The story that wasn't a story

The buzz before last night's game was over what the Nationals would do to Pedro Martinez. Having plunked his share of Nationals hitters, would the Nationals retaliate against Martinez, with the bats or otherwise? As it turns out, the buzz should have been what Martinez was going to do to the Nationals.

Martinez shut down the Nats in a masterful performance. Pedro's line reflected his dominance: 7 innings, 3 hits, 3 strikeouts, one walk, one earned run.

We shouldn't really be surprised by the lack of fireworks. First, Major League Baseball has come down hard on the two teams, and we doubt that any player wants to risk a long suspension on doing something stupid. Second, the Nats are overmatched against pitchers like Pedro. There's no shame in that, because Pedro makes a lot of hitters look foolish, but a team that makes Brian Bannister look unhittable doesn't stand much of a chance against Martinez.

There will be a lot of games like this as the season progresses. If there is a silver lining, it's that Tony Armas looked pretty good: 6 innings, 8 hits, 4 strikeouts, one walk, two earned runs. He wasn't dominant, but he was productive, which is a lot more than we expected. Let's hope that we see many more such starts from Mr. Armas.