Nationals 10-10, 2/16th of our way to Mighty Decent

(JFK got involved with a bat 4 Horsemen style in the Racing of the Presidents the other week)

Nats have now played 20 games, and pitter-pattered their way thru a weekend series against the Pirates. Jayson Werth has sucked thus far and most of the commentary has been, "He always tweaks things, he's adjusting, he's a hard worker, etc etc." This makes me think UH OH, considering the Washington Redskins/Wizards historic tradition of high-priced free agents. Of course we knew that UH OH would eventually come on his 19-year contract, but I guess I wanted 2 or 3 years of glory to usher in the drug-addled reign of The Ultimate Harper.
Anyways, Jordan Zimmermann has been pleasantly nice, pitching has really saved this team thus far, as I think only six of their position players actually carry bats into the batter's box. The rest just walk up and say, "Ump, I'm gonna pop out to 3rd," and save themselves the wear and tear on their body.
It sucks rooting for a team like this, in a sport like this. You'd like to be relevant or at least a move or two away from relevancy. As it stands, I am rooting for them to be mediocre to put us in position to be better if other things go well. It's like rooting for your family to not be poor, yet being fully aware of how these things work, so you go, "I can get my kids into a better college than I went to as the first person in my family to go to college, and then they hopefully will not fuck up and make good money at that level so that their kids could maybe go to private school and an even better college, and eventually in like four generations, if everything goes perfectly, nobody fucks up or dies or ruins something with cocaine addiction, we'll not be a fucking doomed ass poor family." This is being a baseball fan from about 25 cities in a nutshell.

Tommy Johns in the House

Last year Jordan Zimmermann was recovering from his Tommy Johnson surgical implants and was having control issues with a lackluster fastball, in the process of re-learning his shit, so to speak, like a stroke victim but about the pitcher's arm instead of the half of brain. Last week, he had a strong showing in punking out the Mets on their opening night, to piss on their field and declare that, "No, we Nats are not the bottom feeder in this NL East motherfucker no more."
Last night against the Phillies though, Zimmermann took it to the next level. Holmes pitched five perfect innings, not allowing a single punk ass Phillie bitch on base, and gave up a homer in the sixth but made it through 7 solid innings with only that one earned run. On top of that, after the game, Cliff Lee remarked that Zimmermann's fastball was one of the nastiest ones he'd seen. Coming from Cliff Lee, that's high praise. Of course being stoked that a star pitcher lavishes praise upon one of your starting Ps kinda goes against that whole "not the bottom feeder in this NL East" mindset. But hey, we take what we can as Nats fans.
Some important excitements and calmnesses to take from this are, it looks Tommy Johnson Surgery can be recovered from, as we all hold our collective stupid breaths looking at the $300 million dollar Kid Strasburg. But the recovery process is longer than just getting back on the mount. Even if Kid Strasburg is back this year by the fall, he's gonna be going through what Zimmermann did last year - relearning how to do what it is he does. Zimmermann got his speed back but took a while longer to get control of that again. Hopefully Kid Strasburg can do the same.
Man, looking at the stupid Phillies pitching line-up a few days in a row is ridiculous. Even if Zimmermann ends up a solid as fuck starter for more than a few months of a few seasons, and Kid Strasburg returns as great as his potential promised, that still pales in comparison to the Phillies. What the fuck man? What the fuck?