There’s a reason why the Washington Nationals don’t like the Arizona’s Diamondbacks. Since the days of hotdogging Eric Byrnes, the D-Backs have been known as a showboating franchise with a nasty streak — and they proved it again during the just-concluded four game series with the Nationals.

While the Nationals were able to pull out a win in the 11th inning of the final game of the four game set (an inning that included a Michael Morse grand slam dinger), the series was noted for its HBP scoring notations: two hit batters in game one (Upton and Werth), Upton twice in game two, one  hit batter in game three (Werth, again) and five in game four (Upton, Werth, Morse and Espinosa — twice). By the end of the series detail-oriented scorers had notched nine unemotional HBPs in their books, with Upton being hit four times — and Werth three. Both teams anticipated a bench-clearing brawl (and it certainly would have cleared the air), but it never quite came.

The HBPs took their toll: by the time the final game had ended (nearly four-and-one-half hours after it began), Jason Marquis and D-Backs pitcher Esmerling Vasquez and both managers were ejected — and Justin Upton was being considered for an Oscar for his writhing reaction to a one-that-got-away pitch from Jason Marquis in the 6th.

On Saturday, Nats’ skipper Jim Riggleman, who probably saw this coming, rejected any Arizona contention that the Nats were targeting Upton: “I feel terrible that the same guy gets hit three times,” Riggleman said. “But clearly, the first night when he got hit, that put the tying run to the plate. Obviously, we don’t want that to happen.” The Diamondbacks didn’t believe him, so they targeted Werth in game four and, when they couldn’t get him, they went after Danny Espinosa.

The nasty plunking by both teams did little to offset a near-catastrophic Nationals loss in the final set-to: the Anacostia Nine were up 4-0 in the eighth, but the bullpen (with the lone exception of Tyler Clippard) couldn’t hold the lead. The Diamondbacks scored three in the bottom of the 9th (the result of an almost unheard of spate of just-a-little-outside wildness from Drew Storen), but the Nationals held off the Snakes in the 10th before scoring five on reliever Joe Paterson in the 11th.

A near disaster, then, for sure — but reminiscent in its own way (it’s a stretch, but if you could hum the theme for “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” right here, that might help) of any classic “Spaghetti Western,” where the good guy gets the nasty punk and rides off into the sunset: or in the case of the Nationals, onto a charter flight for California.

As it turned out, the Nationals scored runs when they needed them: with Wilson Ramos’ big bat coming through for a homer in the 8th, Roger Bernadina going 3-6, Danny Espinosa at 2-4 and and Morse’s blast in the 11th. The victory gave the Nationals a needed split in Phoenix, and they now head to San Francisco, where they face Timmy and the San Francisco McCoveys.

Danny Espinosa made a strong case for being N.L. Rookie of the Year last night, notching three hits — two of them home runs — as the Nationals scorched Cliff Lee and the Philadelphia Phillies, 10-2. For Nationals fans who worried that their team’s game-in, game-out hitting drought would continue, Tuesday night provided a needed tonic. The Nationals registered ten runs on thirteen hits, to support the solid pitching of veteran Jason Marquis, who is now 6-2.

Espinosa was 3-4 (with four RBIs), but joined there by Michael Morse (3-5, with two RBIs), who is now hitting .301. Marquis was his usual steady self: he gave up back-to-back home runs in the fifth, but then settled down to throw 6.1 of two run baseball. Jason Marquis and his magic sinker have now made their mark on the N.L. East, where the former Rockies’ steady performer is now viewed as the centerpiece of the Nationals much-better-than-average rotation and is (sometimes) damn near untouchable.

Perhaps the most effusive post-game comments came from “things have got to change” Jayson Werth, who praised Espinosa and the hitting spree: “We’ve had our chances this year,” Werth told the press. “We’ve had opportunities, had guys on, been in this situation and had the matchup. For whatever reason, we haven’t got the job done enough. As time goes on, I think we’re going to relax as a club and do the things we need to do.”

The game was preceded by a pre-game chat to the team by Jim Riggleman: who told the Anacostia Nine to keep plugging and the hits would come. After the ten-run win, Riggleman was pleased with the progress shown by rookie Espinosa: “He’s an electric player. He’s a strong kid with powerful movements,” he said. “He’s going to be a tremendous player as the left-handed side catches up to the right-handed side.”

