Sitting in line already?

Shouldn't another writer be covering that story so the Post would have at least one guy on the Nats beat?

Let me be clear: No knock on Barry; he works his butt off offering updates here and that's greatly appreciated.

But the Post should have a national baseball writer (or dare I say, a baseball columnist) covering the steroids while the local writer covers the local team. We don't need more national coverage in the Post sports section; we need more local coverage.

Second verse same as the first

We don't need to wait until Thursday to know the result of Felipe Lopez's arbitration hearing. Felipe will lose. I am amazed that he would put himself through that, since he had an awful year, and the team can make a good case that they are offering a generous raise in spite of it. Oh, and since you are the beat writer for the Nats, I want to say that I do understand that that arbitration hearing is probably the only news for the team today.

That being the case, I can see why you are at the hearings. It sounds like a squirm fest. I only want to know highlights, because I would get no joy out of watching one or two people perjuring themselves.

Swani is right. I'm sick of the post not covering the Nats..just skins, skins, enough!

The fact that Lopez and his Agent Scott B. believe he has earned more than the Nats offer does tell us something about where his head is. The same place it was all last season, which is not a good sign.

Keeping Lopez on this team is a huge gamble and one that I think will backfire on Jimbo. That money should have been spent on a replacement. We are not going to get much in return when we trade him next month and keeping him through the winter prevented them from facing the facts they have no middle infielders for the future.

Oh...... and Swanni is correct but even I have given up on Barry ever following through on his 6 month old promise of addressing this issue honestly.

People! Lighten up already. This is the biggest story in baseball, and it's happening in our home town. What baseball writer wouldn't follow it? I am sure the Post's **national** baseball writer will be there as well. I might remind you that spring training hasn't started yet, so Nats news is likely to be sparse today anyway. Barry is doing a fine job. And no, I'm not Barry's mom, just bored with all the kvetching here.

Carrying over from the last post:

I'm in, too, Juan-John! Probably should carry this over to the new post if you haven't already done so.

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Since the Nats aren't playing at home on July 4 this season but the Potomac Nats ARE, anybody up for a group day at the P-fitz?

We have plenty of time to plan a July gathering but, just for the record, the 6:35 p.m. July 4 P-Nats game is vs. the Braves-affiliated Myrtle Beach Pelicans and there will also be a fireworks extravangaza.

#31,
Would the Metro section send its DC City Council reporter to cover a Bush press conference -- just because it's a big story and it's in DC?

The Post Sports Section needs a major shakeup from top to bottom. Particularly at top.

Honestly, kvetching about coverage of a Nats' arbitration hearing for a shortstop that isn't even listed as a starter over what is undoubtedly the biggest story in all of baseball shows a serious lack of perspective. I for one am glad the WaPo sent Barry to it, and am looking forward to his particular brand of insider viewpoint on it and not just relying on what ESPN wants to tell us about it. If you manage to get on camera, Barry, wave!

Sending Barry to Capitol Hill is just more evidence that the Nats are an afterthought in the Post newsroom.

I bet the skins reporter wouldn't go report on a Congress hearing on steroids and football, especially just two days before the beginning of training camp like the Nats guy is doing.

The Post is evil. The Post hates the Nats. The Post wants the Nats to fail.

Rinse. Repeat.

Would it be okay to send Barry if Paul LoDuca and Nook Logan were the star witnesses? Does this make it Nats-worthy? This is a seriously provincial attitude. And--yes--Metro does cover Congressional hearings if they have a hook on a local institutions.

Hey, why don't they send their steroids expert Howard Bryant? Oh, wait...

Patching a hole in the rotation --
Free agent Livan Hernandez signed a one-year, $5 million contract with the Twins, with a durable reputation for pitching 200 innings each season.

-- Minneapolis Star Tribune

Local newspapers spending too much time on national issues (trying to be the New York Times) is one of the many reasons why local newspapers are rapidly losing circulation.

Juan-John, love gave the right answer to your question about Manny vs. other managers. Many of them are "old school" guys who either manage from the gut or adhere to some time-tested practices that have been shown to be statistically questionable (e.g., bunting a runner over any time other than in the late innings of a one-run game). Manny is part of a new breed of managers that combine baseball knowledge with statistical analysis (Manny reportedly reads some of the sabermetric blogs), see this from firejoemorgan.com (quoting that other DC paper):

"I was floored by how reasonable new Nats manager Manny Acta comes off in this Washington Times article. Honestly. Floored.

