The Nats didn’t get their top priority for the July 31 trade deadline, a lights out lefty specialist for the bull-pen. What they ended up with is an infielder who can field almost as good as Espinosa and may be able to hit slightly better than Danny or Kevin Frandsen. I’m not very impressed with these results, frankly. We are stuck with Jerry Blevins who has been virtually ineffective for a lomg time and Detwiler who doesn’t want to be in the bull-pen and has been inconsistent over the last 6 weeks or so.
This leaves me praying that Ryan Zimmerman will be back at least for the playoffs and hoping the starting pitchers won’t need help from anyone not named Storen, Clippard or Soriano. We clearly have a front office that doesn’t have the goal of competing with Oakland, LA (both Dodgers and Angels), St. Louis, or Detroit. OK, I’ve got it. Our goal is to just win the National League East, but not the playoffs.
So we bring up Stephen Souza, who looked very out of place in his earlier call-up, to maybe replace McLouth with his phoney injury. It would be wonderful if Souza could give Harper the incentive he has lacked so far to actually look like a major league hitter! I’ll hope for that.
Pete's Curveball 
It still seems to me that ownership might be having final say on any deals that might require a big $ commitment. Either that or Rizzo has a hard number that he will not cross. I’m always prompted to recall an interview with some of the owners who talk about the massive outlay of $ and I really fear IF the Nats had a lot of success the owners would blow them up for a few years a la Miami a few years ago.