Ah well.

We didn’t have it today, which, after eight consecutive wins, has to be expected at some point.  Thor wasn’t at his best, the offense was going up against the eternally irksome Madison Bumgarner, and, well, we lost.

For what it’s worth, it was our fifth straight series win.  It’s not worth much.  The Nationals won again; they’ll lose eventually, but they’re not doing it nearly enough.

We’re 15-8, and the Nationals, barring a Cardinals rally, will be 17-7.  Eh, so what?  Losses, wins, they happen.

We’ll get going again; our four aces will get their pitches moving just the right way, our bats will start swinging better than today, and we’ll go out and beat the Braves.  That doesn’t make it any more fun watching our winning streak dissolve into incompetence against those preternaturally annoying Giants, but hey, it is what it is.

It didn’t help, either, that Terry built his lineup around the concept of righty/lefty matchups, which I thought had been discredited, at least as an automatic playing time determinant.  Asdrubal Cabrera is better — significantly better, in fact — than Wilmer Flores against lefties, and even if he is a tad better, no one wanted to see Eric Campbell in the lineup.  But again, it’s a loss.  It happens; the lineup didn’t change much.

So we move on.  We stay home and take on the Braves and beat them down.  We keep playing our game; we hit and pitch and keep doing everything better than most other teams in the league do.  It’s not that hard, with the team we’ve got: we just didn’t do it today.

Conforto.  Cespedes.  Wright, Walker, and Duda.  Cabrera, Granderson, and even Plawecki.  The Giants held us down today.

Do we really think that’s going to last?  Let’s be serious here.