Take a look:

Defense: "A big part of defense is positioning. We are not going to be letting these guys do most of these things on their own. We are going to be controlling some part of the game from the bench. We will have enough charts and stuff to be able to see if he is in the right spot and, if not, control it. We would rather take that out of their hands, and between me and Pat Corrales, we will take care of that."

"Charts and stuff." That means evidence, or at least an attempt at evidence. Fine. I like it. A decent start.

Stealing: "We will run selectively. I think one of the things that doomed this club last year is that they were first in caught stealing. I am not going to be running all over the place just because 25,000 people in the stands are saying I am aggressive while people are getting thrown out on the bases. Not everybody will have a green light here. The guys who are going to run are the guys who are going to prove to me that they will be successful most of the time trying to steal a base."

Yes! Manny Acta, I love you. This guy just gets it. He even gets his own dig in at people think making extra outs on the basepaths is "aggressive." Preach on, Manny.

Bunting: "It's been proven to me that a guy at first base with no outs has a better chance to score than a guy at second base with one out. That has been proven to me with millions of at-bats. I don't like moving guys over from first to second unless the pitcher is up or it is real late in the game.

Manny Acta: capable of learning. Open to new ideas. Looks at studies involving millions of at-bats and believes the results over what he's been told over and over again. Opposite of Ozzie Guillen.

Lineup: Acta said his preference for the second spot in the lineup ideally would be determined by on-base percentage -- even though his plan is to bat Guzman, a low-percentage on-base guy, second.

"You can't steal first base," he said. "That is the main thing for me. You have to get on in order to score. I know Guzman is not a big high-percentage guy, but we don't have all the choices that we want to have here right now. With Lopez on base, Guzman may be the ideal guy to get him over with a hit-and-run or a drag bunt to get the guy in the scoring position for the [Ryan] Zimmermans and [Austin] Kearnses of the world.

He said if everyone were healthy, Ryan Church would bat second.

I'm going to come out and say it right now: I think Manny Acta reads FJM every day. He probably has it in his Bloglines."

Would the Metro section send its DC City Council reporter to cover a Bush press conference -- just because it's a big story and it's in DC?

The Post Sports Section needs a major shakeup from top to bottom. Particularly at top.

Posted by: swanni | February 13, 2008 08:15 AM

This is just one of those posts that make no sense. Is Barry familiar with the Mithchell Report and the events that have lead up to this event today? Of course. Is he qualified to report on the proceedings today? Of course. Swanni, your fountain of negativity is really foaming today.

Hey, KidsPost even had a steroids story today. Not about the Clemens hearing per se (although they mentioned it), but rather about the terrible effects steroids have on the body. They illustrated it with a drawing - of a baseball player, natch, although it's a generic one and not marked with a particular team's uniform. Oddly, they mentioned the skin, heart, liver and arm and leg bone effects of using the 'roids, but forgot to mention the shrunken cojones and big head. An attack of prudishness, perhaps, or a reportorial or editorial lapse? We'll probably never know.

But shouldn't the KidsPost section be sending its crack reporter (or maybe even a kid) down to the Hill today, if steroids are so important to the kids in this town? I mean, there are way more kids around here than there are Nats fans. Obviously this steroid hearing trumps any other kid news today. Barry, is the KidsPost reporter down there along with you, Sheinin and Shipley? (We won't bring up Boswell. He's obviously still in the middle of his long winter's nap.)

I was getting tired of the whinning about WaPo's coverage of the Nationals until I went to the Minnesota newspaper site to read about Livan. Wow, at least 3 fresh articles from different writers on the team. Plus, coverage of the hearings in Washington DC. That got me curious so I just picked a ballclub at random and went to that newspaper - the Kansas City Star. Same deal, 3 fresh articles about the Royals including one on what uniform they will wear during the first home stand. Wow. Are you kidding me?

That kind of coverage reminds me of the Redskins coverage here in town. It also sways me to Swanni's point of view. Those Minnesota and KC articles may be fluff, but as a Post reader and DC sports fan, I eat that stuff up.

I do want to know what Zorn had for breakfast, but I also want to know what Manny, Eddie, and Boudreau ate too! Come on dudes! Step it up! Who in the heck is running this outfit?

Swanni, shut the f**k up.

Mike Z, I think many of us completely agree that the Post is wanting in Nats coverage.

We're just sick to death of hearing it, in this forum, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Opinion stated. Done. Move on.

"This is just one of those posts that make no sense. Is Barry familiar with the Mithchell Report and the events that have lead up to this event today? Of course. Is he qualified to report on the proceedings today? Of course. Swanni, your fountain of negativity is really foaming today."

