Blue Flowers

Hey, tonight actually was the night! The Nationals finally broke the "Tonight's the night" curse. I'm not about to dig through Retrosheet to figure out if the Nats ever won a season opener after tonight was proclaimed to be the night, but they lost the first one and the last one, so this is a step in the right direction.

Bryce Harper hit a homer and then wore a funny hat. Max Scherzer was pretty good, aside from an apparent desire to match the Nats offense dinger for dinger. Daniel Murphy won the game all by himself without subjecting us to any silly-ass walkup music.

There's no way this doesn't wind up being the high point of the entire season, Murphy-wise.

There was a fair amount of dumbassery, even with Murphy's entrance on mute. Rendon got picked off right before a home run. Even before they handed the Braves a run, you got a bad feeling from the bullpen – they had the look of a dog who's going to eat your food the minute you turn your back.

The dog represents pitchers who aren't Max Scherzer. The turkey represents giving up a run, I guess.

Sure enough, as soon as our backs were turned, Felipe Rivero walked in a run and, more amazingly, managed to walk Jeff Francouer.

The really worrying thing – more worrying than "What the hell are we going to do when the starter doesn't go seven innings? – is that Ben Revere, our brand new center fielder, couldn't even make it four innings before he hurt a rib and had to be entrusted to the bloody clutches of the medical staff.

Their office is not a place that you're guaranteed to make it out of.

Ben Revere checks in with the trainer. "You have ptomaine poisoning on your tongue. You need a bad operation."

It was a fun win, but we have to hope every victory isn't going to cost us a center fielder.

Tonight's the night

The Clutch of Life and the Fist of Love

I've been reflecting on those we lost in the offseason, and I think Doug Fister is the only one I miss.

"This is Doug Fister reminding you on behalf of my good friends at PepsiCo to stay hydrated this season. Together, we can pitch a shutout against thirst!

What? No, I don't know whose hand that is."

This is going back to 2013, but that was such a nifty trade! The Nats gave up a couple relief pitchers, one of whom might have been useful but whatever. They also sent along one of those inexplicable fan favorites, which speaks well to the organization's character.

Steve Lombardozzi isn't really a major league player, but people loved him. He played all the positions, and you could call him "Lombo" - maybe that's all it takes to develop a cult following. He was well on his way to becoming our own Super Joe McEwing, and the fact that the Nats thought as little of him as he was worth is a good sign.

The Tigers were roundly mocked at the time for giving up Fister for so little. Hell, they only held on to one of those dudes, and it wasn't even the good one. It turns out that one of the main things that determines that I'm going to really like a ballplayer is if my team ripped another team to get him, and that's certainly the case here.

The Nats got one really good year out of Fister, and then I got a really good year out of Fister, and then they let him go to Houston because he couldn't pitch any more.

And that's how you run a ball club. Neither end of Fister's tenure with the Nationals was a franchise-altering masterstroke, but the whole episode evinces a reassuring competence.

Drive Like a Demon from Station to Station

The Nationals pulled off some North American free trade in January. Remember Drew Storen? Not our problem any more. He's a Blue Jay now. Let Trudeau worry about him.

We got Ben Revere, who, according to various advanced metrics I won't be sharing here, will be at least useful.

Is he the solution to our outfield challenges? He can't do everything to fix our woes, obviously - it would take an MVP performance from Jayson Werth's parole officer to do that - but he should help.

I'm second to none in my affection for and mockery of the tiny-headedness of Michael A. Taylor, but the dude's a born fourth outfielder. The Nats know this - did you see some of the cockamamie schemes they were devising to keep Taylor from being the starting center fielder? I'm glad we didn't have the wherewithal to pay Yoenis Cespedes. They actually would have made him stand in center every day.

So now we have Ben Revere, and this could wind up being a lot of fun. Revere got on base over 35% of the time last year, and after I make my it's-not-1998-anymore adjustments, that turns out to be pretty good. Also, he completely runs like hell all the time. He stole exactly twice as many bases as any Nat last year, and that's always an entertaining dimension for a baseball club to have.

