If memory serves me right, we lost 5 in a row at that point, went down to Houston, took game one, and atleast I thought we would take 3 of 4, mash the Pirates, and soon enough Strasburg would be starting and we would make a run at .500.
I was wrong.
Actually, we were both wrong. The Nats were 20-15, not 25-20. Still good. They got to that point with a game 1 win in Colorado to start a 4-game series, then proceeded to lose the next three. They lost the next 2 in STL to make it 5 straight losses. They had a .500 homestand after that (capped off with a dramatic tenth-inning walkoff HR for Josh Willingham, damn I miss that guy), only to go on the west coast and drop 2 series against SD and SF.
The series after that was against Houston, and yep, they crapped the bed. They came home, Stras debuted, and the Nats swept the Pirates. It looked like there was hope as they got within a game of .500 at that point, but little did any of us know that they wouldn't sniff .500 again that season even with St. Stephen in the fold.
It hurt that pretty much everyone else in the rotation turned into pumpkins. Olsen, Atilano, and even Livo started struggling after decent-to-awesome starts to the year. The rest of our starts were comprised of things like a debuting Yunesky Maya
, a still-recovering Jordan Zimmermann (by far his worst season/stint), and a befuddled John Lannan.