Do the Nationals have the pitching for the home stretch?

First, a little background on how a guy in Indiana became a Nationals devotee.

I felt so bad for the 2004 Expos. No team was ever set up to be a bigger failure in the history of the modern game. And this city had already been screwed 10 years earlier when the strike dashed a promising Expos season onto the rocks. I remember Montreal being on a tear in '94, looking unstoppable.

I never really cared much about baseball growing up. It was a football house. I had a passing interest in a few teams (Mom's Cubs, etc...) but never got into the game. Too slow for me. No one gets drilled on the line of scrimmage. Etc.

I gave baseball a bigger chance in my twenties when Miami got a team. Although I've never really lived in Florida, being one so sensitive to heat I've always had a fondness for any group of athletes who can actually funtion for an entire game under the Florida Sun. (It's a whole other sun, believe me. It's part of why I've loved the loser Bucs all these years, even through the 2-14 campaigns...and worse.)

So when the Marlins started up, I became a fan. And in '97, I watched 'em win it all. Livan and Rob Nen became my favorite pitchers, and I started to learn more about the game.

I moved to Colorado, and watched the Rockies do it wrong (except Helton). I came back to the Lake Michigan region, and found myself surrounded by Cubs and Sox fans. I stood by my Marlins...until they hired McKeon. I couldn't believe that they would go with someone so old and out of touch with the modern game. Still reeling from the '98 Fire Sale...I gave up on the Marlins.

And they won it all. Refusing to jump on the Cubs bandwagon when it was o so trendy to do so, I even went so far as to wear my Marlins Cap during the series with the Cubs to raise the ire of my coworkers. I was actually cussed at in traffic one day while wearing it. Passionate area.

I flirted with teams in the 2004 season, but never found anything I liked. I felt for the Expos with the contraction talk, and having to play some home games in San Juan, Puerto Rico (a far cry from Montreal). And when I discovered Livan was pitching there, I started following their fatal season.

Then came rumors that they might move the franchise to Vegas. And I became a fan, in hopes that it would be true. Vegas is where I was born. FINALLY, a team I cheer for would make sense.

And then they went to Washington. So be it. I declared myself a fan anyway, despite the desert snub, and now I'm cheering for the hottest pre-All-Star team in the NL this side of St. Louis.

But I also am enough of a fan, no matter what the sport, to look that gift horse in the mouth.

WHY are they hot? What makes the success tick? Failure to identify such things, to look for the cracks in the dam, is akin to wearing blinders when you type. You're going to miss a lot of what you need. And you won't understand how it could go wrong later.

And I'm noticing that, though they are winning a ton of one-run games...they are One Run Games. We need more pitching. Sure, everyone does, but for the Nats it could be the single piece that makes the difference.

The question is...whom do you bring in? Whom do you give up? How much fuel do El Hombre and Loaiza really have? Can brilliance in Spring really carry into the Fall? History suggests it's unlikely.

How long before Atlanta, or even the Marlins or Phillies, go on a tear and bite the lucky Nats in the ass?