Bob Carpenter has been the primary play-by-play announcer for the Nats on MASN since 2006, and his retirement party will be this weekend at the conclusion of the series finale against the Pirates. Nats fans might roll their eyes at Carpenter getting hyped over any medium-depth fly ball, but he is a real professional who has had to work with some…somewhat challenging color guys over the years: the cheesy homerism of FP Santangelo, the just plain cheesiness of Kevin Frandsen, and the often awkward chemistry with fill-in Dan Kolko during both of those tenures. Nats fans with the time should go celebrate Bob on Sunday!

Another day, (what should have been) another blowout win in the mausoleum that is Loan Depot Park, this time a 7-5 victory in front of a couple thousand (as opposed to the tens of people that were in attendance Monday evening) and that was largely uninteresting before the bottom of the ninth. One would think that after all these years of losing the Marlins would have a strategy or three to get some people out to the park in August and September, but I digress. Josh Bell got the Nats off to a fast start with a three-run upper-tank shot (no fan was within three sections of the ball’s landing spot) in the top of the first, and after Joey Wiemer got one back an inning later with a solo homer, the Nats more or less cruised until the eighth. The Nats added two more in the fourth thanks to a bases-loaded sacrifice fly and force out, another on a Daylen Lile bomb leading off the fifth, and one more on a sacrifice fly (Bell again) in the sixth.

While all this scoring was going on, Mitchell Parker breezed through his first seven innings on just three hits, retiring fourteen in a row between the Wiemer home run and a seventh-inning single that was immediately erased on a 6-3 double play to end the frame. He loaded the bases with two outs in the eighth thanks to a single and his first two walks of the day before he was pulled, but overall it was one of Parker’s best outings of the year, probably since April. P.J. Poulin allowed one of Parker’s inherited runners to score before getting a gift called third strike on a high fastball to Jacob Marzee with the bases still loaded.

And then came the ninth. Cole Henry struck out the first batter before allowing a single and hitting pinch hitter Liam Hicks, Henry’s eleventh beanball of the season (note - that’s far too many). Henry then threw a wild pitch to eliminate the possibility of a double play before a shallow fly to right (two outs) and a flared double down the left field line about 110 feet from where James Wood was positioned (two runs). That forced the Nats to bring in Jose A. Ferrer to try and wrap things up. After an error by Brady House, a passed ball, and a single, all of a sudden the Marlins had the winning run at the plate before a grounder to CJ Abrams finally ended the game at 7-5 - much more exciting than it needed to be.

After an abysmal first eight weeks to his season - at which point he ditched his new swing and went back to his familiar old one - Josh Bell is hitting .277/.363/.476 over his last eighty games, and since taking over at first base for the departed Nathaniel Lowe has been at least playable over there. Would you resign Bell to a two-year or three-year deal to get some time at both first base and designated hitter and provide his exemplary clubhouse (and public-facing) presence for a young team in desperate need of steady veteran leadership that isn’t at risk of getting traded every single July? I think I might at this point.

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