Deja-vu all over again. Another 9th inning implosion as Nats lose 3rd straight to Marlins, 7-4, fall to 1-10.

Man, I'm glad to see the Marlins leave town.

Today, the Nats put forth another good effort through 8 innings only to collapse in the 9th and lose.

What can you say after this? At least Joel Hanrahan escaped any culpability, he wasn't sent in to pitch in the 9th.

I don't know what the deal is with Saul Rivera, usually a bullpen reliever put in to close today, but he's not the same pitcher he's been the last two years, he's worse. Quite simply, he's not throwing strikes and he's consistently getting behind the batters.

For my part, I changed my blog template (like it?) to see if that might send the team some good mojo. Alas, it didn't help. I may have to change it again.

For the most part, starter Daniel Cabrera did his job, even though he committed the unforgivable sin of actually walking the opposing pitcher.

On MASN, Bob Carpenter made a comment which made me laugh, yet turned out to be quite prescient. When the Nats went up 2-0 early, Carpenter commented, "Somewhere in the Marlins dugout, someone is saying, 'We've got them right where we want them'". Alas, his comment was right on the money.

The offense was getting on base, but they kept stranding runners. I don't know yet how many runners they left there, but through the first five innings, they'd stranded ten. TEN runners! I'm not certain that I want to know what the final total was.

I'm kind of glad that I wasn't there for this one. Gray sky, chilly and a little breezy.

I have tickets to tomorrow night's game, but the forecast is for rain all day long, so it might be another postponement. It will be too bad if that happens. I'm anxious to see the Major League debut of Jordan Zimmerman, one of the team's best young pitching prospects. Also, in Manager Manny Acta's postgame press conference, he made it clear that there would be an all-new bullpen tomorrow. The phones are ringing in Syracuse tonight.