Bryce Harper<\/strong> leading off??) \u00a0\u00a0Nothing has made a difference; the team has basically been playing .500 ball for weeks and weeks now.<\/p>\nFor whatever reason, this team of players, picked by every baseball pundit out there to make the playoffs and by a good portion to make it to or win the World Series, is now 10 games out of of the divisional lead. \u00a0They’re 10 games back of Atlanta, which themselves has only played .500 ball since mid April after a 12-1 start. \u00a0The Nats just finished June and July playing 50 games in a row against teams that missed the 2012 playoffs (perhaps not the best bench mark, since Pittsburgh has the best record in baseball this year, but still), and finished the stretch 5 games south of .500.<\/p>\n
The team looks like its sleepwaking through games. \u00a0They look like they have no voice, no spark, no sense of urgency. \u00a0No leadership.<\/p>\n
The trade deadline won’t help at all; the Nats have practically no tradeable assets. \u00a0Their only FAs to be are\u00a0Dan Haren<\/strong> and\u00a0Chad Tracy. \u00a0<\/strong>Kurt Suzuki<\/strong> has a 2014 option that clearly won’t be exercised, so he counts too. \u00a0But who is out there lineing up for these 3 guys? \u00a0Meanwhile, despite their offensive woes, there’s really not a spot on the field that can be improved through trade. \u00a0Go around the field and you’ve got players on deals that at least extend through 2014 (LaRoche<\/strong> and\u00a0Span<\/strong>), or \u00a0you’ve got guys on major contracts (Zimmerman<\/strong> and\u00a0Werth<\/strong>) or you’ve got cornerstone younger players (Harper<\/strong>,\u00a0Ramos<\/strong>,\u00a0Desmond<\/strong> and\u00a0Rendon<\/strong>). \u00a0Who are you going to replace? \u00a0Maybe you think about trading Rafael Soriano<\/b> (after all, the last thing a losing team needs is a high-priced closer) but a quick glance at the teams in playoff contention does not easily find a team in need of a closer (the best candidate may be Pittsburgh, who just lost their closer\u00a0Jason Grilli<\/strong> to a forearm injury, but they’re not exactly rolling in dollars nor likely to take on an $11M\/year guy).<\/p>\nMaybe its time to bring in a new voice, and see if he can scare this team into an August and September run.<\/p>\n
Sorry Davey; you know how the old saying goes. \u00a0You can’t fire 25 players, but its pretty easy to fire the manager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I know this is blasphemous to say. I know it’ll never happen, not under this GM and not under this ownership group, both of whom have far more respect for\u00a0Davey Johnson than to give him such an ignominious end to his time here. And I know that Johnson is as good of a manager […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[184,185,164,835,983,135,137,482,52,181,114,1828,115,1033,196,1398,276,36,24,235,147,906],"class_list":["post-7323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-adam-laroche","tag-anthony-rendon","tag-bryce-harper","tag-chad-tracy","tag-dan-haren","tag-danny-espinosa","tag-davey-johnson","tag-denard-span","tag-drew-storen","tag-henry-rodriguez","tag-ian-desmond","tag-jason-grilli","tag-jayson-werth","tag-kurt-suzuki","tag-nathan-karns","tag-rafael-soriano","tag-rick-eckstein","tag-ryan-zimmerman","tag-taylor-jordan","tag-tyler-moore","tag-wilson-ramos","tag-zach-duke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7323"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7332,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7323\/revisions\/7332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Davey](\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/JohnsonDavey-Getty-Images-via-mlb.com_.jpg\")
<\/a>