Nationals 7 Pirates 4

As Lanny said post-game, not as close as the score indicated. Mark Redman "elevated" the ball (according to Steve Blass) and we were never in this one. We hit Hernandez hard and often, but instead of following hits with more hits, we generally followed them with double plays. We also played more terrible outfield (Tike repeated his mistake from yesterday by chasing a ball to the wall and letting it bounce over his head, Matt Lawton misplayed ANOTHER ball into a triple while we were trying to hold the deficit at 6-4 and stay in the game). As I mentioned earlier, I find it very interesting that every time Freddy Sanchez gets a few starts in a row and just seems to be heating up, he comes down with some minor "injury" that magically gets Tike Redman a start. And when I say I find it interesting, I mean that it's ridiculous. Maybe I'm reading into things too much, but I don't know. We sat Doumit tonight. He's definitely going to get the Craig Wilson treatment for the next couple years. Ryan, I hope you like playing out of position and pinch hitting even though you're crushing the ball.

Watching the Nationals, they're the team we should be. They do the little things right and they get solid pitching from the people they expect to get solid pitching from. They aren't overly talented and they probably won't win their division, but they'll finish .500, which is a lot more than people expected of them to start the year. That doesn't mean I don't think we're good enough to take two of three from them, because we are. This team is falling back into the same funk we did last June, and if we don't get two wins here against the Nats, I'm pretty sure there aren't many coming this weekend in St. Louie.