NATS FIGHTING THROUGH SLUMP, SO MUST WE
In the mid 1990s, I developed the beginnings of a back disease that has stayed with me to this day. But when it hit, it hit hard. At first, I was missing an hour here, an hour there at work. I ran a camera store, and I was really the only one with the experience deep enough to make the place run smoothly consistently and smoothly. My missed time didn't matter too much. That is, until the hour here and there turned into days here and there, and then weeks at a time. No question my illness hurt the store. Sales volume dropped more than 20% during the first two months that I missed consistent time. Customer complaints were up because I wasn't there to calm them down. Things really turned for the worse when the doctors told me I couldn't work at all for two months. By this time, sales were down more than 30% from the same period the year before.
What should the owners have done? Gotten mad at me? Fired me? Pressured me to the point that I would disregard the doctors order and come back to work? No. They supported me whole heartedly, told me to take all the time I needed, and paid me my salary even though I had run out of sick leave weeks before. Loyalty. It's an amazing thing. Once healthy, I returned to work with a vengeance, and within a year, my store had made up all the lost income and then some.
Do you see where I'm going here?
Let's look at some facts regarding this tough time for the Nationals:
What should the owners have done? Gotten mad at me? Fired me? Pressured me to the point that I would disregard the doctors order and come back to work? No. They supported me whole heartedly, told me to take all the time I needed, and paid me my salary even though I had run out of sick leave weeks before. Loyalty. It's an amazing thing. Once healthy, I returned to work with a vengeance, and within a year, my store had made up all the lost income and then some.
Do you see where I'm going here?
Let's look at some facts regarding this tough time for the Nationals:
- The current offensive slump began two days after Jose vitro was hurt
- The Nationals have a league high 10 players on the disabled list, and these are key players, not the 24th guy on the bench
- When teams are in slumps, the pitching staff tries to make "perfect" pitches every time, which leads to a lot of hard hit balls
- In addition to the 10 man DL, Nick Johnson, Christian Guzman, Vinny Castilla, Brad Wilkerson and Jose Guillen are all playing with varying degrees of injuries
Sometimes, bad things just happen to good teams. The Nationals have lost as much confidence as they have talent on the field. The combination of those two problems has created a team that will struggle to win for some time to come.
It gets worse. Tomorrow, the Nationals play host to the Atlanta Braves, who are again blistering hot. All the Nats can do is their best. Their is no money to bolster the sagging roster. All we can do is bring up minor leaguers from teams that are pretty much all in the basements of their divisions and hope they are ready to help the big club.
Such is the life of Being a low payroll team. But remember, come fall, all of these problems become moot.
# posted by Farid Rushdi @ 12:06 PM 
