The Washington Nationals have major problems

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[Box Score]

As The Nats Blog pointed out, for the fourth time in four games to begin the season; the Nationals failed to score four runs.

Washington got a leadoff home run from nice looking young player Michael Taylor, and then didn’t score again for the rest of the game off Jerome Williams. Jerome friggin’ Williams! And thank goodness I did not have idle time before the games started tonight, because I was about to text my bookie (someone delete this guy’s number for me please) and involve the Nationals in a parlay that they would have doomed. This is because I figured the Nationals; who I have winning the World Series, could not possibly start the year 1-3. Well, they did.

The fact remains that the Nationals are leaving their superstar starting pitching staff with little to no margin for error. They ran out an offense that went Taylor, Yunel Escobar, Bryce Harper (struck out three times), stiff Ryan Zimmerman (he actually looks stiff in the box nowadays), Wilson Ramos, Ian Desmond, Dan Uggla, Tyler Moore. That’s not scaring anyone.

Gio Gonzalez wasn’t awful, but had a little bit of a messy line. And the Nationals aren’t going to make this a fun experience from start to finish. They’ll likely get healthier and begin to peak later in the year as they’ve made a habit of the past several seasons, but right now they’re a below average team offensively and there’s really no solution in sight.

They’re going to need to battle and scrape for every run they get and continue to stress those arms in their rotation in the meantime.