(Editor’s Note: DCist would like to welcome Chris Kelly to our Sports staff. He will be assisting in our coverage of the Nationals with a weekly column each Monday.)

Call ’em “The Comeback Kids”, “The One-Run Wonders”, “The Cardiac Kids”; doesn’t matter. Call ’em whatever you want, but your first place Washington Nationals extended their 10-game winning streak yesterday with yet another 1-run victory (8 out of their last 13 wins have been by 1 run), downing the Seattle Mariners 3-2 in front of 37,170 sun-drenched fans at RFK. The win capped off an astonishingly good home stand (12-1) and their third series sweep in a row (Seattle, Oakland, and Florida all got the broom). With that, your Nationals own the best home record in the Major Leagues (24-9), thanks in no small part to the one million-plus fans who’ve now packed into RFK to root, root, root for the home team.

But now the Nats head West for a 9 game road trip, and so far this season the road has been anything but friendly. The Nats are an ugly 13-17 away from home. It’s been an incredible run thus far, but the next two series away from home against AL West powerhouses LAAoA and Texas should give us a better idea of what this Nats team is made of. Esteban Loaiza takes the mound for the Nats against the Angels’ Paul (no relation to Marlon) Byrd this evening.

On Friday, the Nats bid farewell to disgruntled starter Tomo Ohka, shipping him out to Milwaukee for second baseman Junior Spivey. You remember, of course, last Saturday, when Ohka disrespected Frank Robinson by turning his back on his manager when he came out to take the ball after Ohka got into a jam in the fourth inning against the Marlins? Well, apparently showing up your manager is a tradable offense in these parts, because that seems to be the impetus for this head-scratcher of a trade. What was GM Jim Bowden thinking? This trade makes absolutely no sense on many levels. Here are three of them:

(Flickr photo taken by MGDistrict)