The Washington Generals were a basketball team that served as the comic foil for the Harlem Globetrotters. The Washington Nationals are a baseball team that has become the comic foil for the Atlanta Braves. Difference is, the Generals lost to the Globies on purpose. The Nats are supposed to be trying to beat the Braves.
Since Aug. 21, 2012, Washington is 7-22 against Atlanta. That’s a winning percentage of .241. If the Nats played at that pace over 162 games, they’d finish 39-123. In the history of baseball, no team has ever lost 123 games.
And here we note the overarching incongruity: Except when they play the Braves, the Nationals are a good team. From April 2013 through Sunday, Washington is 86-63 against every other opponent; it’s 7-18 against the Braves. And how, losing pitcher Gio Gonzalez was asked, can the expanse between these clubs be explained?
“The Braves lock it in — they compete,” Gonzalez said, speaking after Sunday’s 10-2 thrashing that capped yet another Braves sweep. “We do the same thing. We just catch some bad breaks.”
Really? That explains being 1-5 against the Braves in 2014 after going 6-13 last season? Bad breaks?
“The common thread is that it feels the same way pretty much every time we play these guys,” shortstop Ian Desmond said. “Maybe we should try something different the next game.”
Like what? Switch to the Wishbone?
The Nats’ frustration grows more evident with every lost series, and they’ve won only one of the past nine against the Braves. (They’ve been swept in four.) They were picked to win the World Series in 2013 but were lapped by Atlanta. They were picked to win the National League East this season, and they still might – provided the Braves secede from Major League Baseball.
The weekend couldn’t have gone worse for the visitors. They lost three games and two starters – center fielder Denard Span and third baseman Ryan Zimmerman – to the disabled list via strange injuries. Span slammed into Dan Uggla after flipping a go-ahead single into left field Friday and was later diagnosed with a concussion; Zimmerman suffered a broken thumb in getting picked off second base Saturday. (The Nats are lousy at baserunning, FYI.)
The Nats also saw Bryce Harper, their hugely touted left fielder, get caught off base Saturday and get thrown out Sunday trying to advance – with his team trailing 6-0 – on a pitch that bounded six feet in front of Braves catcher Gerald Laird. The same Harper, stationed in center field because of Span’s absence, made an error Sunday, two days after fumbling the Justin Upton bloop single that brought Jordan Schafer around from first with the winning run. Harper had moved to right Friday night because Jayson Werth exited with tightness in the groin.
Before Sunday’s game, Zimmerman sat at his locker in street clothes, his thumb in a metal brace. (He’s expected to miss a month.) “Crazy things happen in these games,” he said. “You see things you don’t see very often.”
Well, yes. But most all of these games have a similar ending. On Friday, first baseman Adam LaRoche said: “I don’t think we ever play well against those guys.” On cue, his Nats went out and dropped another three-spot.
Zimmerman: “It’s no secret they’ve been winning most of these games. I don’t think it does anything to our confidence. I don’t think it’s a mindset thing.”
Speaking before the game, Nats general manager Mike Rizzo told Washington reporters: “We feel we’re better than this team. We respect them, we respect the organization, but we don’t fear them … We think at the end of the day we’re going to come out on top.”
As a rallying cry, it fell flatter than New Coke. Four batters in, the Braves led 3-0. Gonzalez aided and abetted his undoing, fielding B.J. Upton’s bunt and flinging the ball past LaRoche down the right-field line. (The Nats made seven errors on the weekend. They’re bad at defense, too.)
“I felt I made some great pitches,” said Gonzalez, who yielded five extra-base hits in the first two innings and who has a career RBI of 5.31 against Atlanta. “Things just went their way.”
“What we can’t do is get outside of ourselves,” manager Matt Williams said afterward, although it mightn’t be a bad idea if the Nats showed up disguised as the Mets. That lowly team was 9-10 against Atlanta last season and is 2-1 this. The Nationals would take breaking even with the Braves in a New York millisecond.
Someone asked Desmond when the talk of Braves domination starts to get old. “About 30 games ago,” he said.
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