Some Thoughts on The U.S. Season Opener

I've been watching the Nationals host the Braves in the U.S. season opener, and noticed a few interesting things along the way:

1. The outfield looks large pretty large, including deep, triangular left-center field that resembles a sort of mini version of the Bermuda Triangle in Florida. Those sort of extreme ballpark quirks really annoy me, as they make me feel like the architects are trying too hard to make the field "individual" or "unique." However, the park appears to be really quite beautiful and the announcers have been saying that you can see various D.C. landmarks from different points in the stadium, which is awesome.

2. The weather in D.C is obviously highly variable over the course of the season, and the cool weather they are experiencing tonight won't last throughout the summer. That said, it appears that balls hit hard and deep to right field, on a line, carry extremely well. The Braves hit a couple of lasers in that direction and both times the ball stayed up in the air for what felt like forever.

3. Peter Moylan has a really entertaining submariner-slider.

4. I haven't had a chance to watch the Nationals too often, but I find it hard to believe this offense will score a lot of runs. Young, Zimmerman, Johnson, and Kearns form a solid core, and Dukes and Milledge have promise. But the Braves got 24 straight batters out at one point, and the Nationals' plate appearances were terrible. This team looked like someone told them they'd be executed if they took a walk. Maybe swinging early was their game plan against Hudson, but why they'd want to just hack at every pitch a sinkerballer throws is beyond me.

5. Zimmerman won it with a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth, a pretty spectacular finish for the first game in Nationals Park history. Now I have yet another reason to list Zimmerman as one of my favorite players.

6. Nats closer Chad Cordero was warming up with the lead during the bottom of the eighth, but Jon Rauch came in to close instead. I'm pretty sure I could here a million fantasy baseball team owners groan in unison when the top of the ninth began, sort of like how Obi Wan Kenobe could feel the disturbance in the force. Cordero was apparently stiff warming up, and lo and behold - Rauch blew the save.

7. Odalis Perez isn't a very good starting pitcher, but despite everyone snarking out over his being a horrid opening day pitcher, he turned in a good performance. You can see why he's been able to stick around so long - he throws hardish, with decent movement, for a lefty. He is also high effort (five innings tonight) and will probably never have great command.