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: As if things aren’t bad enough for the San Francisco Giants (with the wind-knocked-out-of-you injury to Buster Posey), they are now looking up the ladder in the N.L. West at the stinking Arizona Diamondbacks. While the D-Backs lost to the Marlins in Arizona last night, the team with not-much-chance-at-anything had previously won six in a row, the most recent victory being a knock-em-down 15-4 pounding of the Fish.

The Diamondbacks now sit atop the N.L. West, and are leading the Giants by a half game. Last night, the Giants took on the Cardinals, losing a 4-3 heart breaker, giving up three runs in the eighth. The Giants have been bitten by the Nats’ bug: they were 2-25 with runners in scoring position in last night’s contest and Aaron Rowand is starting to talk about how it takes a little “luck” for teams to repeat — a sure sign the McCoveys are stumbling around the diamond. “Bruce [Bochy] has been really working on [Posey replacement] Eli Whiteside’s hitting,” San Francisco television commentator Mike Kurkow said in the middle of last night’s game, “but, you know, it’s just not working.” Whiteside is hitting .171.

And the key to the D-Back’s success? Well, pitching and good defense: and yada, yada, yada. Really, it has to be Justin Upton: who is hitting the ball like he’s Jose Bautista. Upton is starting to catch fire: he’s .333 over the last ten games. On Monday, he was 5-5, and last night 2-4.  If Upton has another year like 2009 (.300, 26 home runs), the Showboats will hang in there, and the Giants will rue the day that they didn’t re-sign Juan Uribe. After mopping up the Phillies today, the Nationals will head out to Phoenix to see if they can stop this juggernaut.

Where Have You Gone Ryan Zimmerman, Nats Nation Turns It’s Lonely Eyes To You: The hobbled Nationals third baseman is rehabbing in Florida, and plans to play an extended Spring Training game this week, according to the Nationals. Don’t get your hopes up. Zimmerman, recovering from an abdominal strain, is still set to return in mid-June, and is apparently in pain when he throws from third across his body (yeah, well, me too). We are now on day-whatever of our extended coverage of the Z-man’s return and, despite the 10 run outburst last night, we sure could use him.

When the MLB-best Philadelphia Phillies roared into town on Monday with Doc Halladay (he of the 2.56 ERA) scheduled to be on the hill, the woeful Nats line-up had every right to be shaking in the their boots. But despite their .230 team batting average the Nats held their own by slamming three homers and totaling 10 hits on the day. Even so, they went down in a 5-4 defeat.

But another one-run loss needn’t have been the ultimate result given the beautiful chance the home town nine had to put some points on the board in the seventh. Down by a run the Nationals had runners on first and third with no outs — thanks to a lead off double by Alex Cora and a bunt single by Ian Desmond. With the Phillies infield playing in, the Nats had Cora running on the crack of the bat. Unfortunately, Rick Ankiel delivered a swinging bunt back to the box and Hallady fielded it cleanly, delivered another strike to the plate and catcher Carlos Ruiz relayed the ball to third-sacker Placido Polanco who put the tag on Cora. The unusual 1-to-2-5 play took the wind out of the Nats’ sails and they never threatened again.

Was it bad luck that Cora was running on contact — or a bad call by Riggleman? My guess is neither. Forget about luck. If you make enough plays you’ll win. And it wasn’t a bad call; it was an aggressive one. And it’s just what the Nats need. If Ankiel’s grounder was a couple of feet to the left Halladay doesn’t reach it . . . and it dribbles toward second. Score tied.

It wasn’t meant to be: the Nats didn’t help themselves with seven strike outs, including one for each of the top five spots in the lineup (Espinosa K’d twice). The Nationals are second in the majors in strikeouts with 412 for the year and that may be part of the problem. When a team strikes out 25 percent of the time, the ball isn’t put in play often enough — and there aren’t Nats on base to make good things happen. If you strike out, you can’t hit and run, or steal a base. When you strike out, you don’t have the opportunity to make your own good luck. And that’s what the Nats need right about now.

You can’t mention the words Milwaukee Brewers without adding “surging” — as in, the “surging” Milwaukee Brewers. After taking three from the Colorado Rockies that left the Helton’s reeling, the Brewers decided that they’d had enough of Corey Hart’s 0 for 11 start of the season, and the big bopping right fielder victimized the Nationals with three home runs and seven RBIs.

