The Nats are now three games over .500 following a convincing 7-1 hooking of the Marlins in Florida. The Nats were powered by two Ryan Zimmerman home runs and the ace-like pitching of former Marlin Scott Olsen. Zimmerman, who has been nursing a spate of sore hamstrings, homered in his first and second at bats — going 3-4 with three RBIs in the victory. Marlin hurler Ricky Nolasco, Florida’s most effective front-liner, was lights-out in his two previous starts (against the power hitting Phillies and Rockies), lasted only four innings against the Nats, giving up eight hits and five earned runs. “He got some pitches up. He looked like he wasn’t the Ricky that we’ve seen,” Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez said after the game. “He struggled through four innings. Now we move on to his next start.” While Washington has been playing well despite Zimmerman’s semi-rehab on the Nats’ bench, for Washington center fielder Nyjer Morgan, the return of Zimmerman meant even more victories down the road. “We have our horse back,” he said.

Scott Olsen provided the Nats with his second consecutive quality start, pitching six innings of five-hit ball. Olsen’s performance was particularly humbling for the Marlins, his former team. Nolasco had little to say about Olsen’s performance: “He threw well. He’s getting stronger as the year goes on,” said Nolasco. “Good for him. We’ll try to go get ‘em tomorrow. We’ll move on from this one.” But Olsen was upbeat about his performance against his former team. “I’d be lying to you if I said it didn’t mean a little more,” Olsen said. “The effect of being traded has worn off, but it is nice to finally beat them, nice to pitch well against people you played with and you know.” Olsen admitted that he couldn’t throw his slider for a strike in the first innings of the contest, but settled down thereafter, mixing his pitches and depending on a stellar Washington defense.

Scott Olsen’s seven inning gem against the Dodgers has Nats fans (and the Washington Post) oohing and ahhing about the team’s new attitude. “Instead of saying ‘Get ‘em tomorrow,’ the Nats have finally assembled a tougher, more irritable group that actually does it,” Post columnist and leading baseball pundit Thomas Boswell writes. Boswell goes on to note: “It’s not just the Nats’ record that is different this spring. The Nats themselves are. They’re starting to resemble the first gritty crew that brought baseball back to D.C. after a 33 year wait.” Tougher? More irritable? Gritty? My first reaction was to scoff: forget irritable and gritty — we need front line guys who can throw strikes. Please, please, please Tom (I know you’re the best, or close to it), but you know (and I know, and it’s no secret) that a rotation of Lannan, Stammen, Olsen and Hernandez are not going to get it done.

But in studying yesterday’s box score, I began to question by own cynicism. The difference in the Nats 1-0 win yesterday (a beautifully pitched game, if ever there was one) from any of their wins last year was obvious. For right there, in the middle of the line-up, were two players the Nats needed, but didn’t have, in the ’09 campaign. When Mike Rizzo signed Ivan Rodriguez and Adam Kennedy in the offseason, he not only filled two special needs, he added two gamers to the clubhouse — players who not only know how to win, but want to. While Rodriguez and Kennedy went a combined 0-6 yesterday, their role on the team has been indispensible, providing much needed leadership to a crew of talented, but young, players. Mike Rizzo added a caveat: “We’re a long ways from where we want to be.” Yeah, true. But you’re also a long ways from where you were.

The difference between the ’09 and 2010 Nats becomes more obvious when you go through the line-up of the Chicago Cubs, whom the Nats face in Chicago starting tonight. The North Side Drama Queens are a team of head cases and disasters-waiting-to-happen: Alfonso Soriano’s penchant to drop flies in left field is damn near agonizing, the perpetually petulant Carlos Zambrano has been demoted to the bullpen, the perennially injured Aramis Ramirez is a fracture away from putting the Cubs in the cellar and Kosuke Fukudome is overpaid and (undoubtedly) on the trading block. I know, I know — the Cubs just swept the Brewers and can hit the hell out of the ball. But the name of this game is pitching, and the Cubs don’t have it. Forget the starters (or don’t — if you really believe that Carlos Silva is the answer), and focus on the bullpen. The line-up of Berg, Grabow, Gray, Russell and Marmol is a patched together crew of rookies and semi-veterans (like Marmol) who have yet to prove they can hit the strike zone. Put another way, we would be justified in saying that the Cubs bullpen collapsed in the first two weeks of the season, but we’d be wrong. It had nothing to collapse from.

Cubs fans are on a death watch. Nats 320 has an outstanding interview with Cubs blogger Joe Aeillo of View From The Bleachers, and while Joe sounds positive enough, you can almost hear the ‘Oh-God-wadda-we-gonna-do’ tension in his voice. Joe talks about Uncle Lou’s bullpen problems and notes that Zambrano has been “the weak link” in the rotation so far this year, but the icing comes when Nats 320 asks about Soriano. “I’ll give you $20 right now, straight cash homie, if you convince the Nationals to take him back,” Joe says. That’s a deal we can pass up: we’ll keep Willingham. Soriano, the bullpen — they’re all problems. But the real problem facing the Cubs is down the road in St. Louis. The Cubs don’t have anyone who matches up with Chris Carpenter, Brad Penny or Adam Wainwright. I can’t stand Penny (he should just rob a 7-Eleven and get it out of his system), but the former Dodger bad boy is pitching brilliantly — with three wins and a 0.94 ERA. That’s a record that Zambrano can only dream about.

