5 Innings and Change!

Call it what you want. It's spring and the pitcher's aren't ready. The weather makes the pitchers stiff. The pitchers stink! Whatever the case may be, the Nats' pitchers must go 5 innings and that's it. I'd say give them one baserunner unless it's a 1 run game. For what it is worth, our guys melt in the sixth inning. They let it out of the bag, and it is not necessarily a pitch count issue. It is understandable that Manny wants to get extra innings out of starters because the relief guys will eventually melt in August because they added up all those 6,7,8 and 9 innings to their arms. My point being that getting to our pen should be job one, and the pen should, at least in the spring (Until May 15), be called on at the start of the 6th inning or the first baserunner in the sixth.

The WP has today:

"He (Manny) does, though, pull the levers that run the team. And yesterday, in a situation in which his fragile club badly needed to win, he pushed each button on the control panel at the correct time. He got only five innings from his starter, right-hander Tim Redding. But on the first day closer Chad Cordero was active for a game, Acta pieced together the final 12 outs by using five relievers -- coaxing his team through the ninth, when the Braves loaded the bases and threatened to deliver a devastating loss."