Brutal stretch of games will test club’s mettle
The Major League Baseball season is six weeks old, and the Nationals find themselves in an unusual position.
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They are not looking up at the rest of the National League East. They are not the bumbling, inept franchise fans in the District have watched with increasing apathy. Instead, Washington’s baseball team has put together its best sustained stretch since its first season here in 2005.
Now the question: Can it last, or is this just a nice start before the inevitable fall? This week’s three-game series against the New York Mets began a run of 19 games out of 24 away from Nationals Park. And 15 of those are against teams with a winning record. By June 6, the Nats will have played 32 games in 33 days — the kind of relentless grind that can whittle a team’s win-loss record down to its appropriate mark.
“I think our players feel like if we’re close we have a chance to win a ballgame,” Nats manager Jim Riggleman said. “Early in the year we got blown out a couple times, and that’s never a good feeling. But the ballclub never lost confidence. … It all comes back to pitching, and we’ve gotten good pitching.”
Indeed, until the bullpen’s meltdown Tuesday night against the Mets — Washington led the game 6-2 in the eighth inning — the relief corps has been far better than last year’s league-worst unit (5.09 ERA). Even without free agent signee Jason Marquis (elbow injury), the starting rotation has been solid, too. Livan Hernandez (4-1, 1.04 ERA) has the league’s second-best ERA and Scott Olsen (2-1, 3.51 ERA) has recovered nicely from shoulder surgery last summer. Neither was guaranteed to make the team in spring training.
There are warning signs, however. The bullpen has been propped up by the performances of Tyler Clippard (major league-leading seven wins) and closer Matt Capps (leading the league with 14 saves). That duo has pitched an unsustainable 44 1/3 innings combined, and Clippard was battered in Tuesday’s loss. The rotation is already down Marquis, who did not make it through Tuesday’s minor league rehab start healthy at Single-A Potomac. He is likely to have surgery. And questions remain about left-hander John Lannan after he skipped his last start with a tender elbow.
But there is still a sense that this team is different from the previous two 100-loss clubs. And if it can somehow get through this brutal month intact, there is hope. In June, 22 of Washington’s 27 games are against teams with a losing record. That includes series against the sport’s four worst teams — Houston, Baltimore, Kansas City and Cleveland.
