Brutal

What a brutal series. The Rockies violated us over and over again, getting big hits, and preying upon the Nationals many many many many many errors, as the Nats threw the ball all over the ballpark as if they were Mark Brunell trying to complete a 5-yard out pattern.

Fresh off my last 'the defense stinks' post, the Nats went out, and not only crapped the bed, they rolled around in it all night. 6 errors!?! If this were the deadball era and they weren't wearing gloves, then, yeah, that's acceptable. But the comedy (a black one!) of errors was just this side of disgusting.

The outfield play was abysmal in the entire series, missing, bobbling, lobbing every ball that got more than four feet in the air. Ryan Zimmerman fielded like Butch Hobson in '78. FelipE Lopez did whatever he could to not make successful plays. And Nick Johnson? Oh, Nick Johnson. How the mighty have fallen. Earlier this season he showed an amazing ability to misplay popups in foul territory. Lately, his hands have turned to stone, and his inability to scoop anything but the easiest of throws has hurt the other infielders (not to mention the pitchers!) Jose Vidro continues to play spectacularly bad defense, and I saw at least two plays where a merely competent second baseman would've turned double plays. Ugh.

Yesterday, the team didn't make any errors, but the pitching still blew chunks. Astacio couldn't make it out of the third, and someone called "Chris Schroder", perhaps distraught about his cat being in a box, loaded 'em up and gave up a Grand Slam to Todd Helton -- at least it wasn't Jamey Carroll.

The offense was fine enough, but this minor league pitching.... yeesh. That's what we're left to deal with though. And part of me hates it. But part of me realizes it's for the best. Although looking at the Fielding Independent Pitching stats, I realize that there aren't many keepers here either.

Jamey Carroll torched the Nats in this series and during the entire year, hitting .452/ .528/ .677 against our fair (fair as in mediocre -- wait, we're not even good enough to be mediocre!) team.

Now I love Jamey as much as he loves the Lord, but let's not get carried away with the love and the pity and the anger and the.... Jamey's still a pretty mediocre player. He's a slap-hitting singles hitter who's playing in a park that accentuates the ability to slap singles. And he's playing full time for a lousy team -- something, even with as lousy as we've been, he wouldn't have done here. He went to a perfect situation where he could make Bowden look foolish.

Sure, I'd have rather had Carroll to the sack of crap that was Damian Jackson, but the difference between Carroll and Jackson is negligible, even with all the 'little' things. Losing Carroll for peanuts sucked, for sure, and having one fewer likeable person on the team to root for sucked, too. But in the scheme of things, the bigger picture, we'd be just as lousy -- maybe one or two games less lousy. Who cares?

You know you're a bad team when the team's beat writer spends the first 11 paragraphs describing a completely inconsequential defensive indifference call.

Am I the only one who's not enthused about Soriano's 40/40 chase? He's had a helluva season, but this one only marginally warms the cockles more than Preston Wilson's drive for 90 last season. Yawn.