He might be lousy at defense. Opinions are mixed, and I guess we'll find out. Gotta be better than Cespedes, right?

The cost to pick up Revere was one Drew Storen. I'm glad to be rid of him for two reasons.

1. Drew Storen is a very good closer in laboratory conditions. He can get the job done as long as there aren't any loud noises or other relief pitchers with more saves than he has or Pete Kozma. As long as everyone sits quietly and believes in him really hard, he's an asset.

I don't have to tell Nats fans that a closer with those attributes is of limited utility. Maybe he'll thrive in the clinical environment of the Rogers Centre. Maybe he won't. I don't care.

2. Drew Storen reminds me of the human condition, which is depressing. I'm glad I don't have to look at him anymore.

Last year, I plagiarized the Oedipus to talk about Storen's situation, how he seemed to be in a pretty good place until it suddenly came crashing down around him. It was definitely more pretentious than it was edifying or amusing, but I meant every word of it.

Storen's breakdown was instructive, but it was also ominous, and I don't feel like being reminded of it every time the Nats have a lead in the ninth. I don't want Storen on my baseball team any more than I'd want Oedipus to be my king. I feel real sorry for the motherfuckers, but I have my own problems.

Kept His Gun in Quiet Seclusion, Such a Humble Man

Now these thugs actors all of a sudden

[Marlins general managers] hustle backwards all of a sudden

-Rick Ross, "Rich Forever"

I never thought that random hillbilly Dan Jennings would become a beloved recurring character on this blog.

I'd never heard of him until last year, when he parlayed his position as general manger of the Marlins into a demotion and termination. That's what we call "hustling backwards." With a combination of good intentions and incompetence, Dan Jennings has made himself the platonic ideal of hustling backwards, and now he works for the Nats!

Now that we're on the same side, I hope he doesn't take it personally that I spent a fair amount of 2015 referring to him as a random hillbilly and comparing him to Billy Carter. I don't think he will. Whatever his faults, Jennings seems like a good-natured fellow, and he doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would take "hillbilly" as an insult.

In fact, he seems like the kind of guy who not only knows all the words to the song from "Dukes of Hazzard" but tries to live by them. He's just a good ol' boy, never meaning no harm, etc.

Dan Jennings on his way to work

It's worth recounting what is, for all its dopiness, the most unusual baseball career since Rick Ankiel's:

1. Dan Jennings grows up somewhere in Waffle House country. He makes his way the only way he knows how, even though it's just a little bit more than the law will allow. He probably plays baseball at some level.

2. Dan Jennings winds up working for the Marlins, straightenin' the curves and flattenin' the hills.

3. Dan Jennings becomes general manger of the Marlins. I assume that this is because everyone ahead of him quit or got fired, but still. As GM, he is called upon to fire manager Mike Redmond.

4. Dan Jennings exhibits a deep-seated understanding of the spirit and purpose of the Marlins organization: In an effort to prevent the team from having to pay another manager, he offers to step in and manage the team himself. It's an unusual move, going from general manager to regular manager and expecting to be kicked back up to GM when you're done. It beats all you ever saw.

5. Dan Jennings isn't any good as manager. Maybe it's not his fault, but I bet Mike Redmond felt pretty good about it.

6. Having done his part to save his loathsome organization from paying an extra salary, Dan Jennings asks for his job back. He is fired.

7. Dan Jennings gets a job with the Nationals as special assistant to the general manager. There are nine special assistants to the general manager, so there's no telling what he's actually doing. Maybe he's getting coffee. Maybe he's running moonshine. The mountain might get him, but the law never will.

So there's Dan Jennings' bizarre baseball career arc. From GM to field manager to unspecified front office job. Based on his demonstrated tendencies, we can assume he's using his face time with Mike Rizzo to hustle himself backwards into a bullpen catcher job. After that? The ground's the limit for Dan Jennings. Maybe he'll start blogging.

