David Huzzard: Stop pointless debates and enjoy what's happening on the field

When I was growing up, Washington D.C., was the murder capital of the world and currently the Nationals are murdering baseballs at an alarming rate. The third inning of yesterday's game saw a quintuple homicide committed at Nats Park. But as with anything that's fun, there are always people that want to ruin it. Seriously, go to your Twitter right now and type in something you think is fun and declare your joy for it, and I'm sure one of the first responses will be someone looking to rain on your parade.

That is how this entire who-should-bat-second debate feels to me. The Nationals offense is incredibly fun to watch and doing impressive things. They have, after all, scored the most runs in the National League. They are the best. They can't get any better. The entire discussion is completely pointless. It is an argument that can only be had on theories, which makes it doubly awful. Arguments this time of year should be about the prospect cost of acquiring players to help your team. I do not believe with the change in free agent compensation rules and the fact that Yu Darvish is a two-month rental and he will cost that much to acquire. That argument will be proven right or wrong at the latest come Monday.

Arguing who should bat second has no answer and no way to prove who's right, other than arguing, and any argument about it will be circular, never-ending, and full of what-if scenarios and competing theories. Because I'm a stupid idiot, I ran the Nats lineup through the baseball musings lineup optimizer and it told me the best possible lineup would be Anthony Rendon, Bryce Harper, Adam Lind, Ryan Zimmerman, Daniel Murphy, Brian Goodwin, Matt Wieters, Max Scherzer and Wilmer Difo and that would average 6.141 runs a game. It also gave me several other good and bad lineups, and none were the lineup the Nats use, but the worst lineup would average 5.334 runs a game. The real Nationals are averaging 5.54 runs a game and that is the best in the NL with Colorado second with 5.33 runs a game.

These facts make me doubt the lineup optimizer tool. I have my doubts that a lineup with Scherzer batting second would still score more runs than the Rockies. Just like the entire argument, my effort in running things through the lineup optimizer was wasted. What really makes it a bad argument is there is no control. There isn't a universe we can look into where Rendon is batting second or the fully optimized lineup is run out there or any other number of possibilities and then all variables have to be accounted for. What if Difo has started to hit well because he's batting second and he's getting pitches to hit because he's batting in front of Harper? And what if Rendon really does prefer to bat lower in the order and he wouldn't be the same player he is batting sixth? What if pitchers would sequence their pitches differently if the lineup were shuffled? These are all things we can't possibly know and worthless to argue about.

The only knowable thing is the Nats offense is incredibly fun to watch. This Nats team is quite possibly the best Nats team of the past six seasons - and that is saying something with how good the 2012 and 2014 Nats were. This is easily the best Nats offense we've ever seen and they are doing it with three regulars missing significant time. Arguing about who should bat second instead of simply enjoying the season is a draining experience. It is great in some ways because it shows how much this town can care about baseball but there are far more important things to care about, like should the Nats trade for Darvish and are brownies best served warm with ice cream or room temperature and alone?

David Huzzard blogs about the Nationals at Citizens of Natstown. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidHuzzard. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our regular roster of writers.