A Less than Stellar Game

It just wasn’t there on Thursday. The Nats made too many mistakes and didn’t take advantage of the opportunities that were presented to them.

The mistakes matter no doubt. Desmond had another error on a ball that would most likely have been a double play. These are easy to spot and are very dramatic. But just as important, in fact in my opinion more important, is the inability to capitalize on the opportunities presented to score. Because of that the Nats lost 6-3.

A little from the Post:

Strasburg stumbled in the third inning. He allowed a single to Curtis Granderson with one out before his defense let him down. He got David Wright to hit a would-be double-play ball to shortstop. Ian Desmond’s approach left him an in-between hop that he could not handle. Just like that, inning over became two on with one out.

“I’m all for owning up when I make a mistake,” Desmond said. “I wish I would’ve put myself in a better position to — I don’t really know — get a better hop. I wasn’t expecting the ball to bounce up like that. But like I said, the object is to convert the balls that are rolling into outs. I wasn’t able to do that.”

Here’s something that talks to my second point:

In the second inning Thursday, with Desmond on second after his first hit of the season, Uggla hit a groundball to deep third and beat it out with a headfirst slide to first. Desmond did not score. So the Nationals’ first hit with a runner in scoring position did not yield a run.

You need to get a run from this situation. The Nats were 3-8 with runners in scoring position. That’s what prevented them from wining the game. Move that number even a little and this is a win.

There is of course all this hand wringing going on. You should see the comment sections of stories on the Nats in the Post. Just silly. It's only three games into the season. Checking on how things are going tonight in Philly looks like they could loose again. You have to wonder when people will start calling for Matt Williams' head. People need to take a deep breath here.

As for the conditions at the game it was cold. A damp cold. Barely 50 degrees. So sitting watching the game you got cold fast. I just so happened to bring along blankets that were given out as a give away at one of the games. So Mark and I both had one. It did help.

I experimented on the burst function on my new iPhone. I talk more about that later but here's a series of pictures of Matt Harvey pitching to Bryce Harper.