Halfway to Nowhere

Midseason. A time for reflection. A time for taking stock. Perhaps time for a vacation. Looking back over a half season highlighted by Da Meat Hook's All-Star turn, and lowlighted by darn near everything else, it's report card time. And after careful consideration, the crack research staff here at Nats Triple Play is ready to grade the first half:

Player Acquisition: B-

The offseason brought us Dmitri, Ronnie Belliard, Jesus Colome, Jason Simontacchi and Mike Bacsik, all of whom have contributed to keeping the Titanic of franchises from becoming the Posiedon of franchises. But that's damning with faint praise, isn't it? Achieving the same level of craptacularity for less money is nice for the Lerners, and it gives rise to good "back from the scrap heap" stories, but have any of these guys actually improved the team in any measurable way? Even Meat Hook is, at best, a placeholder for Nick Johnson, may he rest in pieces.

On-field Performance: D+

Plan or no plan, 33-48 is nothing to be proud of; and it's been an ugly 33 wins. The "good" players have been mediocre. The mediocre players have been terrible. And the terrible players just won't take a f***ing hint and go away. The pitching staff is held together by duct tape, bailing wire and whichever pitcher's 2004 shoulder surgery seems to be finally healed up this week. The "staff ace" fled to Canadia to avoid the draft or something and our best pitcher has more doctors on retainer than Cedars-Sinai.

Off-field Performance: A

No suspensions, not even any ejections fer chrissakes. No arrests, no acquisitions of alleged baby seal clubbers. Even the guys with checkered pasts have been Eagle Scouts under the new Manny-gerial regime. Frankly, it's a little dull. We miss Jose Guillen.

Second Half Outlook: F

Blow it up, burn it down, sow the ruins with salt. Seriously, if you thought this team was bad, subtract Dmitri Young and Ronnie Belliard from the starting lineup and think again. We're talking about two months of starting Robert Fick and Bernie Castro, together, every day. Think about that power outage. The pitching staff is a crap shoot, right? Factor out Micah Bowie and The Chief. The challenge for July, August and September 2007 isn't going to be improving on the first half record, it's going to be scoring more than two runs a game while giving up less than seven.

GUZMANIA!: Incomplete

We've spilled quite enough ink on this subject. Man, it was fun while it lasted. And despite what Harper thinks, you will be able to look back and pin the total collapse of the Nats season on Josh Barfield giving Cristian that broken handjob. (Take that, Google search engine!) It's the Trickle Down theory. No rested, renewed Guz slapping out doubles at the top of the lineup means no productive outs for the RZA and no RBIs for Meat Hook. Voodoo Guzmanomics? I think not.

Speaking of GUZMANIA!, it has come to our attention that another blog has taken up the cause. This is all well and good. The missionary zeal of the One Tru Faith knows no bounds. But nestled deep in the bowels of the NTP bunker, we take a certain amount of pride in having unleashed GUZMANIA! upon the world after a drunken scrabble game went horribly awry one evening. In the months and years since, we have nurtured our Guzmanic beliefs through many ordeals and crises of faith.

So, Kyle and (j)on, welcome to the club. There are punch and cookies enough for all after the meetings.