These Nationals Look The Same As Last Year's

For a minute there, Washington Nationals fans lost themsleves. They'd started thinking that maybe this year of baseball would be better than last year's "limp to the finish line" train wreck. And when the Nationals soared to a 20-15 record, Washington, D.C. began to catch "baseball fever". Unfortunately, it looks like D.C.'s fever has broken.

Since that 20-15 start, the Nationals have gone 13-29 as they stumbled their way through the softest part of their season schedule. The blame lies with the usual suspects: poor defense, suspect pitching, and wasted at-bats. Basically, exactly the same problems as last year.

Here's just how bad the Nationals have been :

• The Nationals again lead the major leagues in errors. In the last week alone, the team has committed 7 errors and given up 6 unearned runs. In the last month, they've surrendered 24 unearned runs while committing 29 errors. So when the team commits an error, it usually turns into a run.
• The Nationals have been batting .246 over the last week, and .238 over the last month.  That ranks them near the bottom of the league over both stretches of time and it's largely because in the last 30 days, only 6 other teams have struck out more. The rest of the time, the Nationals have been hitting balls that barely make it out of the infield and usually turn into easy groundouts. It's hard to put up points with that kind of ineffective hitting.
• The Nationals are also bottom-dwellers in the important categories of slugging average and on-base percentage. They're not reaching base enough and even when they do, they don't reach many. It's also hard to score when you can't get around the bases.

Needless to say, it's not pretty and the fans won't take it for much longer. Manager Jim Riggleman has already copped to calling a team meeting in hopes of motivating the ball club to fix its mistakes. But it's looking like there's an increasing need for some drastic action to be taken before the Nationals' season really falls off the tracks. Here are some recommendations:

• First, the batting order needs to be rearranged, especially the lead-off spot. Nyjer Morgan has lost his mojo. The base-stealing, hit-slapping mid-season pickup from the Pirates last year has cooled off into a lackluster 1-spot with a sub-.250 average, an OBP of .311, and a knack for getting picked off while stealing bases. Meanwhile, there's this guy named Roger Bernadina sitting in the bottom of the order who has an OBP of .354 and a batting average of .291. He's been one of the bright spots in the lineup as of late and he's earned a chance to be a lead-off man. There's also a guy named Michael Morse who's been hitting pretty well lately and needs to be at the plate. Let Morgan figure out his issues somewhere else in the lineup.
• Tell Ian Desmond and some of the other fielders to stop trying out their heroics. Actually, Desmond might get a bit of a pass on this one because he's a rookie who will learn from his mistakes and his heroics have resulted in some clutch outs. But Christian Guzman and Nyjer Morgan and (to an extent) Ryan Zimmerman need to know when to hold the ball. Sometimes it's better just to take the baserunner.
• The team needs to clean out some dead weight. For example, Willie Harris, a player who sees most of his at bats coming off the bench to pinch hit, has been noticeably lacking in production this year. He does have 4 homers, but he also has seen his batting average drop to .155 over the course of the season. That's not worth the $1.5 million that the team is paying him this year.

But that's just some of what could be done. Regardless, this team needs to get it together if they want to avoid sliding into another 100-loss season. There is still a lot of baseball left and it's not too late to salvage the season, but the time to make a move is now. The Nationals next three series are against three of the best teams in the National League: San Francisco, New York, and San Diego, and the schedule only gets more difficult from there. Beating those teams would go a long way towards pulling the 2010 season back from the brink.