Short Work

• Marlins 12, Nationals 1

Think not that the Nationals lost, but that Rick Short won. The Nats long-suffering minor leaguer hit his first major league homerun yesterday, providing the lone bright spot in an otherwise vicious shellacking by the Marlins.

Parental Warning: The following rant is offensive and obscenity-laced, and should not be read by children, the elderly or people with mental, physical or emotional issues. Read at your own risk.

What the fuck is the point of yanking your "starting" pitcher after 2/3 of an inning? No wonder no one wants to pitch for the Nationals. Frank "didn't like what he saw" and "wasn't going to wait till he gave the game away in the first inning." No indeed, why should Halama get to give the game away all by himself when it could be a collaborative effort with six Nats relievers? Instead of a 12-1 loss where the starter went 5 or 6 innings, we have a 12-1 loss that decimated the bullpen. Working over the bullpen puts more pressure on today's starter John Patterson, who already feels like he has to be perfect because the Nats hitters consider run support a privilege, not an obligation.

I'm beginning to lose patience with Robinson's manage by gut style. We jettisoned two starting pitchers (Ohka & Day) because the coaching staff "lost confidence" in them. By my count, over the course of the season the coaching staff has, at one time or another, lost confidence in Claudio Vargas; Tomo Ohka; Zach Day; Sunny Kim; Ryan Drese; Tony Armas Jr.; John Halama and Darrell Rasner. For those of you keeping score at home, that's 8 starting pitchers. Eight! To my mind, Robinson is directly responsible for the departures of Ohka and Day because he indicated they disrespected him. After recovering from failing to give Frank his props, Ohka is 10-7 on the year, with a 3.93 ERA and 76 K vs. 41 BB while Zach Day gave up 2 runs in 5 innings in his first start for the Rockies.

The other culprit here is Jim "Pitching, pitching, pitching" Bowden, who managed to lose two starting pitchers on the waiver wire and get exactly nothing in return. Gee, it sure would be nice to have either Claudio Vargas or Sunny Kim or both in our rotation right now. Thus endeth today's rant.

One potential bright spot: Jon Rauch, allegedly recovered from shoulder surgery, is back on the active roster and might be the 4th man in Frank's brilliant 3+1 four-man rotation.