August 29, 2015

Snakebit Season

Sometimes good teams just don’t win, even if they play well against a poor team, or across a whole season.

Despite limping into D.C. with the second-worst record in baseball (just barely ahead of the Philadelphia Phillies) and featuring the league’s second-most impotent offense (3.7 runs per game), the Marlins — losers of six of their previous seven games — jumped out to an early 4-1 lead on Scherzer and held on for a 4-3 victory at Nationals Park.

Even though the loss didn’t drop Washington any further behind the New York Mets, who fell to Boston in extra innings, it left them 6.5 games back with barely over a fifth of the season left. To quote the great poet Jerry Reed, the Nats have a long way to go and a short time to get there, which is precisely why they can’t afford to lose any more games they’re supposed to win. But that’s exactly what happened on Friday.

The saving grace for Washington is that they have six games left against the Mets, but more and more it’s looking like they will need to win all six to make the playoffs. That’s a tall order.

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