinosa as Manager Jim Riggleman had originally planned. Espinosa will play tonight against the Marlins, but Riggleman simply changed his mind after saying yesterday he planned to hit Desmond, who began the season 0 for 13, seventh in the lineup and move Espinosa to leadoff.

It's been a bad day and a half for the two levels of management just above the players. Let's review!

• Jim Riggleman reverses his own inexplicable mistake and moves Desmond down in the order.
• Riggleman makes me watch a couple old men in the middle infield instead of playing the starters.
• Third base coach Bo Porter kinda loses the game by faking out Jerry Hairston with all the ankle-breaking elan of a prime Allen Iverson.
• Riggleman, concluding after less than one try that his new lineup wasn't optimal, moves Desmond back to leadoff.

So yeah, that's a pretty sour mixture of indecisiveness and incompetence, like a cocktail made of Coors Light and dishwater. Jayson Werth kinda lost the game too, but at least he hits doubles.

But none of that matters, because ¡LIVAN!'s pitching tonight. There should be a name for beautiful days like today. I mean, we had Strasmas last year, but ¡LIVAN!'s been bringing us joy since day one. Livanoween? La Fiesta de Santo Gordo? National 82 MPH Fastball Awareness Day?

A Post

They've rolled out the B-team four games into the season. Santangelo likes it, but I kinda want my money back. I wasn't prepared for a Cora - any Cora! - in the starting lineup just yet.

Other than my disgruntledness, the big effect here is to hide for a day the drastic reshuffling of the lineup. Ian Desmond, who's looked as bad as anyone can over three games, is no longer leading off; Danny Espinosa is.

Bob Carpenter was quick to point out that "This isn't about getting Desmond out of the leadoff spot." He didn't explain what other objective aside from getting Desmond out of the leadoff spot was to be achieved by getting Desmond out of the leadoff spot, so I'm going to go forward with the assumption that this was primarily about getting Desmond out of the leadoff spot.

Why was he ever there? I realize that this roster doesn't give you a lot of good options there, but Desmond doesn't get on base. It's just not part of his skill set. Other than just picking the up the middle guy with the most seniority, I can't figure out the thought process that wound up with him batting first anyway.

Greek for "Ankiel-Lizard"

Ankylosaurus was an herbivorous dinosaur that wielded a club made out of a bunch crap that congealed at the end of its tail. The typical Ankylosaurus found its target only occasionally, but it did enough damage on those occasions to make its Cretaceous contemporaries think twice about messing with it.

Rick Ankiel is an omnivorous outfielder that wields a club made out of wood, which he swings with the wild desperation of an also-ran dinosaur being eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex. Like his namesake, he seldom finds his target, but he makes sure it hurts when he does.

Rick Ankiel is the Than lan moc cau of baseball. And in my book, that's worth 1000 đồng.

Unlike the Ankylosaurus, which didn't exactly stand out among the really impressive animal life of 100 million years ago, Rick Ankiel has had one of the most compelling stories in baseball.

Ankiel came up with the Cardinals as a pitcher sometime during the pre-Nats dark ages. He boasted one of those preposterous curveballs that in other contexts would cause one to criticize a video game for being unrealistic. Unfortunately, his other go-to pitch was a fastball to the backstop, which he debuted and used perhaps excessively during the 2000 playoffs. It was an awful sight, and Ankiel was sent to the minors to work on some of those things that a pitching coach really can't help you with.

That should have been the last we ever heard of him. He pitched all over the Cards minor league system, threw some of those Desmond-style random target fastballs, and had some injuries. News filtered up through whatever it is that protects the casual baseball fan from every dispatch from Knoxville that he was going to try baseballing from the other side, as an outfielder.

The crazy thing was: it worked. He displayed both the power and whiffiness of an Ankylosaurus' tail, along with the ability to handle the outfield and gun down anyone who remembered his pitching career and figured it was safe to run on him. He hit a three-run home run in his first game back in the majors since his playoff humiliation and went on to have a couple quite decent seasons as a major league outfielder.

