The Half-Assed Fan

Adrift. Confused. Discombobulated.

These all describe my feelings last week, during which time I was on the other coast in a time zone not friendly to catching the Nats. Sad but true. My return to DC was accompanied by the realization that the Nats had actually…wait for it…won a series!

Adrift. Confused. Discombobulated.

Oh, but it was true. As I began catching up, I learned several things:

• Kearns is still breaking my heart.
• Lannan is next line for the fleeting type of love so treasured by Nats fans.
• Nieves went and got all grown up on us (and we really don’t need Doubting Lo Duca).

So, here goes a glance at what some other folks are saying:

Capitol Punishment takes a surprisingly optimistic look at the last few games. Noting that three out of four ain’t bad at all, my boy Nieves tops the list of positives, while Kearns tops the list of “What’s Bad.” Sadly, I can’t disagree on that. All in all, I gotta say I dug all of the latest over there.

Walking away with the “Case of the Mondays” award, Oleanders and Morning Glories proceeds to call out Nieves, Kearns, Chico and Lannan. Here’s the part that I actually do disagree with:

No Wil Nieves is not this good. This 30yr old is not going to be the Nats answer at catcher. Not in 2008 and certainly not beyond. What he is is that odd player that helps carry the team when the stars are struggling. Which is fine for me, what about you?

Well, let’s see… Odd player, check. Struggling team, check. Helping carry the team, check. Yep, that’s fine with me, actually. I mean, with Lo Duca injured, he can’t run around with his usual level of enthusiasm and positive energy, so Nieves has gotta pick up the sla…oh, wait. I just got my own joke.

Oh, man! I really do love Miss Chatter’s photos. My favorite, and her’s too, apparently, is this shot of Kearns missing the play. Really, the look on Kearns’ face is emblematic of the season. The Miss goes on to make an excellent point near the end of her post.

The first month of baseball ends in a few days. When will the Nationals open up their eyes, relax, and stop pressing? Please?

Combine that advice with a couple healed injuries and I think we could all feel a little bit better.

One of the guys over at Nats Triple Play hilariously disassembles Thomas Boswell’s recent column, which seems to try and connect bad plays with a new ball park. My favorite part:

The Nats are surrounded with everything money can buy.

Except major league caliber starting pitching and a middle-of-the-order impact bat. But why quibble.

It’s funny because…it’s true (and sad). I mean, I rarely fault the management of the club. They’re walking a fine, and perfectly appropriate line, between a good business and a good team. But, man, the more I learn…I understand where this frustration comes from, even though I think most of these decisions have been made in good faith.

I love it when you guys out there agree with me. Thank you, Nationals Pride:

…who would have thought that Will Nieves could play a major role on this team?? Okay, there are two hands, and they are from Mike and I, the two Yankee followers.

Needless to say, that particular post goes on to run down Nieves’ strengths, eventually attributing his demise in NYC to being squeezed out of an offensively overloaded lineup.

Ok, so I was kinda hard on O&M, but here’s why–they’re right! In the long term, we have to get Cordero back up to strength, Kearns has to start performing, Lannan will have a slump, Nieves will have a bad game (and then everyone will wonder why he hasn’t gone back to Columbus yet) and Lo Duca will (most likely) not get a personality. So, as I said previously, there’s a long season in front of a Nats fan, but let’s enjoy the excitement of a soundly won series while we can.

State the Sphere will be somewhat regular, hazy look around the Nationals’ blog-o-sphere.

There’s not a lot of happy out there right now.

“But wait,” you say, “the Nats just broke their 9-game losing streak!” Yes, and therein lies the rub. It’s not that we’re unhappy about breaking that streak, but…

Capitol Punishment starts off with,

This is rock bottom right? Like last year, it has to get better.

Ouch. CP continues by explaining that, while it’s a sweet win, a more in-depth look at the stats reveals some dark horizons. Namely, Zimmerman, Kearns and Bergman. Check out the post for some some pretty intense stats.