The Cubs haven’t had a team since Mark Prior and Kerry Wood were five outs away from the World Series. Remember? Prior was a USC power pitcher with Cy Young stuff and Woods struck out 20 in his rookie season. And then . . . and then, in the 8th inning of Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS a little pop foul that should have been caught did them in. It was their last shot. Neither Prior nor Wood have been the same since; Prior became a surgeon’s dream and is now out of baseball and Wood is in Cleveland, dealing with a cranky back. Looking at Prior (a shoulder, an achilles tendon, a hamstring, another shoulder), you can understand why Mike Rizzo wants Stephen Strasburg in the minors — and why he insists that any member of the Washington club have a winning attitude. Put another way, the problem with Cubs comes down to this: Carlos Zambrano throws the ball in the mid-90s and is capable of a 20-win Cy Young season. But wouldn’t you rather have Livan Hernandez?

John Lannan says he’s ready for Opening Day and he better be: he faces new Phillies’ ace Roy Halladay. ”As a pitcher, you would like to face the best, and I want to face the Phillies,” Lannan says. “I want to go against the toughest guys and really compete. It’s going to be exciting. Either way, I wanted that [Opening Day] game so I can make up for last year, and I definitely want to do better than last year.” Lannan opened for the Nats last year, in Florida, and struggled: he pitched three innings and gave up six runs. You might recall that game — it was an Emilio Bonifacio runfest. It looked then that Bonifacio would be the bane of the Nationals for the year, and proof positive that the trade that had sent him to Florida (for Scott Olsen and Josh Willingham) was a bust.

It was anything but. After a quick start, Bonifacio tailspinned, ending the year with a .252 BA and one home run. Willingham, meanwhile, sat the bench and Scott Olsen struggled, eventually going down with arm trouble. By the end of May the trade seemed a wash, at best – the swap of a still-developing kid (with minor leaguers Jake Smolinski and P.J. Dean) for two mediocre piece players who just couldn’t get going. But as it turned out, it was only a matter of time before Austin Kearns played himself out of a job (earning a well-deserved ticket to Cleveland), while Willingham became a fixture in left field. Olsen, meanwhile, showed flashes of brilliance and is now, albeit tentatively, penciled in as a candidate to be DC’s fifth starter.

Willingham’s the story here, not Lannan. The Marlins’ 17th round draft pick is starting his seventh major league season, and is likely just starting to peak. When Kearns did his “oh the humanity“ routine in late May of last year, Willingham was ready — hitting a very average, but very respectable, .260 in 133 games, with 24 dingers and 61 RBIs. You have to wonder what he might have done with an earlier start, and a more workmanlike September (when he tanked). Dunn, Zimmerman and Willingham became the heart of the Nats order for 2009 and you have to believe that, with just a little more oomph, the trio might have transformed itself into a Half Street version of Murders’ Row. Which is only to say that, one year later, the trade that sent the young speedster to Florida for Willingham and Olsen looks pretty good: if Josh can pick up where he was last August — and if Olsen can be the pitcher the Nats supposed when they brought him north.

Just before losing a back-and-forth tussle with the Dodgers at Nationals Park on Thursday (final score: 7-6), the Nats front office apparently decided it was time to start preparing for next year. The things-are-looking-up offensive had the distinct odor of being planned to coincide with the Nats’ 100th in-season loss, a kind of Mendoza line for franchise futility. The “let’s talk up the good news” program included an on-line fan exchange featuring Mike Rizzo, a fan appreciation reception just before the Nats game with the Dodgers, a website feature on Ryan Zimmerman’s amazing season, and select “don’t worry, we’re on the right road” post game quotes from Jim Riggleman and company. “I’m just so proud of these guys,” Riggleman said after the Dodgers loss. “With exception of a ballgame or two — from the All-Star break on — we have been outstanding in terms of effort and attitude. Our fans responded to the energy on the field . . .  The Dodgers are going to popping champagne any day and we [are going to be right there soon].”

Well, maybe. Nats fans continue to show up at the ballpark, but Mike and Company shouldn’t be fooled: the team is on a short leash. Good teams are strong up the middle, but successful franchises are characterized by strong front offices. This 100 loss season can be put down to bad pitching and poor play, but Nats fans know that the most chilling aspect of ’09 didn’t take place on the field. Last January (four months to go before opening day) the Nats’ brain trust had already decided that Joel Hanrahan would be the closer, that its young pitchers were ready to carry the team to respectability, that there was no need to sign a strong glove to anchor a shaky infield, that Dmitri Young would return to provide clubhouse leadership — that Lastings Milledge was on his way to stardom. When Jim Bowden resigned as the team G.M., he predicted “a championship season.”

It’s possible to be wrong about a player, to spend too much money signing a prospect, to make a bad trade, to over value a free agent — that happens to the best teams and it’s forgivable. But to pin your hopes on the bats of Austin Kearns, Lastings Milledge, Dmitri Young and the arms of Scott Olsen and Daniel Cabrera is beyond strange. It’s nearly perverse. The Washington Nationals ’09 campaign is a “lost season” not simply because the team lost 100 games (though, there’s that) but because the team spent the first three months of the season building what it should have been building for the last five years: a group of development experts and talent assessors who are capable of being honest about what’s on the field. So let’s not mistake what happened yesterday: the front office of the Washington Nationals decided to divert our attention from what has been happening on the field – and for good reason.