The great chase – first team to 100 wins takes the National League East – has thus far been a walkover. The Atlanta Braves have seized a 6 ½ game lead over the Washington Nationals, who exited Sunday with a more pressing task to attend: Nose back to .500.
The consensus choice as baseball’s best team– full disclosure: I shared that opinion – has been, through nine weeks of a six-month season, a raging dud. The Braves beat Washington 6-3 Sunday, dropping the Nats to 3-7 against the team they concede they’ll have to subdue if they’re to make anything of a season manager Davey Johnson has characterized as “World Series or bust.”
Said Nats shortstop Ian Desmond: “We want to win our division. In order to do that, we’re going to have to beat them. That seems tough right now, but it’s a long year.”
It is. Anyone who witnessed the Epic Collapse of 2011 knows how quickly a fat lead can be overridden, and those Braves didn’t begin to unravel until August. “There’s still plenty of time to right the ship,” Johnson said Sunday, but his issue isn’t so much time as team.
Washington, which won 98 games last season, is on pace to win 79. It entered Sunday’s game ranked 13th among 15 NL teams in runs and batting average, 14th in on-base percentage. Said Johnson: “Half the ballclub is not doing the things it’s capable of doing. We’ve got too many quality players to be doing that.”
So you’d think. But Desmond recalled glancing at the scoreboard during the Nats’ recent series against Baltimore and being startled. “They had five or six guys who were plus-30 in RBI’s,” he said. “We have like two.”
Actually, the Nats had – and have – none. Some of this is due to injury: Right fielder Jayson Werth has missed a month with a sore hamstring, and the famous Bryce Harper hasn’t been himself since he smacked face-first into the Dodger Stadium fence three weeks ago. Werth is scheduled to return this week; Harper was placed on the disabled list Saturday.
One night earlier, the other face of the Washington franchise left after two innings. Stephen Strasburg tweaked an oblique in the series opener here and was shipped to D.C. for an MRI. The Nationals are hopeful he won’t miss a start – No. 4 starter Ross Detwiler is already DL’ed – but his many aches and pains make you wonder: How fragile would Strasburg be if he hadn’t been shuttered after 159 innings last season?
To watch the Nationals over the weekend was to see a team that fully believed in spring training beginning to wonder. The Braves won Saturday night on a walk-off single by B.J. Upton, who’d been benched five times in the previous seven games, and Upton’s home run Sunday yielded a lasting lead. The Braves won the series without benefit of an RBI from Justin Upton or Evan Gattis, which is the sort of thing good teams do.
At 28-29, the Nationals aren’t even good. The way they lost Sunday was downright bad. Four of their first six batters managed hits; only one of the next 27 did. Afterward Desmond would say, “We’re grinding it out, doing everything we can,” but this performance didn’t suggest a team doing much of anything. Mostly the Nats seemed interested in getting out of town.
Contrast this with Brian McCann’s at-bat in the sixth. With the Braves leading 3-1, Johnson summoned left-hander Zach Duke to face the lefty McCann, who fouled off three two-strike pitches before driving a run-scoring single the opposite way. That’s grinding for you.
Said Desmond: “It’s just a matter of our team getting the pieces back, and we’ll be better and all these questions will be a thing of the past.”
Johnson: “We’ll get Jayson back … He should be ready to carry us on his shoulders.”
About here, you wanted to say: So when did Jayson Werth, who has never had a 100-RBI season, become Miguel Cabrera? But decorum carried the day and the question went unasked. The Nationals have troubles enough; let them take solace where they can find it.
Besides, most of what the Nats say is true: With four months remaining, the dynamics of this division could change a half-dozen times. Said McCann, declining the chance to declare victory: “It’s a long season. It’s one of those races that will be won by who gets the best pitching.”
In other words, this could well turn out like all races. As the moment, it has been no race at all. The Braves have been very good. The reigning NL East champ – the team allegedly possessed of a swaggering “Natitude” – has gone splat.