It's Too Late to be Grateful

On Christmas Eve, Daniel Murphy's representatives paid a call on Mike Rizzo. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and stood, with their hats off, in Rizzo's office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Rizzo,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for unemployed infielders, who suffer greatly at the present time."

Representatives from the ACES agency make their pitch to Mike Rizzo

At this point, a certain kind of general manager - a more cautious, if not necessarily a better, one - might have asked if there were still prisons and Union workhouses, if the Treadmill and Poor Law were still in full vigour. Finding out that they were, he would have dismissed Murphy's agents, snapped at Dan Jennings for expecting to get Christmas Day off, and gone home to eat some gruel and be terrorized by ghosts.

Rizzo took a different tack. Overwhelmed by holiday spirit, he whipped out his checkbook and started writing, looking up to ask the portly gentlemen if 37 million dollars would suffice.

It did, and now we have Daniel Murphy for three years. I'll do the cons first:

They tell me Murphy can't really play defense. He's going to be playing second, at least until everyone gets injured, and bad second basemen are no fun.

Murphy's presence means that we'll be rooting for Ryan Zimmerman's inevitable trip to the DL to come before Anthony Rendon's inevitable trip to the DL. The former might send Murphy over to 1st base, where the damage he can do is minimized. The latter could set off a terrifying cascade of defensive wackiness, so let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Assuming he stays at second, this is a straight defensive downgrade; possibly a steep one.

The other reason I don't like this signing is that Daniel Murphy is a basic Irish-American. That's a new stereotype I just developed to describe people whose walk-up music is "I'm Shipping Up to Boston." Thanks to Rizzo's Christmas liberality, I'm going to have to hear that damn song a couple hundred times more than I would have otherwise. Sam Adams commercials have been more than filling my need to hear it, so this is not a welcome development.

Fricking Irish. I'm starting to think those 19th century editorial cartoonists had a point.

Daniel Murphy avec shillelagh

To understand the pros, I have to put in some effort to accustoming myself to baseball in these times. Consider:

A 770 OPS gets you a 113 OPS+ these days. Man, I'm from the 90s. Back then, you could slug .550 and bat eighth. Every shortstop hit 30. The roads were paved with dingers. We didn't have half a dozen basic Irishmen coming up to bat to the hackneyed sounds of "I'm Shipping Up to Boston," either. Back in my day, everyone used "Crazy Train."

The point is that by modern standards, Daniel Murphy's C+ OPS makes him a pretty good hitter.

The other weird thing is that pretty good hitters make 12 million dollars, and that still seems weird to me. Greg Vaughn and Jeff Cirillo never made that much in a year. Eight digits for a guy like Murphy makes no sense to me, but I guess I'll have to get used to it.

So, in conclusion, a lame conclusion. Maybe this is good! By the bizarre, degenerate standards of the mid-2010s, the guy can hit well enough to make an absurd amount of the Lerners' money.

On the other hand, maybe this is bad! I mean, is there really an advantage to having a second baseman who hits a little bit above average when he fields way below average? Is Murphy + Danny Espinosa - $12 million really better than Trea Turner + Danny Espinosa + $12 million? I'm not convinced, and I'm not sure a free agent signing that requires a number of injuries to pay off is a good investment.

Lenny Harris for the Hall

David Ortiz says he's going to retire in about a year, so in the spirit of putting up Christmas decorations on November 1, it's time for Hall of Fame arguments.

I don't know if Ortiz should be in the Hall. Craig Calcaterra thinks he should be. He may well be right, but in mounting his argument he strung together some impressively illogical blithering about whether all of Ortiz' designated hittering should factor into it. I quote the entirety of the "The Designated Hitter Factor" section of his piece (except for the end).

He has played a mere 277 of his 2,257 career games in the field, spending the rest of his time as a designated hitter. 

