So - if you totally revamp your blog to talking about the Nats, and then the first thing you do after doing that is miss the first game, ....well, you'd be me. It's not entirely my fault; I had to stay late at work. By the time work was done, so was the game, and the Braves walked away with a 6-4 win.
This was a hybrid of both the incredibly early-season struggles the Nats had (let's fall behind before we come up to bat!) and the slightly-more-recent ability to generate offense (the winning run was on base as late as the 7th inning). By the time the first was over, the Braves had sent 8 guys to the plate and Jerome Williams had pitched 36 pitches, and I'm left to believe that the McCann walk was of the unintentional intentional variety.
After that, it was more of the Nats' early-season woes; Smoltz sent down the side in order the first two innings before Chris Snelling worked out a walk in the third, coming around to score thanks to a sacrifice and FLop's infield single + throwing error.
Fast-forward to the bottom of the 7th (current score: 5-2). Once again, another rally was started by a Schneider non-hit followed by Snelling coming up big, and FLop contributing another RBI. It's good to see this from FLop, who's had a rough go of it early on. Still, two runs scored, and with Kearns at second, Zimm struck out and Meathook flied out. End of rally, end of game; Rafael Soriano and Bob Wickman closed the door. Another day, another game.
Aside from that, some other minor notes:
- FLop finally seems to be warming up; he's 6 for his last 14 with a stolen base (and a CS).
- Snelling continues his semi-intermittent hitting pace (5 for his last 10 if you ignore Monday's game). As bats in the number 8 hole go, you could do a lot worse.
- Scheider continued his odd pattern of getting critical non-hits, igniting a rally in the 7th. A double-switch going in the top of the 7th turned Schnieder into the de facto leadoff hitter, knocking Robert Fick out of the game.
- Speaking of Fick ... in the 6 spot? I'm a big fan of Acta, but I don't get it. Eh, he'll get a pass on this from me for now.
In other news, the Kory Casto experiement is on hold; he's been sent back down to Columbus. Not too surprising; as I mentioned before, Snelling has done a damn fine job hitting that far down in the order, and I'm personally wondering when he'd move up to hit 7th (or 6th!). Casto needs the everyday PT, which he wasn't going to get with the big club.
On the other hand, this is going to create some interesting debate as to who should start when Logan comes back from the DL with Snelling and Church hitting well.
