Jason Marquis’ first start for the Nationals could have gone better.
(AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Phillies 8, Nationals 4: Phew, it’s a good thing we got that whole Philadelphia invasion thing out of our system and can now focus entirely on baseball, right? One thing: it’s still the Nats and that same old awful starting pitching. New starter Jason Marquis fared slightly better than John Lannan did on Monday, but he still struggled to find consistency as the Phils beat Washington 8-4. Marquis allowed six earned in four innings of work, sandwiching three innings of acceptable work with a jittery first inning featuring three walks, one hit batter, and a wild pitch and a fifth inning in which Ryan Howard crushed his second homer to knock Marquis out. Two games into the 2010 season, here’s the Nationals top two starters’ combined line: 23 recorded outs, 15 hits, 11 earned runs, six walks and only two strikeouts. Blech. On the bright side, Ian Desmond continues to prove that he could be the offensive answer for this team at shortstop, hitting a laser home run to dead center in the third, and smashing a double one inning later, raising his slugging percentage since his call up last September to .606. (Though his two errors in two games is certainly concerning.) Oh, and since there wasn’t an Obama sighting or Opening Day festivities, attendance was back to 27,240, or 65 percent of capacity. So let’s see: horrid starting pitching, random outbursts of offensive promise and a stadium with plenty of seats that went unfilled. Sounds like we’re back to the usual brand of Nationals baseball, alright.

Magic 121, Wizards 94: The Wizards were on the road against a team who was 31-7 at home going into the evening. Their best player shot 5-19 from the floor, Dwight Howard was his normal self and Washington was outrebounded by 12. So, yeah, they didn’t win their third straight last night.