Thursday, June 23, 2011

Don't Look Now: Playoff Speculation Inside

Don't look now, but Washington, DC has a baseball team that is above .500 (38-37) on June 23rd. The Nats took to sweeping the Seattle Mariners this Thursday afternoon 1-0 in more walk-off fashion. And boy oh boy, is the mood changing in NatsTown.

Earlier this season, Nats fans would have been dejected by the lack of run support for Jason Marquis stellar 8 inning 3 hit performance, but there was a different feel today. Even though the bats weren't doing much, there was a feeling that this team could actually put together a Curly W after all. And then, in the 9th inning, the newly resilient Nats did exactly that.

An inexplicable play by former Nats infielder Adam Kennedy left the bases loaded after an attempted Pudge sacrifice, and eventually Laynce the Daynce Nix hit a sac fly to left that scored Danny "Rookie of the Year" Espinosa for the walk off win. We don't mean to get ahead of ourselves here, but as of this moment, the Nats are 4.5 games out of the NL Wild Card spot. Seriously, they are. Look it up.

Despite our ridiculous excitement, don't count us as true believers... yet. We don't seriously believe that the Nats will be in the Wild Card conversation come September, or even August, really. They're certainly much better, but we're not convinced they're playoff contenders. But if the team does what we outlined in our post this morning, which is beat some weak opponents before the All-Star Break, we very well may change our tune.

Any way you look at it, though, it's become damn fun to watch baseball in NatsTown, hasn't it?

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