The notion, however, that just because one has zero defensive value means one has no Hall of Fame case is silly.

No one is arguing that, right? Well, I'm sure you could find someone who refuses to consider DHs for the Hall, but this is certainly not engaging the real argument.

Baseball players' offensive output is graded on a curve. 300 home runs from a catcher means more than it does from a first baseman, right? Then it follows that those same dingers from a DH mean even less.

The DH has been part of the game for 43 seasons. It is not some novelty anymore.

OK. So? This is not an argument.

Relief pitchers are routinely inducted to the Hall of Fame now and they are specialists too. Many — specifically, one-inning closers — are the sorts of specialists that have only existed since the 1980s, really. If no one knocks them for not being all-around players no one should knock the DH.

Things that are different are different. Is this an argument that people should like the DH, or an argument that being a DH should have no bearing on a player's candidacy? Either way is dumb.

And the fact is that, with the possible exception of Edgar Martinez — who should be in the Hall of Fame in my view — David Ortiz has been the greatest (mostly) full-time DH in baseball history.

This is begging the question - "Ortiz is the best at something, so he's a HOFer." Being the best thing something - anything - is not a criterion for election. Being the best hitter or pitcher gets you in, sure. But it doesn't work for the best pinch hitter or defensive first baseman or third base coach.

It’s also the case that Paul Molitor and Frank Thomas would not likely have lasted long enough or produced enough as players to make the Hall of Fame without the aid of the DH as well.

Then it seems like the voters have already managed to factor designated hitting into Hall of Fame candidacies, huh?

What I suppose Calcaterra is doing is arguing against the ideological anti-DH case for keeping Ortiz out of the Hall. In doing so, he ignores more reasonable arguments, which I guess makes it a lot easier for him.

Six Year Itch

The theme of the Nationals' 2015 is nostalgia. The team celebrated the tenth anniversary of its arrival by embarrassing the hell out of us like it was 2009 all over again.

Bryce Harper and Max Scherzer ensure that we're no longer humiliated by every Nats headline, as was the case six years ago, but the ratio is nevertheless unfortunate, and it got worse as the year wore on.

Or rather, it's getting worse as the year wears on - our embarrassments didn't end on October 4, which prompted the Sports Bog to compile the Nats' ten most embarrassing moments.

The Natinals jerseys screwup is the funniest one. Papelbon choking Harper checks in at #1, but I'd put Smiley Gonzalez there. Lots of teams have public disagreements in the dugout; I think we're the only one that's lost a GM because the FBI was coming after him.

Rob Dibble's on there, but Tom Paciorek was worse. Dibble was kind of fun.

"Rob Dibble here reminding you to bring a lunch!"

A couple of my favorites didn't make the list. Remember when the Nats were ordered by the DC Fire Chief to stop setting off fireworks because some hot explosives landed on a guy?

And that guy was in fact the D.C. Fire Chief? 2009 really was a hell of a year.

That same year saw Washington Post Nats beat writer "Chico" Harlan throw an hilarious little prissfit about how he was too good for his job.

I wonder why the Sports Bog didn't mention that one.

Penny Wise

This managerial situation is amazing. The Lerners seem not to realize that talented people expect to be paid for their services, and thus have embarrassed the hell out of us all once again. I would agree to manage the Nats on a one year, $1.6 million contract. The problem is that no one who should be managing would accept that.

It has probably worked out for the best. Managerial performance is even harder to predict than it is analyze, but we may well be better off with Dusty Baker. With the exception of headline writers, of course, for whom being teased with Bud Black must have been very trying.

Even if everything's OK this time, you have wonder to what extent the Lerners' parsimony and lack of appreciation for the manager role has held this team back. They have never paid top dollar for a manager, relying on people either too new or too old to command big salaries.

Like Matt Williams.

