A Fate Worse Than Death?

In a development overshadowed by last night's stunning episode of the Sopranos, we learn here that the sore elbow of the Nationals' leading All-Star candidate, Shawn Hill, will likely send him to the DL. Hill described his elbow as "tender" but "not too bad," which sounds slightly less painful than Christopher Moltisanti's bloody demise. Sore pitcher elbows have a way of requiring surgery to make them right, which we can only hope is not required. As we've stated before, the Nats must focus this season on finding back-of-the-rotation starters to help them next year and beyond. That's hard to do when the most promising candidates are injured and cannot develop themselves. It also hurts when no pitcher -- starting or relief -- even has 25 career wins' worth of experience. While Hill's 5 career wins and first 50 innings this year are a great beginning, it would be tough to slot him as a reliable starter next year if his sore elbow turns into season-ending surgery.

In a parallel development that warms our hearts and mitigates the pain in Hill's elbow, Christian Guzman delivered an epic 2-RBI performance on Sunday (the words Guzman and RBI have not appeared in the same sentence in nearly 2 years). Guzman's efforts helped the Nats to a rare sweep. For those of you keeping score at home, that's $8M and 2 RBIs in the last 2 years.