"It's difficult to hit any worse than .176, but Nate McLouth has done the deed. That skinny number is what he was batting when he went on the disabled list after a clash of noggins with Jason Heyward. Since returning last week, McLouth is 1-for-13, which represents a Twiggy-like .077.

(And the hit, we should note, was a flare that dropped into right field McLouth's first game back. That gift should offset the live drive that became a double play Sunday.)

We have seen Braves struggle over the years — Andruw Jones, Jeff Francoeur, Yunel Escobar, the legendary Greg Norton — but we have never seen an everyday Brave perform worse than this. Nate McLouth is hitting .168 on the season. He has three home runs, 14 RBIs, four stolen bases. The highest his average has climbed since April 8 is .208.

He wasn't very good in his half-season as a Brave in 2009 — a .257 average, 11 homers, 36 RBIs — but today the Braves would take that tepid yield and be ecstatic. McLouth has been so bad for so long, starting in spring training and continuing apace, that there's no cause to believe he's is a big-league starter, or even a big-leaguer, any longer.

There were whispers around baseball that the Pirates had noted a decline in McLouth's skills and were thrilled to unload him before the rest of the sport caught on. If so, that marks the first time in two decades the Bucs have outsmarted somebody. (Not that losing Charlie Morton was any setback.)"