Let's say, hypothetically, the Nats were the team that poached Joe Maddon away from the Rays. Williams gets the Rick Renteria treatment.  With Maddon installed and the Lerners millions of dollars poorer, things would have played out quite differently. Would Jayson Werth have spent his season undercutting the manger? Would one of the closers have sulked himself into uselessness? Would the other closer have tried to strangle the Bryce Harper?

Probably not, but that's why Joe Maddon costs five million dollars.

"Hey now, fellas. No choking in the dugout."

Uncle Blackie

Mike Rizzo has turned things over to his bestest buddy in the whole wide world, Mr. Black. For the last nine years he was manager of the San Diego Padres. Until they blew up.

There's a lot to like about this. For one thing, it shows that the Nationals are able to learn from their mistakes. Matt Williams was hired despite lacking any real experience because he interviewed well and was a Mike Rizzo crony from back in the day. Bud Black may have interviewed well, but neither of those other attributes is true of him.

I'm sure we're all going to enjoy how easy his name will make headline puns. You've got an evocative color AND a word that can mean friend or beer or marijuana. "Dank Bud Smokes Opposition." That kind of thing.

Plus he carries on the baseball tradition of dudes with last names that describe them inaccurately, like Cecil Fielder or Bill White or Mike Trout.

Is he a good manager? I don't know. Probably, right? People didn't seem to blame him for getting fired. I prefer to analyze these things in hindsight. It's much safer.

I may not be confident saying Bud Black is a good manager, but I'm sure he's an improvement.

Stable Condition

The Nationals fired Matt Williams, and the fact that the move was a year late doesn't mean it's not a good one.

Virgil points out that rumor is a monster, vast and terrible, fleet-winged and swift-footed, sister to Coeus and Enceladus, who for every feather on her body has as many watchful eyes below as many tongues speaking, as many listening ears.

Enceladus' sister is already providing us the with the names of possible replacements. Bud Black? Yeah, sure. Dave Martinez? OK. Cal Ripken? That's the stupidest damn thing I've ever heard.

I mean, the Nats just acknowledged that hiring a really good player with no managerial experience was a mistake. One has to hope that they're not going to follow up by hiring an even better player with even less experience.

Whoever they hire is going to have his work cut out for him. The Nats do have talent, but that talent comes with some issues. The main issue is that the guys playing for the Nats are weepy schmucks, at least one of whom isn't afraid to try to get his manager fired.

This stable may well be impossible for an outsider to clean out, and I'm going to suggest that they give that job to the man who filled it up.

Jayson Werth should manage the Nationals in 2016.

Just think of all the things that could go right!

• Barry Svrluga said that Werth is insightful and thoughtful. That can't be enitrely because Werth spent all year giving Svrluga dirt about the team. Disregard for speed limits aside, Werth does seem smarter than the average ballplayer. He might be really good.
• Major league manager is a full time job. Faced with the pressures of his new role, Werth might be tempted to give himself lots of time off.
• It's pretty clear that the most difficult aspect of managing the Nationals is Jayson Werth. But if Werth is the manager, it becomes the easiest job in sports. Smooth sailing, Nats fans!

Triumph

After a successful campaign, a Roman general could celebrate a triumph. He'd ride in a chariot through the city with his face painted red to make him look like a terra cotta statue. The crowd would cheer as they gazed upon the spoils of war, and the victorious soldiers would sing dirty songs about their leader.

At the end of the parade, the guy who lost the war would be ritually strangled. In the case of Vercingetorix, he had to wait around for five years between his surrender and the administration of the coup de grâce.

The Nationals have gone to New York, not with dirty songs and painted faces, but with the resignation of a Gaul who's killing time until it's killing time.

This happened a few weeks ago. We're just now getting around to the strangling.

I haven't been paying much attention the last couple of weeks. It's not that I've been especially busy or whatever. I just don't care. The Nats aren't playing for anything, and . . . well, I mean, do you like these guys? It dawned on me over the course of the season that I don't.