But even without Hart’s heroics, the Nationals would have fallen to the Brewers’ bats: the Anacostia Nine accounted for eight hits (which included a Michael Morse dinger) and just three runs — but the game was not as close as the final 11-3 score indicated. Without pitching the team is starting to look like road kill to the rest of the National League. Washington starter Tom Gorzelanny looked particularly ineffective on Monday, giving up eight hits and six runs over five innings. The Brewers, meanwhile, are just three games behind the Cardinals in the N.L. Central, as the Reds have dropped six in a row.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: Adam LaRoche was put on the 15-day DL with a sore shoulder. But it might be worse than fifteen days. Isn’t there a pattern here somewhere? Last year, Jason Marquis had much the same problem, tried to play through it — and couldn’t. It took a second year for the free agent signing to work out. With Ryan Zimmerman out until June, LaRoche sidelined and Rick Ankiel rehabbing, the Nationals are playing with one-third of the starting line-up they started with in April . . . Stephen Strasburg is now throwing off a mound, which means that he’s playing catch off a mound, not pitching off of one. Hey great. See you in 2012 . . .

Book ‘Em Danno: Joe Torre, MLB’s head of baseball operations has fined Nats’ G.M. Mike Rizzo an undisclosed amount of cash for confronting umpires after Thursday’s 1-0 loss to the Mets in New York. Rizzo and Nats’ catcher Ivan Rodriguez were upset with a call on Jayson Werth that snuffed out a late inning Nationals rally, and confronted the umpiring crew in a stadium tunnel after the game. Rizzo had no comment on the fine, except to say that he would always stick up for his team and organization. “I’ve always got the manager’s, the coaches’ and the players’ back,” Rizzo told a reporter. “Whenever I need to put myself on the line to do so, that’s my job, so I’m willing to do it.”

Ya just gotta love Mikey (and we sure do), but maybe he’s gotta bigger problems than umpires. Yardbarker has put together stats on Jayson Werth and Adam LaRoche’s slumps and concluded that the first two months of the season are actually “among the worst months these guys have ever had.” A quick scan of the stats shows this is probably so; and leads us to the conclusion that as statistics are only terrific when predicting past performances, they show what we’ve been saying all along: Adam LaRoche needs shoulder surgery, and Jayson Werth needs Ryan Zimmerman . . .

After Friday’s 17-5 runaway victory in Baltimore, the Washington Nationals were confident that their season-long slump was at an end — and that with their bats finally loosened (and their defense and pitching solid), the close wins that had eluded them for so long would start coming their way. There was nothing in Saturday’s 8-3 loss that dissuaded them from that, despite the team’s paltry seven hits.

But with Sunday’s disappointing 2-1 defeat, the result of a single shaky Jordan Zimmermann inning, the Nats might begin to think that even hitting well won’t help. The Nationals outhit the O’s in Baltimore on Sunday afternoon (8-4), and arguably outpitched them (Zimmermann was superb, actually), but the Nationals could not respond to a Vlad Guerrero dinger — which proved the difference in the game. While the Nationals came out of their interleague games versus the O’s with two losses, they weren’t outplayed by them; but it was a frustrating experience that has put the team four games under .500.

Aside from the 17 runs scored on Friday, it’s clear the team needs to find a way to generate offense. “It’s more of the same,” Nats’ manager Jim Riggleman said following the loss. “I’m glad we got baserunners out there. That’s better than not having them out there, but we are just not getting them in. That’s too bad, because we got another good pitching performance.” The Nationals now head to Milwaukee, where they’ll face the Brewers in three tough games: the Brewers have started to click, and are coming off a three game sweep of the Rockies.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: Our readers (here they are) have been calling and writing — wondering whatever happened to our reporting on the Cubs-Red Sox series. And you know what? . . .  it’s a damn good question. But our board of directors decided that, after getting in late (“ladies and gentlemen, we have an unexpected delay . . . and will be here in Bridgeport for a few minutes”), we’ve decided the save the entry until tomorrow . . . er, later today.

That said, we would like to assure everyone that our team of writers (here they are) had a terrific time in Beantown, visiting the city’s most famous sites: traipsing through the Old North Church Yawkey Way, gawking at Lexington Green the Green Monster, and cramming ourselves full of Boston’s Fenway’s famous clam chowdah sausage and beer.

