Somewhere in his Northern Virginia townhouse, deep in his basement where nobody can see him, Manny Acta is cackling -- the kind of wild howl of a crazy man. Four games into the Jim Riggleman Error... err... Era, and the man who replaced the fired Acta seems to be even more helpless than Manny did.
With yesterday's 11-something (you probably turned it off, too) loss to the Cubs, Riggles' boys are now 0-4, perfectly matching Ryan Zimmerman's batting line from yesterday.
That's a heck of a start for Riggleman. Consider:
The Nats were outscored 26-11 and Alfonso Soriano -- he of the 100-something homerless AB streak -- tied the Nats team in homers 2-2.
Other signs proving the Nats suck:
Speedster Nyjer Morgan stole three bases, but was caught stealing twice and picked off once. (Plus, one of his three SBs was thanks to a rag-armed wild throw.)
The Nats catcher, Josh Bard, is playing with a severely strained groin, which helped lead to four wild pitches in the series.
Their starting shortstop, Cristian Guzman, missed a big chunk of the series with bunions. Yes, bunions.
His replacement, the glove-first and non-bunioned Alberto Gonzalez, booted another ball.
That was one of six errors the team made in the series. Those led to seven more unearned runs.
Ryan Zimmerman made one of those errors -- another sloppy throw -- and finished 2-for-15, with one of those hits being a solo homer in the garbage time of a ninth when the Nats were already down big.
Julian Tavarez pitched twice for a total of .2 innings -- with four runs and five hits mixed in. After the game, the Nats dumped him, choosing to bring back Logan Kensing, a reliever with an 18.00 ERA with the Nats.
The Kensing experiment might work as well as the Garrett Mock one did. Yesterday's starter had flamed out a few times as a reliever with the Nats, so after a hot streak as a starting pitcher in Syracuse, the team figured he had figured it all out, even though he throws the same mediocre stuff.
Three innings and seven runs later...
Yeah, Manny's definitely laughing, thankful that he's no longer in charge of this train wreck.
Chris Needham used to write Capitol Punishment. He wishes Tom Watson were playing tonight to distract him, too.