In about the same vein, Federal Baseball asks a great question I haven’t seen or heard anywhere else:

Why make Chad Cordero come back in a tight situation, when he hasn’t been throwing above the mid-80’s in 2 rehab starts? The MASN radar had him at about 85mph on his fastballs? Cordero didn’t look happy leaving the game or on the bench afterward.

It’s a great question…but I think Acta was just testing him. Although we couldn’t tell because of those sunglasses, I’m willing to be Acta never took his eyes off Cordero while he was on the mound. And, remember, Cordero was pulled after only 2/3 of an inning.

Oleanders and Morning Glories seems to struggle through two rather scheziphrenic paragraphs before going down the glass-half-full path:

The long National(s) nightmare is over. Yes, it took an injury to Glavine, and a very shaky Jeff Bennett tossing out walks like they were Kit Kats on Halloween, but the Nats will take it.

[You could say the Nats were patient enough to take advantage of Bennett’s wildness. You could say that. You could also say walking Guzman, Milledge, and Zimmerman back to back to back was more the pitcher being bad than the Nats being good…]

I’d like to say that Wily Mo and Chad Cordero came back over the weekend and said “Get on our backs, boys. We’re carrying you to victory” I’d like to say that.

O&M also tackles the question of rushing the Corderos of the world back, but really takes issue with Guzman:

I’m not ready to praise Guzman just yet, the devil does come as the most alluring of batting averages, but can we please drop him down in the lineup? What he really has going for him right now is the slugging and for him to follow the struggling Belliard, the pitcher, and even worse Paul LoDuca, is wasting those doubles and triples (that honestly we might never see again)

You know what I have to say to that? Here’s why we’re excited to see Guzman playing well right now…we’re not going to see it again for the rest of the season.

The prevailing attitude seems to have really gotten to Just a Nats Fan, who takes on the challenges of photography in the new stadium, and ends with:

However, the frustrations have just mounted to the point my blood was bubbling yesterday and I wanted to explode or burst into tears — so I did a combination of both.

This despite a win!

The Curly W dives into the quagmire that is the Nat’s pitching situation:

It’s spring and the pitcher’s aren’t ready. The weather makes the pitchers stiff. The pitchers stink! Whatever the case may be, the Nats’ pitchers must go 5 innings and that’s it.

Agreed. Did anyone else lose count yesterday as Acta powered through what seemed like the entire bullpen?

And, finally, Nationals Farm Authority provides the backhanded optimism moment of the week by completely forgoing the rest of this season and looking forward to the draft:

I’m going to start looking at what the 2008 draft holds for the Nationals who pick at #9 in the first round, #56 in the second round, #87 in the third round, and #121 (+30) in the rounds four and out.

W’uh-oh.

Oh, before I forget, the Manny Acta-lovefest quote of the week, from the Washington Post (thanks to The Curly W for this…I read the story yesterday, then couldn’t find it today, and W had it right there…):

“He (Manny) does, though, pull the levers that run the team. And yesterday, in a situation in which his fragile club badly needed to win, he pushed each button on the control panel at the correct time. He got only five innings from his starter, right-hander Tim Redding. But on the first day closer Chad Cordero was active for a game, Acta pieced together the final 12 outs by using five relievers — coaxing his team through the ninth, when the Braves loaded the bases and threatened to deliver a devastating loss.”

Ah, yes. Gotta throw love at Manny.

Anyway…here’s the thing folks. Everyone (but the Post) is right–this season’s gonna suck. Acta’s real trick won’t be guiding the Nats to impossible wins, but guiding them through a couple of seasons of low productivity, saving those stars like Cordero while leveraging the experience of veterans such as Guzman and Peña. The other part of this is keeping an even emotional keel in the clubhouse…you can’t let morale get too low, folks lose hope and want to leave. I suspect Acta’ll keep a very emotional keel on himself, but we’ll see what happens now that we’re through the first couple seasons of excitement over the mere presence of baseball, and the reality of the expectation of productivity.