Congratulations Jim. Your off-season moves, bragging and segway riding have produced the worst team in baseball. Thirteen games. Twelve losses. The Nats are now 4-12 — the worst team in Major League Baseball. After a two week downward spiral, all we have to blame is ”starting pitching.” Right, that’s it.
Lannan, you’ll note, struck out 11 batters and gave up only one run in 6 innings. An excellent outing for one of our best young pitchers.
We got a whole lot of nothing from the lineup. Nick Johnson’s home run put two runs on the board. After that, a runner here or there, but not much to work with. Kearns got caught in a rundown trying to steal 2nd. You think Church or Schneider are calling our signs? Victory came with Schneider at bat. Hanrahan’s wild pitch ended the ball game. Church and Schneider celebrated their victory.
So, how did it all fall apart after Lannan’s phenomenal start? Rivera struggled a little, straightened himself out but then suffered a fatal Belliard error during his work. Eventually, that run would score on Rauch - by none other than Ryan Church, who is hitting .340. Ayala couldn’t get Wright out, but we’ll settle with the walk; it could have been worse. Colome battled but pitched scoreless for two innings. Ray King took the ball in the bottom of the twelth to give up a hit and a bunt hit. On Church’s bunt, King got a lucky call and the force out at 3rd. Joel Hanrahan came in to pitch to David Wright and got a double play ball. He battled until the 14th and fell apart. He had to intentionally walk Wright and Delgado. You could almost just predict control problems to follow. Sure enough, a wild pitch. Mets win 3-2.
Defense was alright minus the critical Belliard error and a dropped ball by Pena. Nieves, the recently called up backstop, threw a runner out at 2nd in the 11th inning. How long’s it been since you’ve seen a Nats catcher TRY to throw out a runner? To actually nail one? He didn’t hit at all, but he did draw a walk. That’s still a dramatic defensive improvement over Toast and Estrada.
A good fight with extra innings and all but Lannan deserved the win tonight and got no help from his teamates. “Frustrating” is in my vocabulary. This blows.
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April 18th, 2008 at 6:53 am
Hang on just a minute, now. You can say what you want about JimBow, and so do I sometimes.
This was never going to be a 100-win team. But these guys *are* major league hitters (well, most of ‘em). They let Lannan down big time. I’d be looking at the guys on the field, or at Lenny Harris, or, Lord help me, even Manny.
Some butt needs to be kicked. (If your fear is that JimBow may try to do the kicking and thus make things worse, that is an apprehension I can share.)
April 18th, 2008 at 8:13 am
I can understand where you are coming from. I think the problem is during the offseason, it was Jim mostly who sold his roster moves as bringing more offense to the club. It’s difficult when we haven’t seen that click yet. On top of that, Jim is looking to place the blame somewhere. Sure this team was never going to win 100 games, but it was supposed to be better than last year. Its obvious something isn’t working and at least to me there seems to be a bit of a complacent attitude on the team. They are digging a pretty big hole, yes it still early but it is going to be hard to get out of it.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:03 am
what’s more troubling than the wins (few) and losses (excruciating) is the lackluster play, the sloppy fielding and general malaise around the team right now. it started on such a high, but the team is just finding ways to lose. no for one minute last night did i feel they would hang on. i actually wrote three different endings to my game story as it was happening, and the Mets own incompetence allowed the game to go to 14.
Zim has GOT to put his head down and start driving the ball. and as much as i HATE sacrificial moves in April, Lenny Harris needs to go.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I don’t think we can blame this offense on JimBow. The guy he brought in (Milledge) is doing great, the guys we got rid of are doing great too, but that likely has a lot more to do with their surrounding cast than their own talent. If given the chance I would love to go back in time and swap Kearns for Church in the Milledge trade, but I’m probably all on my own in that regard…I would also have liked to see the team have signed Estrada as the lefty backup catch and install Flores as the #1 catcher right away. That is a tough call though and time will tell if the brain trust is right to give him another year in the minors to mature as a hitter and perfect his defense.
Speaking of Kearns we come to the real problem with this team. For this team to take the next step up from last years “over achiever” squad we needed Kearns AND Zimmerman to have rebound/breakout seasons. So far they have gone the other direction and I wonder how long the Kasten/JimBow/Acta love affair with Kearns will last. When Dukes is back and healthy it is going to be very tough to keep him on the bench to start Austin Kearns. As for Zimmerman? He will be our starting 3B for the future so we have to ride it out with him, but similair to Kearns if he doesn’t get it done he won’t be batting 3rd for long.
April 18th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
It would have been nice to see Kearns go instead of Church, but Jim would never let that happen. For some reason, he wasn’t a fan of Church at all and tried to get rid of him for a while. Kearns somehow has both Jim and Manny singing his praises even when he is in this massive slump. I’d like to see Dukes start in right once he’s healthy, just to see what happens.
I’m with you on the Flores issue. It’s ridiculous to me that pitchers like Lannan and Chico and players like Milledge are allowed to learn in the big leagues, while Flores has to learn in the minors. Signing Lo Duca was a waste of money. Why not let Flores start and go with Estrada as a back up? Chances are we’d have more offense…
I’m not sure I will ever understand the logic used so far this year…at times it seems there isn’t any at all.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:41 am
This team is a joke right now. Bowden needs to go immediately.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 am
Oh, and Zimmerman is overrated.