The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.
WASHINGTON -- When is it time to start worrying?
That's the question Nationals fans have to be asking themselves after watching their team fall to the world champion Phillies 9-8 in Washington's home opener. The Nats are now 0-7 and have lost 11 straight games dating back to last season, a season in which they lost more games than anybody else in the majors (102) in a brand new ballpark paid for by the taxpayers of Washington D.C.
"I think we could call the first week a down," Stan Kasten, the team's president, says coyly. "We are confident we've made great progress with the team on the field."
Great progress? Well, here's hoping. The Nationals, after all, did lose 102 games. They would almost have to try to be worse than they were in 2008.
Washington's home opener looked a lot like its first road trip. There was plenty of offense. (The Nats are averaging a respectable 4.8 runs per game this year.) Cristian Guzman had five hits. Elijah Dukes, Adam Dunn and Ryan Zimmerman all homered.
Zimmerman, a player manager Manny Acta calls "everything" to the Nationals as a franchise, went deep against all-world Phillies closer Brad Lidge, who hasn't blown a save since 2007.
But the pitching and defense undid it all. Starter Daniel Cabrera only got through the fifth inning, then, after a scoreless sixth, reliever Saul Rivera did his best impression of a gascan, hitting two batters before surrendering a long home run to Ryan Howard and then a second to Raul Ibanez. Anderson Hernandez, just activated from the disabled list, added to the misery with two errors, Dunn committed one of his own, and he and Milledge continued to make even semi-routine line drives and fly balls in the outfield resemble Family Circus.
"It's a long-term building project that I think is nearing the point where we can really be pleased with it," Kasten says. "We're not there yet, but we're on our way."
So what is taking so long?
The Nationals were dealt a tough hand to be sure after years in the stewardship of Major League Baseball. But this is the start of the team's fifth year in Washington, the start of its third full season under the Lerner family ownership group and the start of its second season in Nationals Park.
In other words, enough time has passed that Nats fans have the right to start expecting more.
The problem isn't that it is taking time to build a winner, it's that there aren't many signs that one is "on its way" in the first place. The Nationals have what appears to be a decent lineup, but they also have the very definition of a patchwork pitching rotation and little depth anywhere at all levels of the organization.
Much of the goodwill that came with the Nationals' arrival has been squandered.
"We get the attendance we deserve," Kasten says. "Until we get the product to where we want it to be, we're not gonna be selling out every night."
Or any night at this rate. Washington welcomed the Nats with open arms. It even built a stadium for the team.
But they have slipped from 81 wins in their first season to 71 in 2006 all the way down to 59 last year. In the process, the farm system has failed to develop any real stars except maybe Zimmerman (the jury's still out on that one), it has offered little reason to think that will change in the near future and the only general manager had to step down in March amid a scouting scandal.
"If we give [the fans] a reason to support us, they will be out here in droves," Kasten says.
That much is obvious. Just what the reason will be isn't.
