RallyMullet (www.nationalsarchive.com)
Well, Davey Johnson apparently didn’t get the memo that Ross Ohlendorf has a daily shelf life of no more than 5 innings and the Nats dropped to 5.5 games back in the Wild Card. Thanks in large part to Houston’s AAA team, which got swept by the Reds.
Perhaps, the Nationals should’ve gotten a live chicken. Since Gio Gonzalez performed the rubber chicken sacrifice, thanks in part to Nationals super-fan and chicken soup connoisseur Hugh Kaufman (he’s the sign guy), the Nationals have gone 27-12. A pretty good run, but perhaps not good enough.
The Nationals now have just a 1.5% chance of making the playoffs according to coolstandings.com. Still, all hope is not lost. The two teams the Nationals are chasing, the Pirates and the Reds, will play each other 6 times between now and the end of the season.
The Nats meanwhile, will visit Miami’s AAA team for a 4 game set. The Nationals need someone to fall apart and for either the Reds or Pirates to pretty much sweep the other team in their remaining games.
The Nats picked a bad year to have an extended run of mediocrity. In each of the last 5 years, 90 wins would have been good enough to get a team into the second wild card slot, even though it didn’t exist until last year with 88 or 89 wins usually being good enough. The Nationals could win 9 of their next 10 and still miss the playoffs. That being said, winning 9 of the next 10 probably gets the job done regardless of what the standings say. So all hope is not lost, just need more rally mullet and perhaps a live chicken.