Was something brewing at the end of April that pointed to danger ahead?

Dusty Baker knows more baseball than the collective minds on this blog or any other. It does not mean he is always right and sometimes what others perceive was a mistake was in fact a player not executing. There was a lot of discussion last night in the 8th inning when runners were on 3rd base and 2nd base with no outs as to whether Dusty should have pinch-hit for Ryan Zimmerman. Facts were that Zimmerman has been struggling with runners on-base and in fact had 4 hits in his last 40 at-bats in RISP situations and an overall .169 batting average (.167 now) for the season in those situations.

Of course Zimmerman was due for a hit, but that situation could also be partially successful with a productive out. The bench was stocked at that point as Dusty had not used a single bench player in the game. It was the perfect spot for Dusty to choose wisely, but Dusty favored loyalty, and expected Ryan Zimmerman to execute. Zimmerman did not execute. He struck out.

The 3 highlighted names all batted and failed in key spots in the 8th and 9th innings last night. In fact, all 3 struck out.

On April 28th, we wrote this piece which we believed documented the problems and had some foresight on the problems that would soon come. It is werth worth a read.

The day before we wrote that piece, this was the April 27th line-up for Game #20 as the team was 14-6 in the record books:

1. Michael Taylor CF
2. Anthony Rendon 3B
3. Bryce Harper RF
4. Ryan Zimmerman 1B
5. Daniel Murphy 2B
6. Jayson Werth LF
7. Danny Espinosa SS
8. Jose Lobaton C

This was the line-up for the 1st game against the Chicago Cubs on May 5th:

1. Michael Taylor CF
2. Anthony Rendon 3B
3. Bryce Harper RF
4. Ryan Zimmerman 1B
5. Daniel Murphy 2B
6. Jayson Werth LF
7. Wilson Ramos C
8. Danny Espinosa SS

The poor line-up construction indeed became a big problem and whether or not that contributed to Bryce Harper‘s own batting woes is also debatable, but what is not is that Dusty finally came very close to the line-up we suggested on April 28th.

Now with almost half the season over, is there a personnel shake-up needed?