Last night in San Francisco, Pedro Sandoval hit a 2-out, 2-strike offering from Joe Beimel over everything to give the Giants a come-from-behind 9-7 victory. Standard issue walk-off, jumping up and down by the home team, tough one for the vistors. Move along, nothing to see here.If only it were that easy for the 6 or 7 fans left in Washington. Teejay's led the charge in chronicling Team Lerner's ongoing experiment in civic torture in the G:TB comments section, but in the spirit of our government's new transparency, we're throwing the sunlight on the Nats' bullpen's body of work in a effort to expose the putrescence and excorcise the demons. We won't be using any names because a) the list is too long, and b) we have at least a little compassion.
Herewith, in chronological order, the story of Manny Acta's firemen:
April 13 vs. Philadelphia 9, Nats 8 - Uncle Cholly's boys plate 5 in the 7th and 8th innings to ruin the Nats' home opener.
April 17 vs. Florida 3, Nats 2 - single tallies in the 9th and 10th provide the Marlins' winning margin.
April 18 vs. Florida 9, Nats 6 - not satisfied with blowing a win in mildly tough fashion, the Nats give up 3 in the 9th and 3 more in the 11th to fall to the Marlins. The grumbling reaches near fever pitch as Washington's record skids to 1-9.
April 19 vs. Florida 7, Nats 4 - sorry, make that 1-10, as the home team allows 4 runs in the 9th to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
April 27 @ Philadelphia 13, Nats 11 - Manny's boys manage to go 8 days without a meaningful bed-wetting, but make it a doozy to make up for the streak of moderate competence, giving up 6 runs in the bottom of the 8th to the Phightins.
April 30 vs. St. Louis 9, Nats 4 - in one of my personal favorites, the Nats treat the home crowd to a nail-biter, entering the 9th deadlocked with the Central-leading Redbirds. And then give up 5 runs to send the fans home deflated once again.
May 6 @ Los Angeles 10, Nats 3 - in a real
team effort, the bullpen joined starter Daniel Cabrera in giving up 8 runs in the 6th and 7th innings to turn a close contest into a comedy routine. Nats had the last laugh after that pederast Hanrahan found Manny Ramirez' stash.May 10 @ Arizona 10, Nats 8 - good-guy Nats hand rookie manager A.J. Hinch his maiden victory, allowing 5 runs in the 6th through 8th innings. Who says nice guys finish last? Oh.
May 12 @ San Francisco 9, Nats 7 - the above-mentioned Pedro Sandoval waited until the last moment to add one more dollop of gack to the Nats' bullpen recipe.
The 10-21 Nats can legitimately trace 9 losses to their dreadful, awful, horrific, turrible, not very good at all bullpen (1-10, 6.02 ERA, 1.67 WHIP, .828 OPS against). Turn half of those to wins, and they're only 3 games behind the Mets in the decidedly average NL East, with decent young starting pitching and a respectable major league offense. (We'll remain notably quiet regarding the Nats' defensive abilities.)
What you're doing Messrs. Lerner and Kasten, we're not seeing it.
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69 comments:
that homer won me some sweet action. I always bet against the nats.
Sorry to veer off-topic, but is there anybody out there who gives one iota of a shit about a "battle of the minds" between Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell? ESPN.com seems to think we'll care, but I beg to differ.
Can we even qualify Simmons as an intellectual? He got his start by giving running diaries of adult video awards shows and NBA drafts.
And Gladwell is a bit of a clown. His books are cute, and they'll make a long flight a bit less boring, but that's about it. No meat behind his unproven hypotheses. And I would put my peak 'fro up against his any day of the week.
I've been on the road the last 24 hours and have missed the banter about "texts from last night." I'm so glad that the Gheorghe-o-sphere likes the website as much as I do.
And, the Nats suck. They took advantage of the city to get the stadium and are putting a crappy product on the field. I refuse to give them $$.
Also, it wasn't a battle at all. They agreed about everything, even Gladwell's ridiculous idea that basketball teams should always press when they're playing more talented opponents. His article in the New Yorker on the subject is downright embarassing. And unbelievably pompous.
I haven't checked out the battle of minds, but Simmons usually turns in quite submissive performances when pitted against people he is enamored with (Stern) or who are smarter than him (Stern, Klosterman).
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell
I don't think anybody will be able to read the entire thing. I sure couldn't.
I struggle to finish almost every New Yorker article I start. It doesn't help that they're usually at least 5,000 words.
The Simmons-Klosterman debates were pretty brutal. Klosterman's opinions are much more interesting when they're read. When they come from his nasal voice, they're grating.
Was this simmons/gladwell thing a podcast? I have only read blink, which I think isn't particularly outstanding. In the end gladwell doesn't have a real overarching or unifying conclusion.
Is this where I come to commend Magnum Z.I. (Thanks Rob Dibble) on his 30 game hit streak, thus effectivel ending said hit streak with my praise?
Sadly, (possibly) schizophrenic and (definitely) homophobic Julian Tavarez might be the Nats best bullpen arm.
They played Pantera at the Verizon Center? DC seems too staid for such between-action music.
nice of the caps to show up this evening.
Ah the edge of your seat magic of a Game 7.
Ah, Geoff bouncing between blogs in an effort to find somebody to talk to.
Ah Mark bouncing between blogs looking for someone to be a dick to.