Oh, and the Cubs and Red Sox played three, and we were thrilled upset about the astonishing perfectly predictable results. Nothing we saw changed what we believed — the Cubs are a young and exciting old and interesting embarrassing team, while Red Sox Nation (gack!) is finally on track to contend with the Yanks and Rays.

You can’t blame Nationals fans for celebrating: after two embarrassing shutout losses in New York, the Nationals rapped out nineteen hits and scored 17 runs in a badly needed win against their rival Orioles. Danny Espinosa was the team’s heaviest hitter, going 3-4 and notching five RBIs. The Nats’ power surge also included home runs by Jayson Werth (who had two), Roger Bernadina, Laynce Nix, Wilson Ramos — and of course Espinosa. That’s six Nationals’ home runs in one game, something that Nationals fans never see.

Orioles’ manager Buck Showalter was philosophical about the loss: “I think it was probably a given they were going to hit better as the season progresses. It’s just unfortunate it was against us.” That was probably news for Nats’ fans, who have been increasingly critical of the anemic line-up and wondering when things were going to change. But Friday’s game was a sign that perhaps the Nationals have gotten on track. Jayson Werth seems to think so: “I think everybody knows we have been struggling with the bats and not getting hits,” he said in the visitor’s clubhouse following the win. “It has been a long time coming. We have a good team. Hopefully we can build on this and keep going.”

Unfortunately for Washington, starter Jason Marquis didn’t stay in the game long enough to profit from the Nats’ outburst. The Nationals’ righty, who has returned to the form he showed for the Colorado Rockies’ in 2009, was pulled by Nats’ manager Jim Riggleman after four — and was damned mad about it, showing his emotion in the dugout after he was lifted. Riggleman said he’d never seen Marquis so angry. Marquis shrugged off the incident: “I want to be out on the field, battling out there with the teammates,” he said. “It’s a one-game thing. So I’m going to go out there, do my work like I always do, prepare for the fifth day, take that ball and be ready to get a W.”

But the story of the game was the Nationals at the plate: the 17 runs were a Nationals record, and nearly every slumping player contributed: Ian Desmond was 2-6, Wilson Ramos was 3-4 and Jayson Werth brought his batting average to .247. And despite the lifting of Jason Marquis (he simply looked ineffective), the Nationals got a solid three innings performance from maybe-he-can-hit-the-strike-zone after all Henry Rodriguez.

The other piece of good news (though it’s almost, dare we say, predictable now) is the Nationals were perfect in the field. Which is pretty good commentary on the game: when the team puts it altogether, they look almost (almost) unbeatable.

When we saw the final 1-0 score in today’s Mets-Nats match-up (we were having a board meeting here at CFG, planning out trip to Boston — to watch “the Nation” take on “The North Side Drama Queens“) we thought, ‘well, that makes sense,’ because the Nationals were facing Tom Seaver. “Oh no,” we were told. The Nats weren’t taking on Seaver, because he retired long ago. Oh, okay. Well then, the Nats must have been facing Jerry Koosman, because he’s the kind of pitcher who can throw a three-hit shutout. “Oh no,”we were told. Koosman is also retired. Hmmm. Well then, what great pitcher could blank the Nats so effectively over nine innings?

Why it was none other than Dillon Gee. Who? Dillon Gee. In fact, Dillon Gee (a kind of Mets version of Raul Ibanez — who, if he hit just against the Nats, would already be in the Hall of Fame) held the Nats to two hits over 7.2, throwing 107 pitches (and 69 strikes) — and providing the Metropolitans with one of the most effective outings of any New York pitcher this year. “We have to do more,” Nats manager Riggleman said after the game. “We can’t have [three] hits and get shut out two days in a row. We are better than that. We are going to have to do better than that.”

The victim here was not simply the Nationals, but also staff ace Livan Hernandez — who gave up just one run in seven complete. It’s hard to think that a performance like that would not be backed by a line-up that continues to struggle: a struggle that has now reached epic proportions. The Nats are looking for a solution, but there doesn’t seem to be one on the horizon and Nats’ fans may just have to wait — for Ryan Zimmerman to return, for the bats to heat up, for the team to start hitting no-name opposing pitchers who have no business sticking around past the sixth. The Nats are better than that? Well, maybe they’re not.