Plenty of discussion on the Nats' offensive woes during my live chat today, but I thought I'd expand on a few related subjects...

-- The top two guys in the Nats' lineup, Cristian Guzman and Lastings Milledge, have been doing their job so far. Guzman is hitting .333, though he only has one walk. Milledge is hitting .309 with a .361 OBP, though he's been thrown out a few times trying to take ill-advised extra bases.

-- The problem lies in the heart of the Nats' order. Ryan Zimmerman is hitting .211, and he's an astounding 1-for-17 with runners in scoring position. Austin Kearns is hitting .217 with two extra-base hits. He's drawn nine walks, but he's also grounded into five double plays (most in the NL). Nick Johnson has done better (his OBP is a team-best .420), though he's only got five RBI, which is a bit puzzling.

-- The bottom of the order hasn't done much, either. Paul Lo Duca, Ronnie Belliard and all the left fielders are all hitting .200 or worse.

So what's the answer? Some fans have proposed the same thing I thought of last night -- putting Johnson in the No. 3 spot, with Zimmerman behind him, hoping perhaps to take advantage of Johnson's ability to get on base and put the ball in play, while still leaving plenty of RBI opportunities for Zimmerman. There could be some merit to that, though it would leave the Nats with a bunch of right-handed hitters in a row, and Manny Acta certainly pays attention to that kind of stuff. Manny's also not one to make many lineup changes, so my hunch is that we won't see that.

For better or worse, I think we're going to have to see if the struggling Nats hitters can hit their own way out of this. There's no real solutions on the bench or in the upper levels of the farm system. The only guy not here right now who could maybe make a difference would be Elijah Dukes, who is making strides in his recovery from a strained hamstring and could be back in another week or so. That said, I don't know that Acta's just going to plug the talented-but-raw Dukes into the lineup right off the bat, whether in left or right fields.

In other words, hunker down and hope things get better sometime soon...