How good are we (at 7-1)?

The National's are 7-1; best start in franchise history; three games up and heading north to play the second place Phillies...that is a phrase I did not expect to write.

Thing is, we can say with confidence, that the Nat's are better than the Braves.  6 of the 7 wins are over the Braves.  The Nat's will almost certainly win the season series over the braves:  they need to go 4-9 against them for the rest of the season.

The Mets lost series to the Marlins and Phillies, and split with the Royals.  I *think* the Nationals are better than the Phillies, I expect the Nat's to win 2 of 3 in Philly, then split with the Marlins, though it would not surprise me to beat them three games to one; four game sweeps are unusual.

We have now seen each pitcher.  For the starters, Strasburg is a stud, throwing 100 pitches in 6 2/3 innings while *sick*, only giving up 2 runs.  Scherzer is Scherzer.  Ross was most surprising; based on spring training, I was dreading his start, but he was wonderful.  He pitches tonight.  We can see if it is a fluke.  Roark?  Well, in his two games, he was similar in pitching but with different results.  He is not a strike out kind of guy; rather, he is pitch to contact.  In Game on, balls found gaps whereas in game 2 for him, they did not.  Gio showed something I had never seen from him:  mental toughness.   I like the rotation; it seems to be better than expected (though it could be Braves hitters are bad).

As for the lineup:

1. MAT is lost as a leadoff hitter.  He needs to learn to recognize and layoff off speed junk;  
2. Rendon is hitting hard, but at people.  "Tony 2 Bags" will be producing soon.  
3. Harper?  He has a flair for the dramatic.  100th home run an stadium breaking Grand Slam.  We     all knew it was coming.
4. Zimmerman offers great protection for Harper.  He is hitting the ball hard, but not getting lucky
5. Murphy has been a pleasant surprise.  Right now he is our MVP (sorry Bryce).  
6. Werth is finding is swing.  He is getting better at bats, which means he is seeing the ball.  
7. Ramos is now the poster child for LASIK.  
8. Espy is there for defense
9. Pitchers have gotten on base; Gio is batting 1.000.

Defense:
Well, 2 errors in 8 games is good.  Much improved.  One error was trying to throw out a stolen base, the other was SS booting a ball.  One SS error in the first 8 games; last year at this time the Nationals had 6 errors.  Opposing teams have stolen three bases and been caught 4 times.  Defense has been SOLID.

Outlook:  They are out-performing my estimates:  I had them at 5-3 right now, not 7-1.   The Nats would dominate if we could play the Braves for 162 games.

The real test begins in about two weeks when the Nats head out to Saint Louis, KC and Chicago.