And that was even before Barry Svrluga set down the recriminations. It turns out that the Nats don't like the Nats any more than I do. It further turns out that I was right not to like these guys, since they're the most emotionally fragile pack of narcissists that ever failed. I always figured that you had to be mentally tough to make it to the majors, but the 2015 Nationals put that notion to bed.

Among other things:

• Drew Storen responded to his demotion by melting down, sulking, and breaking his thumb.
• Ian Desmond responded to his impending free agency by taking a run at Cristian Guzman's "Worst Nats Shortstop Ever" title.
• The whole team got all weepy over the Tyler Clippard trade, got even weepier about the Papelbon trade, and was just generally weepy about other dudes' paychecks.
• Jonathan Papelbon attempted to demonstrate what happened to Vercingetorix, using Bryce Harper as a stand-in.
• Jayson Werth got a day off and responded by being the biggest jackass in history.

That last one gets a block quote:

Incensed, Werth ripped the lineup card off the wall, bellowing that it was going to change. Then, according to several people who were present, he confronted Williams — not just about whether he would play that day but about what most of the clubhouse considered to be a chronic lack of communication with his players. Among the most jarring barbs, from Werth to Williams: “When exactly do you think you lost this team?” 

The Werth contract was never going to end up being a net gain. It was too long, too much money, and everyone who didn't make that offer to Werth laughed at the team that did. Still, it was looking good for a while there. Werth put up some good numbers as the Nats became a contender. He followed this up by going to jail, getting hurt, being the worst player on a team that included 2015 Ian Desmond, anonymously bitching to the media, and showing up and undercutting his manager.

He's truly the face of the team.

This season isn't a failure entirely because the players are blubbering children. The Lerners decided to get cheap when it came to improving the team. The only move Mike Rizzo made was like taking your car in for a sweet new sound system and instead installing a car bomb. Matt Williams is possibly the worst manager since Ted Turner. Still, it's not clear that these crybabies deserved any better.

I'm not going to cheer the triumphant Mets, but I'm not going to be upset when they get done strangling the Nats either.

Monkey Business

Drew Storen's 2015 has been a reminder to call no man happy until he is dead.

Everything was coming up Storen for the first half of the season. He had a pile of saves and a minuscule ERA. His team was cruising to a division title, which would afford him the opportunity to get the Playoff Monkey off his back.

HOW YA GONNA PITCH TO KOZMA, DREW?

After that, he could look forward to a nice raise in arbitration, another pile of saves, and then a big fat proven closer free agent contract.

But Fate or Whatever had other things in mind. Nemesis struck in the form of provener closer Jonathan Papelbon, whom the Nationals acquired on July 28. The thinking - it was good thinking and I liked it - was that having two closers would be better than having one.

This thinking proved to be flawed, since it failed to account for Storen completely losing it and metaphorically gouging out his eyes with his mother's jewelry. He couldn't pitch anymore. His ERA went up by five, which is a lot. He walked everyone and had as much to do as anyone with the damn Mets slamming a door in the Nats' faces.

It all ended with Storen picking and losing a fight with some locker room equipment. Thumb broken, Storen will not pitch again this year, and we've probably seen the end of his Nats tenure.

The story evokes pity and fear. Storen has a tragic flaw - the fact that his self confidence is as fragile as fine china - but he's not a bad person. He didn't do anything wrong other than pitch badly, and he didn't want to do that.

Behold this Storen, who pitched pretty good and was a man most mighty; what setup man did not gaze with envy on his fortunes? Behold into what a stormy sea of dread trouble he has come.

Therefore, while our eyes wait to see the destined final day, we must call no man happy who plays for the Nats, until he has hit free agency, free from pain.

Spine

So, that's that. The Mets came back from a 7-1 deficit last night, ripped out the Nationals' spine, and strangled them with it. It was the final turning point of the season. The time for competing has ended; now it is time for recriminations.

