88 mph. Coincidentally the speed it takes to travel back in time as well as how fast you have to throw to serve up a homer to Andrew McCutchen

As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, I am an avid movie fan and one of my favorite movies as a kid was Back to The Future.  For those of you who have been living in a cave for the past two decades, Back to The Future is a movie about a teenager who, with the help of a crazed scientist and a failed automobile, accidentally travels back in time, causing a variety of problems between his pre-married parents.  Before you get too intrigued by this cinematic masterpiece and quit reading, let me explain to you why I brought it up. 

Everyone knows that the Nationals have had a variety of problems with their pitching game this year.  It’s hardly a secret.  Well, after three months of depressingly bad performances, something seemed to click for the Nationals in the month of July.  July was the Nationals’ best month of the season with them winning 10 games, the most of any month so far this year.  It was a month that saw the entire team improve in almost every aspect.  On offense, the team got a much needed spark from the addition of Nyjer Morgan and the hot hitting of Josh Willingham and Cristian Guzman, while on the mound, the starting pitchers were going deep into the games and the bullpens were holding more leads.  It was providing a slight glimmer of hope for a season that was already lost much earlier.  Things might actually be looking up for this last place team.

Then something horrible happened.  We had to flip the page on the calendar.  Tonight’s game against the Pirates saw the Nationals kick off August much like they had played prior to July.  Washington fell victim to an 11-6 thumping at the hands of Pittsburgh.  Things looked promising at first with the Nationals putting two early runs on the board in the top of the first inning.  But that was probably the end of the optimism.  The Nationals managed to pound out twelve hits but it didn’t do much as they also managed to strand twelve runners on base as well.  Things weren’t much better for the pitching staff either.  The Nationals gave up fourteen hits, three of them home runs to Andrew McCutchen.  To make things worse, former Nationals disappointment Lastings Milledge managed to drive in two runs with a double in the third inning.  Luckily, our Pittsburgh Pirates castoff, Nyjer Morgan went 3-4 and Cristian Guzman set a Nationals record with an RBI in his seventh straight game.

Let’s all hope that tonight’s massacre was a fluke and things will go back to the way they were in July.  If not you’ll be able to find me searching eBay for used DeLoreans and trying to figure out where I can get enough plutonium for a flux capacitor.