Game 31: Nationals 5 Pirates 2

It's officially time to shift at least some of the Tom Gorzelanny worry on to Ian Snell. I know Gorzo's got a tangible injury that's causing him to miss a start right now, but Snell's been downright awful in his past few starts, especially if you look past runs at at peripherals. After his six-inning, ten-hit, four-run, two-walk, two-strikeout start today, his ERA is over 5.00, his WHIP is 1.65, he's only striking out 5.5 hitters/9 innings, and his K/BB ratio is only 1.56. This is nowhere near the Ian Snell that we've been used to seeing over the better part of the last two seasons. I mean, he gave up a home run to Aaron Boone today! Aaron fricking Boone! Who knew he was even still in baseball?

In keeping with my digging desperately for silver linings in these crappy games, Adam LaRoche hit a homer and a double today giving me a vague hope that he might break out of his early season slump earlier than June this year. As bad as he's been this year, please recall that he didn't actually break the Mendoza line for good until May 27th last year and his OPS didn't get above .700 for good until June 30th. If he starts hitting now, this is an improvement over last year. Man, that's a depressing statement.