I've made it clear how I feel about trying to impose a narrative on a baseball season, but I also understand how tempting it is. It's never been more tempting than last night. If this were a movie, the Nats' screen time would have ended yesterday. Big shootout, Mets win, Nats wind up falling into a lava pit or something.

But, while existence may be a computer simulation, it is definitely not a movie, and the season still has a few weeks to chug along before we can get on with our lives.

Which means the Nats are still in it! I mean, if you hadn't given up a couple weeks ago, why give up now? Momentum isn't real, no matter what that fig-loving fraud Isaac Newton tells you.

"Nah, they're done. According the principles of physics, I mean. #FireMatty."

The Nats could win tonight, Matt Williams could stop bunting, and Drew Storen could decide to stop it with the sulk-pitching.

Then they could win again and again, even as the Mets are destroyed from within by their own hubris and Scott Boras. It could happen. It's not much less likely than it was two weeks ago.

It's no comfort to me - I actually did give up a couple weeks ago. But I'm happy to humor the delusions of others.

I Don't Know. Whatever.

"Bryce Harper Calls Out Nationals Fans"! Can you believe it?

You shouldn't because he didn't. A journalist asked him a question about the ambiance at Nationals Park. He responded honestly, and that gave all the writers an opportunity to shriek and jump and down and get lots of clicks because of all the delicious outrage. So congratulations to everyone involved - you're all credits to your profession.

“I mean, they left in the seventh, so that’s pretty brutal. I don’t know. Whatever.”

Sounds pretty reasonable to me, and keep in mind that this was in response to a question. It's not like he called Mean Gene Okerlund over and started bellowing into his mic about fair-weather fans.

I particularly agree with the part where Harper said, "I don't know. Whatever." That's exactly right, because this whole thing is dumb. Are Nats fans not good at being fans? It's possible. But it doesn't matter.

Being a good fan has no moral dimension to it. "Good fan" and "good person" are not the same thing. They don't even overlap. If you want to leave the game in the seventh, go right ahead. Maybe you have something better to do. Maybe you're in right field melting into a sunburned puddle. The risk is that you will be looked down upon by people who think spending two hundred bucks on a jersey and being willing to overturn a car should the Nats win a World Series are indications of good character.

I can understand that Harper would prefer to play in front of an enthusiastic crowd. It's just that it doesn't matter. It's like Drew Storen's desire to close - we can't all get everything we want, and we can't concern ourselves with everything everyone else wants.

At the same time, it's silly to condemn Harper for stating a reasonable desire in such a mild, unassuming way. "What a punk!" cry the comments. And, yeah, Harper is a punk. It's just that this in no way a demonstration of that.

But all this is fiddling while Rome burns. The Nats blew it yesterday, as I'm sure you don't need me to tell you. Scherzer has been exhausted, and the bullpen's bad enough that, when combined with the acumen of Manager of the Year Matt Williams, there's no lead it can't blow.

Nero didn't really fiddle while Rome burned, they tell us. He performed a poem about the sack of Troy. I don't understand the objections to this. It was thematically appropriate, and what was he supposed to do? Run out there with a bucket?

The Natsiest

This is it, people. The final countdown. We're headed for Venus (Venus).

The Nationals just beat the ever-loving hell out of the Braves, and that's great. Curb-stomping the Braves is something I will never get tired of seeing. It hasn't been the hardest task lately, but when was the last time the Nats looked like a team that could do it? It might have been as long ago as June, when they actually did it.

So the Nats are heading into this series with the Mets in as good a shape as one could expect. The Mets, meanwhile, have become so Nats-like that I have to force myself not to like them. They just dropped two of three to the Marlins - that's something the Nats would do. They lost two games off their lead over the course of a weekend - sounds familiar. They're talking about shutting down one of their starters because of innings and ligaments and Scott Boras - well, it'd be nice for the Nats to have company when it comes to that kind of stupidity.

So we're hitting the Mets at their Natsiest. That's good, because they can send us to game over this very week if they get their crap together and the Nats regress to their second most recent state.

