Thursday, May 10, 2012

Contingency Plans For the Nationals

The Washington Nationals, your resident blogger's hometown team and thus the one he sees the most of (although not his favorite team - that would be the Mets), are tied for first place just over a month into the season, despite a currently putrid offense that ranks 28th in scoring and 25th in OPS.  Due to a swath of injuries, Davey Johnson has occasionally had to do things like bat Rick Ankiel third, or the execrable Xavier Nady (.129/.169/.194 thus far, and no, that is not a misprint) fifth, as happened last night.  Fortunately for Washington, their starting pitching has been as good as their offense has been bad, and they have weathered injuries to their primary closer AND their backup closer in maintaining a decent bullpen.  If they keep it up, team management will have a major decision to make during the middle of a pennant race, and they need to start planning for that now.


Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Bryce Harper's Home Debut

On account of winning a bet with my mother over how early this season Bryce Harper would get called up to the majors, I was in attendance last night (sitting in left field, no less) for Arizona's 5-1 win over the Nationals last night.  Unless you are a starting pitcher, baseball is kind of an odd game to watch for the purposes of seeing one player do his thing, because there are a limited number of opportunities for that player to do something remarkable, quite unlike basketball or football.  But even if the final box score does not show it (0-3 with a couple of putouts in the outfield), Harper still managed to leave an impression and get everybody out of their seats.