You can see it start to happen now. The hitters are hitting, the pitchers are pitching, and the Nats still have some great players who will reappear in the second half after recovering from injuries. This team, already in ownership of the National League’s best record, is still on the rise.

How would you like to face a Desmond-Harper-Zimmerman-Morse-LaRoche-Werth lineup? How do you pitch around that, knowing that playing it careful with one hitter means you just get another who’s almost a clone of the last guy? How do you stand in the box as a hitter when the pitching staff also consists of wave upon wave of nasty-strike-throwing power guys who can mow you down? When Steven Strasburg is the third-hottest pitcher in the Nats rotation, how do you play against that?

You don’t. You lose, and the Nats win.

I now think the Nats are very possibly a 100-win squad. If they assert themselves to their genuine capabilities, they’re the best team in the National League. Now, to me, it looks like no one can touch the Rangers or the Yankees when it comes to overall talent — but, as the Rangers have learned the past two years, playoff baseball is not regular-season baseball. The overall balance of the Nats will serve the team well in both the regular season and the playoffs. And this might be a very very very special season indeed.

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