David Huzzard: Baseball's maddeningly consistent inconsistency

A friend of mine asked me the other day why it feels like we are having the same discussions every year on social media, and I answered that it's because it's different people. The conversation he's referring to is the one about why can't baseball teams just be consistent. The main answer is that the baseball season is not a victory march. Sure, a bunch of experts picked the Nationals to win the World Series before the season started, but that never meant it was going to be easy or that all the other teams would kneel down before them. In order to win the World Series, the Nationals have to play the season and with that endure the normal rhythms of the season.

People that talk about baseball from barber shops to talk radio are always asking why a player or team or pitcher can't be more consistent, and the real answer, the answer that is never given, is because it's baseball. Baseball is a game of inconsistency. It is a game of ebbs and flows, of hot streaks and cold streaks, of winning stretches and losing stretches. The last thing in the world baseball is is consistent, but it is what so many people demand it to be, and the most likely thing to follow a winning streak is a losing streak (and the reverse is true, as well).

April was a bad month for the Nationals. They finished it under .500 and then May was one of the best months the team ever had. It is too early in June to call it anything but it is very likely that it won't be as bad as April or as good as May. Thus is the nature of the game of baseball. The Nationals were hot in May because Bryce Harper was scorching hot, and Max Scherzer was pitching great and those two players will likely contend for an MVP and Cy Young, respectively, and they weren't the only reason May was great. Wilson Ramos had his hit streak, Ian Desmond flourished in the two-hole, Jordan Zimmermann found his rhythm, Denard Span had his own hot stretch and Blake Treinen discovered a slider that briefly solidified the Nats bullpen.

The Nationals won nine series in a row and have now lost two series in a row. Harper's home run stroke has slowed some, but he's still getting on base at a ridiculous clip, and Max Scherzer can only pitch once every fifth day, and when he gives up four runs in six innings, he has to wait four days to redeem himself. All the while, the lineup, rotation and bullpen are starting to feel the weight of injuries.

The depth of the organization helped the Nationals in May, but it can only be stretched so far until it starts to give. But the Nationals weathered the storm of April and Anthony Rendon is about to come off the DL to give the Nationals one more hitter that can get hot and be the complimentary piece Harper needs to make this offense go. Even if the Nationals were at full strength, that wouldn't stop the reality that baseball is an inconsistent game. Sometimes you'll run into a team when they're at a low point in the season and roll over them, and then a few months later, you'll play them again and they'll roll over you. Baseball is not a game that can be predicted over short bursts. Baseball is a war of attrition, and as much as it feels we're approaching the middle of the season, the end is still a long ways off.

Baseball is not a victory march. It is a slog. At points, the Nationals are going to look like an unstoppable machine and at others they will look like a three-wheeled cart pulled by a one-legged mule. To paraphrase an old saying, the Nationals aren't as bad as they looked in April nor are they as good as they looked in May, and the truth won't be revealed until much later in the year. The Nationals were hot, and now they are cold, and soon they'll be hot again. That is the main rhythm of a baseball season, and the best teams have longer hot streaks than they do cold ones, and the bad teams have longer cold streaks than they do hot ones. This is the reality of baseball, a game that's only consistency is that it is unbearably inconsistent.

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.