Congratulations, Washington

A lot of people thought that when the Expos moved to Washington, D.C., they would be able to turn things around. Baseball was 'back' in the District and that was great. Well, it's a step up from playing your games overseas because no one at home cares. Unfortunately, it does not produce the W. I no longer subscribe to MLB.TV, (because I have no money and, even more importantly, no bandwidth at school,) so I can only catch a game on the rare occasion that one is on TV and I have a chance to step in. Which isn't often. And that's how I ended up watching Nationals v. Braves last night. As far as baseball games go, this one was not spectacular. Summary: 8th inning, Smoltz is still in a 0-0 game with runners on the corners. Belliard singles to right field to bring home a run, and the Nationals went nuts. Ryan Church, in the dugout, yelled, "we got ahead, finally!" Sadly enough, he wasn't referring to just this game. This was the first time in 61 innings that the Nationals had held a lead. And so the team freaked out. Not wanting to jinx their 'rally' they returned to their previously occupied positions on the bench. Another single by Zimmerman brought in yet another runner, 2-0 Nationals. Go team!

Technically, this was the Nationals first in-game lead of the year. Their only previous lead this season was a walk-off, game winning single by Dmitri Young. So the Nationals weren't really ahead in that game, technically speaking. But enough of how bad this team is. Starter Jason Bergmann went 6 innings, walking four and giving up just one hit while striking out eight. Remarkable, because in his last outing he gave up six walks in 3.2 innings. Bergmann explained his sudden improvement by recalling a "nice chat" he had with GM Jim Bowden, in which he told him that he was disappointed in him, but behind him 100%. Jason decided that walks, "are just not fun," and that's our story. Didn't anyone ever take this kid aside in A-ball and tell him to stop giving the other team free bases? We could've avoided this whole thing altogether. Well, this is the Nationals organization for you. They're so bad, it's even hard to make fun of them. This should be a good year for cracking at the cellar dwellers. We've got the Royals, Marlins, Devil Rays, Nationals, Cubs, Pirates... is it just me, or are the bad teams multiplying?

What was Jim Bowden thinking? - March 21, 2006