Bad Day for the Surge

Washington at Atlanta. Braves 14, Nationals 5.

Not such a good day to be Jerome Williams after all. Or to be nearly any other Nationals pitcher, for that matter. Robert Fick continues to impress, with both a home run and a pitcher staredown/talking-to of mid-season intensity. (BallWonk has long hoped the Nationals could develop a nasty, personal rivalry with Atlanta.) But where are the rest of our bats? OK, fine, we're not exactly putting our starting eight out there for nine innings a game, but neither are the other guys, and they're beating the crap out of us. And sure, a lot of those opposition runs are coming on the kind of stupid errors that are normal in March and rare by April. But again, the other guys are just as stiff and they're beating the crap out of us on fielding, too.

After having used nearly all of the available 21,500 potential starters in grapefruit games, the Nationals have been outscored 22-44. Even with a conservative pythagorean factor, that projects to a 38-124 season.

Does BallWonk really believe that the Nationals will face that kind of a landslide drubbing in the '07 campaign? No. But that's where the early polling points, the trend line is down, not up, and it's always better to go into a campaign eyes open about your chances.

BallWonk had been ready to declare anything fewer than 100 losses a success this year. Is it time to lower expectations even further, say to a benchmark of 120 losses? Thank heavens for those interleague games against Kansas City.