Isn't that nuts? I mean, that never happens. One of the things that happens when you watch baseball for a while and take the long view is you see the same stuff happen over and over. Great players get old, bounce around, and retire. Pitchers blow out their arms, try to come back, and retire. GMs rob Dominican teenagers, get investigated by the FBI, and get fired. Ankiel's career path is, if not unique, enough to set him apart from all the other soul patched hopefuls that march over the green fields of baseball every year.

And now he's here, bringing with him his rich backstory and his distinctive, dinosaur-with-a-bone-club-on-its-tail skillset, and I'm all for it. I'd rather watch an interesting player than a good one, and Ankiel's about the most interesting non-Cuban ballplayer out there.

Phew!

I don't know about you, but I need a breather after all that excitement. Good thing we get the night off, so that we can follow up an afternoon of of ¡LIVAN!'s gelatinous majesty with an evening with a band called Livan in Falls Church. 8 pm at the State Theater. Get your tickets here.

So let's see here:

• ¡LIVAN! rules
• Offense sucks
• Bullpen rules

The last time all those things happened at once, we finished at .500.

Tonight's the night

In preparation for today, I finally washed my Nats cap. The thing was a disaster, encrusted literally with the detritus of countless lawn-mowings and figuratively with the detritus of years of Nationals fandom.

This, I thought, was a new beginning. I would wash away all the sweat and little bits of grass that somehow wound up on my head and awful Boswell columns and Nook Logan at-bats, and together my hat, my team, and I would walk into a glorious future, cleansed of the filth of the past.

Almost nothing came off. It's ground in there too deeply.

And then I put my hat in the dryer and it shrank.

An Original Observation

This is AWESOME.

Omen Update: I got a hit today from Strasbourg, France.  DUDE!  Say hi to the geese for me, mysterious accidental French reader.

Still, I'd Rather Hear Buck Martinez

So I splurged for Extra Innings this year (love it!).  I just turned on the Rays/Jays game, and there's Kevin Kennedy's giant Easter Island head in the booth talking about . . . wait, what?!

Former Major League Baseball manager Kevin Kennedy was among eight individuals that subdued a man threatening to blow up a Delta flight from Los Angeles to Tampa, Fla., early Friday morning.

"He said, 'I'm gonna blow the plane up and take all you to hell with me,'" Kennedy told FanHouse.

At that point, Kennedy, along with seven other passengers, charged Stanley Dwayne Sheffield and eventually subdued him, Kennedy said.

So that was kind of a jolt. Almost sobered me up.

Stamp of Approval

Look, I'm not going to pretend I spent a huge amount of time thinking about the Washington Post beat writer situation after Barry Svrluga left.  When that fancy lad "Chico" Harlan made an ass of himself, I pointed at him and said "hey, look."  That's about it.  Now we have this Adam Kilgore guy, and I totally didn't notice.  Until now.

Sorry for today's absence of game updates. For some reason, my laptop and the wireless in the press box in Port St. Lucie did not get along today. Frank Robinson and Tomo Ohka had a better working relationship.

Holy crap, dude!  That is a serious, old school Nats reference.  And it happens to be right in my wheelhouse.  I loved Tomo Ohka and I hated Frank Robinson.  I spilled so many words on that stuff that I recently received an award for being the one person in the whole world, excepting those actually named Ohka, who cares the most about Tomokazu "The Landlord" Ohka.

You think Harlan bothered to educate himself about this formerly hot button issue?  I bet not.  Not with his busy schedule of bitching about his job and daydreaming about All the President's Men.

So, in conclusion, Adam Kilgore rules.

P.S. I'm still doing this.  I totally went in hella hard on this dude yesterday.

Finally!

I mean, they pretty much made it all up - didn't even interview me - but at least they spelled my name right.