Europe Update: Europe actually put out an album this year. They're big in Sweden, I guess. Please enjoy the first single and title track, "War of Kings."

Knife Fights

See, here's why I don't get into knife fights.

Imagine you're in a knife fight. Your opponent is wearing his Chucks and high-water jeans, and you have your three-quarter sleeve white pimp jacket, as is customary.

But you're losing! You're all cut up, and there's so much blood on your knife that you can't keep a good grip on it.

Suddenly, the winning move occurs to you. I don't know what this would be since I don't get into knife fights, but maybe it's, like, a double reverse backhand knifestab preceded by saying, "HEY look over there!"

The problem is that you're in no condition to pull off this perfect move - you can't hold your knife and you're getting sleepy from blood loss (does that actually happen, or do I just get sleepy because giving blood is boring?). You figured it out, but too late.

The Nationals could be in a similar situation. Everything's coming together, as long as you define "everything" as "the batters."

• Ryan Zimmerman is . . . well, you can't say he's back to normal, because he's not this good. 7 homers, 28 RBI, and a 942 OPS in August. His September OPS is 2121.
• Jayson Werth is now batting leadoff, and in that position he's "slashing" 328/400/621. I'm skeptical that there's any causation there, but I'll take it. I mean, the man's paid his debt to society and maybe it's time to lay off him.
• Anthony Rendon's maybe coming around. The trend line is upwards, at any rate.
• Bryce Harper is walking more than Johnny Appleseed.

This is a different kind of good team than we expected, but it's looking pretty good regardless. It's the kind of team that can win a division.

But it's probably not the kind of team that can win a division in a month while spotting the Mets six games.

Knife Fight Bibliography:

• Borges, Jorge Luis. (1962) "The South." Ficciones  Trans. Anthony Bonner. New York: Grove Press.
• Herbert, Frank. (1965) Dune. Philadelphia, PA: Chilton Books.
• Payne, Anthony (producer). (1983) Beat It [video]. United States; GASP.

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.

Rub Some Dirt On It

Matt Williams lost the Nationals another one last night. The Nats' one deadline acquisition, Jonathon Papelbon, sat there watching as the bullpen did what the bullpen does.

The Papelbon trade turned out to be a "Gift of the Magi" situation. Williams sold his hair to buy Mike Rizzo a watch fob, and Rizzo got Williams a closer he's too stupid to use.

My question: What is the point of Matt Williams?

He's obviously not any good tactically. He has no idea when to pull a starter. He appears to believe that there's a rule preventing a designated closer from pitching in any but save situations. He thinks a defensive replacement is something that happens to other people. He clearly only learned what a double switch was a couple of weeks ago - he handles those things like your grandpa with an iPhone.

Does he make up for it in other ways?

FP Santangelo is a proponent of what I call the emotional school of baseball criticism. You hear it pretty much every game - if the Nats are losing, the solution is to become gritty. Get the uni dirty. Play as a team. Feed off each other like a plane-crashed soccer team.

This is the goal.

I'm not as opposed to this kind of thing as I'm making it sound. There's something to it; I don't doubt that a happy clubhouse leads to better performances than a miserable one or that good attitudes are more likely to produce good results. I'm not going to base any kind of argument around the concept because it's too wispy to hang anything on, but that doesn't mean it's completely imaginary.

But the fact that FP has to say it every day means that Matt Williams isn't making it happen. I can tolerate a bad tactical manager as long as he brings other things to the table. This isn't some kind of "I renounce sabermetrics!" thing either. If I recall correctly, that was the point of Bill James' manager book - the tactics add up to few games. It's being able to manage people that counts.

There's no reason to think Williams can do that. At least some of his players don't like him any more than we do. The team is embarrassingly bad at fundamental things like throwing a ball to first base. To the extent that there's such a thing as "playing with a sense of urgency," the Nats aren't doing it.

Other than using SAT words in radio interviews, is Matt Williams good at anything?

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.