We all should be blogging rather than watching what the Washington Capitals are doing tonight on ice (stinking). A letdown short of the Skins-Raiders Super Bowl, but in the conversation.
anyone else find it inappropriate for craig laughlin to be shilling for his hockey school during the broadcast?
Per usual, you complete me Geoff.
Being short-handed for the first 4 mins of the 3rd period should solve the Caps problems.
Did anyone tell the Caps that this series is limited to 7 games?
hey, super!
one bright spot: this eliminates any potential conflict of interest i might have had should the bruins win tomorrow.
6-2...thrilling.
The Caps were pretty bad in game 7 against the Rangers also. It's just the Rangers kind of suck and couldn't take advantage.
Green is having an awful post-season.
i assume we'll reconvene our bandwagon when dc united begin their mls cup run.
Also on the plus side, Jerry gets to watch more of his buddy Mr. Crosby this season.
WE CAN BUILD ON THIS!!!
/loser talk
Our enthusiasm for the DC United will fall just below that of the DC chapter of WAKA. They at least meet at the Irish Times afterwards.
In an attempt to circle back to the actual post content, the Washington Nationals' bullpen tried to blow another lead (2 ER in 2 IP) but alas, they could not.
And Ryan Dylan went hitless, so his streak ends at 30 games.
Go Bruins. I might be more interested in DC United than the Nationals.
jr smith now 2-2 when i exclaim 'no way' as he shoots.
Nice Zimmerman/Dylan reference, Whit.
Was anybody else surprised to learn that Dirk has been a 4-time All-NBA first team selection? I would've guessed he was on the list twice at most. I guess it was usually he and Duncan over Garnett.
I'm surprised that the woman that Dirk was involved with used to date Tony Banks. She sounds HoF-level crazy -- this story has legs.
Dirk is German, which, by definition, makes him a freak in the bedroom.
The chick probably served as his toilet seat in twisted scheizer films he was making at his place.
TR has been waiting for months to have an excuse to make a scheisse film joke. He needed a Nowitski or Hasselhoff thread, and the day finally arrived.
Thanks, TR. Glad someone caught that bad one.
This one reminded me of you...
(704): I'm taking a dump and eating a fortune cookie and it said "Force it to be successful"
A few more. Shlara has created a monster here.
(919): so I was just driving high and I stopped to let a pinecone cross the road because I thought it was a hedgehog.
(508): my grandmother thought she vaccuumed up a quarter so she made me open the bag, dump it out on her front lawn, and dig through it. no quarter.
(734): I Once took so much Ecstacy that I tried to hug a fire.
(727): He started to lick my mole,thinking it was my nipple.
(636): I just put out an orange level terrorist threat on her punani
this is pretty neat, in a baseball-dorky sorta way. mark, you can move along, nothing to see here.
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/years-best-illusion-explains-why-curve-balls-confuse-batters
paulus to play qb for 'cuse. suck it, teejay.
Paulus would benefit from leveraging his 'Cuse time into a starting role on a team in that new pro football league starting next year.
Sports betting is now legal in Delaware. How about we have the G:TB summit there? The gov'nor says they'll be open for business in 3 months.
I've heard good things about Dewey Beach...
(859): I shampoo & condition my pubes, sometimes i wish my face was closer so i could rub against it cause it feels like plush
I mean how am i supposed to get any work done around here....
It's been a while since we had one of the classic 5-day internet fads like this. My favorite was the one where we could write our own cartoons.
This blog seems made for Greg. Especially the new, less employed version of him.
We could write our own cartoons? When was that?
Around 2001. If you put some thought into it, they could be pretty funny. Or you could go for speed like Teejay and send out a link every hour.
He was the McDonald's of cartoonists, eh? Fitting.
If the natural life cycle of the fad was 15 business days, Teejay's saturation alone knocked it down to 5 or 6.
TJ's been a little quiet around these parts lately... Almost...too quiet...
Yep, work meeting is keeping me down...but on the positive side, Greg is in attendance today at my meeting.
And that text website has given me countless hours of entertainment as I have been trapped in this hotel.
Will you entertain a follow up? What the Christ is Greg doing at your meeting? I'll hang up and listen to your answer.
Greg's venturing into the wonderful world of real estate.
The thought/picture of Greg showing Beltway area homes to old rich people (or young closeted gays like you, Geoff) elicited quite a few laughs from Vitas and I last week.
As of Monday, Gregory is a member of my fine association...so I told him to throw on a suit and come make some friends.
I like it...congrats Gregor.
Teej, was this a little payback for him referring that contractor to you?
SI's Best/Worst owners in MLB listed here.
Guess who's the worst? (It's easy.)
Hey Steph, settle down buddy...
Not a lot of hockey talk here, but game 7 of the Bs/Canes series is all tied up in the 3rd.
OK, I'm sure one of the GTB contributors was there to witness this...
(202): i threw up in a trash can last night at kellys irish times. but in a trash can because i'm a lady
That reminds me of the time I threw up into a potted plant in a crowded hotel lobby during Florida-Georgia weekend and not a single person (including those in my party) noticed.
we're all blackhawks fans now.
No...we're not.
Denver is going to the NBA finals.
Bynum looks more like Tracy Morgan/Jordan every day.
I don't think I've ever heard it called Kelly's Irish Times. You, Teej? Or are you still at McDonald's Hamburger Restaurant?
yes, mark, we are. memo should be in your inbox.
Excellent news!! Coming this Bastille Day...
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