Rarely if ever do I agree with swanni, but he is right on this one. There is no reason why the Post needs to have practically its entire baseball staff (Svrluga, Sheinin, Shipley, but not Boswell because he's apparently still napping, and also not its Orioles beat reporter Carig - odd, that last one, since the O's are so full of 'roid guys) down there on the Hill to report about this hearing. Sure, it's big news, but why not one baseball guy and one of the regular Congressional reporters to cover it? After all, these baseball guys (and gal) presumably know squat about the operations of a Congressional committee, and the committee is one of the two big players in today's event. Which of these congressional guys is the grandstander and which is the one who's seriously on top of the issue? Can Barry and the other baseball experts tell us that? Hell, why isn't Eli Saslow, he of the infamous gamer from the Phillies locker room, down there? Saslow has reported from the presidential campaigns, so presumably he knows a bit about the operations of government, and probably more than Svrluga, Sheinin and Shipley combined.

Meanwhile, the Lopez arbitration hearing also takes place today. We'll hear tomorrow who won and who lost, and probably nothing more than that. I wouldn't expect a blow-by-blow analysis of the arbitration hearing (obviously it's not a public event, so that wouldn't be allowed anyway), but some analysis of the issues involved in this hearing and the effect on the team and player would be good, since those effects will be considerable going ahead. Yet we'll probably see none of that. Maybe a brief sentence or two in the Journal, and a word or two in the print edition. (My entry in the NJ "Guess that word" discussion would be "troubled" as an adjective to describe Lopez.)

It just seems to me that any time an editorial decision has to be made that could pull someone off the Nats beat to do something, or pull someone off some other beat to do it, they look at it as a no-brainer. Pull the guy off the Nats beat. No one cares about the Nats anyway - at least not in the Post editorial ranks.

Two new posts. That's going to hurt our average.

"Mike Z, I think many of us completely agree that the Post is wanting in Nats coverage.

We're just sick to death of hearing it, in this forum, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Opinion stated. Done. Move on."

So, a new person arrives and expresses an opinion on something, and the first thing you do is tell him you're sick of his opinion and he needs to move on. Just because you don't agree with his opinion.

Well, how would y'all feel if anytime someone comments here that the OD rotation wiil be X, or we should/shouldn't pick up Livo, or "hey, no one has sucked up to Barry yet today, so let me fill that void", or "you know, the season ticket mailing really should have had an index", or "up here in Canada, it seems to me that..." or whatever other recurring topics show up here ad nauseum over and over again, I popped in and said "We're tired of that. Been there, done that. Dead horse. Move on."? Because you know, there have been times when I could have done that. But I didn't. Why not? Well, one reason is that I respect the opinions of others even if I don't agree with them. It takes virtually no effort at all to just scroll right past them. Also, there's this, from the commenting guidelines right here on this blog: "We encourage users to analyze, comment on and even challenge washingtonpost.com's articles, blogs, reviews and multimedia features."

It's the Post's blog, not yours. Neither you nor I nor anyone else has the right to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't say here, provided it's not uncivil or indecent or profane. So move on from your "move on" comments already.

Carried over from previous post:

In your humble opinions (1 per blogger please) who comprise the best double play combination this year (players currently in the organization)? Belliard/Guzman, Belliard/Lopez, Lopez/Guzman? What about Boone, Harris, Machowiak? Zimmerman won't play shortstop, but would he technically be the best there? I think the best likely combination is Belliard and Guzman because I think Guzman is a little a more accurate than Lopez. (Too bad we could not pry Khalil Greene away from the Padres. In the happy confines of Nats Park he would have hit 30 HR and significantly improved our infield range).

Right on, Section 419+1.

If we don't address our concerns about the lack of Nats coverage here, where can we?

Hopefully, someone at the Post will read it. Hopefully, someone who has the power to do something about it.

I, for one, would be thrilled if the Post had three stories about the Nats in tomorrow's edition -- and just one about the steroids hearing.

And if someone really believes there isn't three stories about the Nats to write about, then they either lack creativity or don't give a damn about the team. (I fear that some in the Post sports department share both qualities.)

i always thought swanni was annoying, but not stupid. this most recent post, however, has me questioning that presumption.

==============================

Local newspapers spending too much time on national issues (trying to be the New York Times) is one of the many reasons why local newspapers are rapidly losing circulation.

Posted by: swanni | February 13, 2008 09:04 AM

231: When you're losing the argument, attack the person making the argument?

Woo hoo, preach the indexing gospel, 419! :)

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or "you know, the season ticket mailing really should have had an index",