Disastrous week. Many questions few answers
* Worst stretch for the Nats since the Mets swept us in late August 2015.
* Nats fans waited for 3 months for Adam Eaton and Daniel Murphy to return from injury. They are back but they are nowhere near 100%.
* Rizzo gambled by not repairing the catching position with Miguel Montero as his #2 catcher. Now it looks more and more that he’s just waiting for Matt Wieters to return. This doesn’t make sense to me in a “win now” year.
* In trying to incorporate Adam Eaton back into the lineup the Nats relegated a hot Michael Taylor to part time duty. I am not sure that this has yielded the expected results.
* The pitching rotation has stabilized a little during the last time through but not much. They are still unable to give the needed length.
* Dave Martinez is looking more and more like Matt Williams. He messes with the lineups daily but seems mostly paralyzed during the games. There is absolutely no innovative thinking when the team needs one run. We have looked for the one big hit during the past four 1 run losses and it never came.
* We have to give credit to Alfaro for absolutely stopping the Nats running game.
* Pedro Severino’s unwillingness to even offer at a bunt in a critical spot was likely his low point. There also appears to be quite a bit of problems with the communications between him and starting pitchers which had been discussed by F.P. Santangelo during yesterday’s game broadcast.
* There’s a reason the Nats have a strong winning record when Wieters catches despite the fact that he is a lousy hitter, a mediocre arm and deadly slow.
* The Nats are in real trouble in the standings. 6 games out half way trough is not trivial. There’s an army of injured players returning soon, but as we have seen with the last group we shouldn’t expect the returnees to be in mid-season form upon their return.
