A lot of stuff to like on this team over last year's right now.

The bullpen is better. Detwiler is solid in a long relief role and it gives us another lefty arm off the bench. Blevins looks like he's competently filling in the void that Sean Burnett left after 2012 as the short relief lefty specialist. Blake Treinen could do for this team what Trevor Rosenthal did for the Cardinals. Drew Storen looks a lot like his old self. Clippard has struggled early, but that's about it. The relief pitchign has given up 19 runs in 63.1 IP. Can't ask for anything better. They've kept us in games and allowed the offense to come back when the team was down early.

The bench is better. Frandsen has ably replaced Lombardozzi. Espinosa is back to 2011-2012 form when the world (except me) wanted to cut him outright last year. Off the bench before today's game, the team is .277/.382/.426 line in 55 PA. That will no doubt regress, as it's actually higher than the starters' line, but last year the subs' line was .207/.264./351. There's just more talent among the position players.

Hitting has been about what it should be, with LaRoche's start being a nice surprise. Injuries are what they are. Ramos really hurt. If he can come back and stay healthy, it'll be fine. Zimmerman coming back with create a bit of a quagmire which I cannot trust Matt Williams to manage, but I suppose the team will cross that bridge when it comes to it.

The starting pitching has been the outlier thus far. Strasburg has been a bit unlucky. Fister hasn't toed the rubber yet. Zimmermann had one bad outing in Miami. Gio is where he should be. Roark and Jordan have done roughly what you'd expect.

And then there's the manager...I'll leave that alone for the moment.

All in all, I feel pretty good three weeks into the season. . 11-8 right now. 1.5 behind the Braves. One game ahead of the 2013 Nationals. 3 games behind the 2012 team.