Gnats 4, Atlanta 3

Game Notes...

- It has taken me about eight or nine hours to write this post so that it would not be filled with hate and disgust at losing 3-out-4 to the Washington Nationals. The friggin' Nationals. Their cleanup hitter is Ryan Church. The .456 career slugging Ryan Church. Oh, and they started Tony Batista and Nook Logan today. And the Braves lose. Shit on a stick, what the hell is going on? My take is that the Braves were not as good as their record made them out to be.

- Yet again, the Braves offense mailed it in. Chipper homered, a towering blast that had NORAD on stand-by because of how far it went, but that was about all of the excitement for the Braves. Salty went 0 for 3, dropping his AVG to .200. Matt Diaz, batting leadoff because Bobby apparently didn't take his meds today, had a pair of singles and even got an RBI, but all told, the Braves managed five hits and one - ONE! - extra base hit. Against Matt Chico. I don't have enough creativity to make shit up like that.

- Chuck James sucked. Oh, he looked decent coming into the fifth inning, but that was only because he hadn't found his complete suckitude. Despite laboring through a horrible fifth inning, Cox again forgot his meds and sent Chuck(ie) out for a sixth inning. It...did...not...go...well. All told, the strikes were there, the quality effort was not. Chad Paronto comes in and faces two hitters and both seem to be Ty Cobb and single on pitches that weren't even strikes.

- Yatesy was golden. 1.2 ING, he walked a batter and got a double play. Peter Moylan Aussie'd up a Kevin Gryboski-esk inning with a base hit and a walk, but no runs.

- The terrible threesome of Billy Traber, Jesus Colome, and Jon Rauch allowed - wait for it - no runners in their three innings.

- Gerry Davis had an interesting strikezone. Borderline calls over the inside, balls. Borderline pitches that aren't even close to the strikezone on the outside, strikes. I felt like Erik Gregg was back from the dead and terrorizing us yet again.

- After the game, the Braves did something that only means they want me to jump off something really tall. They sent down Brayan Pena, after activating him for a game, and promoted Mark Redman. Well, jeez, that will be swell.