David Huzzard: Pitching is nice, but Nats need more offensive firepower

Last night, Max Scherzer threw a 20-strikeout game. Earlier in the week, Stephen Strasburg agreed to a $175 extension. They are two fifths of the reason why the Washington Nationals are in the race for the NL East title.

Every day I question how a team with so many hitters below league average can be winning as many games as they do. I question it even more when they have multiple comebacks in one game. If you judge a team on their gumption the Nats played their two best games of the season in losing to the Cubs. They came back, they forced extra innings, and they went down swinging in every game. They were simply outmatched, and that is the worry when it comes to the offense. It simply isn't enough for the Nats to be a real contender, and Trea Turner isn't the right-handed, middle-of-the-order bat that can help make teams pay for walking Bryce Harper.

All of the Nats' issues happen to be on one side of the game. Scherzer and Strasburg both made history this week. Scherzer tied a record for most strikeouts in a nine-inning game and Strasburg inked the largest deal for a Tommy John survivor. The entire pitching staff deserves credit. The Nats' 2.77 ERA is second only to the Cubs in all of baseball and the team's 3.15 runs allowed a game is third in the NL behind the Cubs and Mets.

The Mets and Nationals are very similar teams, but it won't come down to starting pitching. They are both good at that. It will come down to who can improve their offense the most during the season. The Nationals score 4.39 runs a game and the Mets 4.34. They are virtually identical teams a little over a month into the season.

Turner is going to help the Nationals and, maybe by the time he arrives, Anthony Rendon's bat will heat up to the point that he can be the right-handed bat that hits after Harper. The most likely scenario is the Nationals are going to have to trade for a right-handed bat at the deadline. Until then, the Nationals are going to have to win with pitching and that has been fantastic. It wasn't until Scherzer had 17 strikeouts that I even realized something was going on. The TV cameraman panned over the area where the K's are placed out and I noticed it was a lot. I had no idea that history was even at hand.

The Nats aren't going to get historic outings every night from their starting pitchers, but they don't need it. Despite the poor hitting from most of the lineup, the Nationals have shown an ability for timely hitting. As a person that believes in advanced stats, the idea of timely hitting isn't one I'm supposed to buy into, but the Nats' sequencing has been opportunistic this season.

They've strung together hits when they've needed to more often than I remember them doing in the past, and maybe that's because my memory is getting worse. Whether the sequencing is better because of luck or because of the power of Dusty Baker's toothpick, it has mattered because of the starting pitching.

The Washington Nationals have been blown out once this entire season. That means they've lost one game by five runs or more exactly once all season. Every other game the Nationals have been in it until the end, and that is because of their starting pitching.

Of the Nats' 13 losses, five have been by one run and six others have been by three runs or fewer. The Nationals have played a lot of close games this season and that means when they do score a run it matters that much more because their starting pitchers have created a situation where an individual run has a larger impact on the outcome of the game.

It's not just appearance that the Nationals have fight. They have been in nearly every game they've played this season and die hard, and it all starts with the five pitchers in the rotation. Strasburg and Scherzer are the ones that made history this week, but Joe Ross, Tanner Roark, and Gio Gonzalez are deserving of praise as well.

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.