So far so bad, but then so good!

Let's see how the long road of May is going:

Pirates away: Goal 2-1, Actual 1-2.
Mets home : Goal 3-0, Actual 1-2
Giants home, Phillies/Marlins/Braves away. Marlins home : Goal 6-10, so far 3-1.

Nats fans are feeling good that the team won the series against the Giants (World Champions by proxy!) but in the grand scheme of the season it doesn't quite make up for not being able to win two series against bad teams. Plus the Giants aren't all that good. With Pablo Sandoval, they might have just enough offense, the pitching is that good. Without him though, this is a team that's going to lose a lot of 3-1, 2-0 games. Plus Miguel Tejada. We joke about Pudge being terrible, but at least you can stick him in behind the plate and feel confident. Miguel Tejada is killing the Giants all over the place. I wouldn't be surprised if he's oversalting their post-game meals.

The Nats have a much tougher set of opponents with the Phillies, Marlins, and Braves. All decent offenses. The Nats are not in the position to outslug anyone. If you haven't noticed the offense is terrible. Look at 'em Mike Morse is trying rapidly to get out of DC before the weather turns warm. Rick Ankiel is worse than we thought he would be, which is hard to believe. Danny Espinosa is facing his first set of pitcher adjustments and is not doing well. Pudge survives on glove alone. Hairston and Cora are Hairston and Cora. Adam LaRoche obviously didn't like being compared favorably to Lee, Pena and Willingham. Ugh. Need to look at something good. Here we go. Let's hope it stays looking that pretty after the road trip.

Other notes : Hey Ian Desmond is killing it! .438 / .471 / .875 in his 5 games back. Honestly I think he waits for FJB to say he needs to be sent down. He's now passed the rapidly crashing Danny Espinosa (.100 / .217 / .100 in past week).

Sean Burnett's line may look bad but it's all in that terrible 9th inning with the Mets and that inning could have ended early if not for the seeing eye single, the almost caught soft liner, the lucky pop bunt. He's fine and the bullpen has at least four good arms, plus H-Rod has looked good since being brought up and Todd Coffey is doing much better after a rough start. The only guy you don't want to see on the mound right now is Broderick and that works in two ways since he's only likely to pitch in long relief when the pitcher has been knocked out. How long he stays depends on if Elvin Ramirez can get healthy enough to put in his necessary 90 days to stay with the team (rule V stuff here). The biggest weakness of this pitching staff is the lineup.