speaking of mr. angelos's sports network, what is the deal with the 8 a.m. replays of so many angelO's game recently?

why oh why is Young batting clean-up?

Manny isn't starting Austin Kearns on his (and mine) birthday?

I guess he really is hurting (and not just sucking).

Based on the Redding contract info I retract my Redding for Balester & Zimmermann level prospects as being too Bowden-esque.Having him under team control and for 2 more years is HUGE and if someone doesn't match or exceed the above offer I would have no qualms with keeping him in DC to anchor our rotation for a least 1 more year, especially is Shawn Hill's latest health issue is more than a 1 start loss.Still I thonk we are sellers more than buyers leading to the trade deadline and looking at the guys I think are on the block and my VERY general evaluation of their relative value;Young for 1AA and 1A position prospect (Desmond & Rhinehart)Guzman for 1AA position prospect and maybe 1A level pitching prospect (Desmond & Alandiz or Willems)Perez for 1AA pitching prospect (VanAllen)Rauch for 1AAA reliever and 1AA starter (Schroder and VanAllen)That would be a tough set of losses for the Nats MLB roster when you think that the starters would then be Hill, Lannan, Balester, Bergmann and Chico/O'Connor or Mock and the starting shortstop would F. Lopez again (or Orr?)

Oh yea, one thing I forgot, since Guz is a FA (ditto Perez) they are more likely to move at the trade deadline. Young, Redding and Rauch are under contract (or team control) for 2009 so it might be more profitable to wait foer the off season to trade any of those.That said I can write the headlien now for June;"Johnson's return pushes Dmitri Young to the front burner of the Hot Stove"Ditto that for Rauch and Cordero.

Do both Milledge and Dukes have options left? Who goes down and who comes up when JBow finally gets fed up with the lack of OF production?

I went to last night' game and am just backreading through the blog entries. One item caught my eye where Barry wrote about how Manny is trying to "protect" the Wasteland of Minimal Production against hard-throwing righthanded pitchers. I know a manger's job is to put players in the best possible position to suceed, this seems so "new age baseball" where the general manger may have as much say, if not more, than the manager as to what situations to play a player. If WMP wasn't one of "Bowden's guys" (acquisitions) would he and his non-productive bat still be on the roster?

RE: Guz - I agree that he's one of the more valuable trade chips the Nats have right now, but unless you're confident you can land Furcal in the off-season who's better in the FA pool? Considering their pending gaping holes in the middle infield I still think it's a possibility that Guz is resigned before the end of the season if he can be had for a value contract. Lopez not so much. Not because of his play but because of his agent.

Leetee, even Bowden has admitted (and he is want to admit anything ever) that they called up WMP too soon after his injury.

His results thus far a proof enough that he wasn't ready to face MLB pitching and clearly hasn't regained his power.

Personally, I'm surprised he hasn't been DL'd with some "phantom" injury to get him a week of batting practice and 3 weeks of rehab. Ditto that with Dukes (who Bowden said they wouldn't rush back, and then did rush), hopefully that isn't also true with DY, we'll see over the next 5-7 games...

"why oh why is Young batting clean-up?"

who oh who should be hitting there instead of him in that lineup??

"why oh why is Young batting clean-up?"

who oh who should be hitting there instead of him in that lineup??

Posted by: 231 | May 20, 2008 4:17 PM
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ditto. whom else can clean up? Milledge?

Happy birthday, estuartj. I hope the Nats give you a present.

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Manny isn't starting Austin Kearns on his (and mine) birthday?

@estuartj

MLB has made it harder for teams to "hide" or "stash" players who aren't injured on the DL, which is probably why WMP is still taking up space here. His trade value is also down and JimBow might he afraid WMP would be claimed if he went through waivers for a minors assignment. It wouldn't break my heart at all for someone to take him off the Nats's hands when you have a better defensive and similar (currently lack of ) offensive player in Dukes, whom I believe has a higher upside and doesn't look like a man of his statue on fly balls to left.

Thanks Bob, I'm flying bacl from a biz trip to AZ today (I did bday with the family Sunday) so I'll only catch the last few innings tonight, but I'm going to do tomorrow's game as a present to myself (unless one of my buddies will pay for my tix and get me drunk).

estuart said "Johnson's return pushes Dmitri Young to the front burner of the Hot Stove"

Can you get that down to six words!

"Johnson pushes young to hot stove" sounds like one of Dukes past headlines.

Wow. How many teams have their corner outfielders hitting 7th and 8th?

112,

they're hiting seventh and eighth only because manny doesn't want to embarass them further by batting them eighth and ninth.

Maybe they SHOULD bat eighth and ninth when Perez starts.

They're batting 7thand 8th because they can't bat 9th and 10th.

Similair to Woody Hayes line after going for 2 after scoring a late touchtown vs Michigan;
Reporter
"Why did you go for two?"
Hayes
"Because they wouldn't let me go for three!"

"So if anything, there should be more baseball fans in DC and the Maryland suburbs than in NoVa, not fewer.

Posted by: An Briosca Mor | May 20, 2008 3:28 PM
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It's a known fact that the majority of the fans that attend the games at Nationals Park are from Virginia. Sheesh.

Posted by: N@sfan | May 20, 2008 3:45 PM"

(a) I said BASEBALL fans, not NATIONALS fans. That includes all of the Orioles, Mets, Phillies, Yankees, Cubs, Cardinals, Red Sox, etc fans that live here. And there are a LOT of them.

(b) And how exactly do you know that the majority of the fans who attend games at Nationals Park are from Virginia? Here's a place where you need to cite a source. The ballpark has been open all of two months. Who did the demographic study and where were the results published? Sheesh yourself.

(c) I've lived in this area since 1960. I have friends in MD, VA and DC, many of whom I've attended games with. Spare me the lectures on what this area is really like. I know, probably more than many of you do.

maybe manny should just send that masn cutout of wmp to the plate for all the good the man of his statue has done so far this season.

I was oddly comforted by the End-Of-Days outfield stats in Barry's story today. Given that the outfield is slugging 77 points behind the 29th lousiest group in all of baseball (anyone know who that is, BTW?), it's a full-on Pope-delivered miracle that the Nats aren't on pace to lose 163 games.

No kidding Cap Hill, with the performance we've had this year from 3, 5, 7 & 9 this year it's a miracle we've won half as many as we have.

Just goes to show how much more important starting pitching is than hitters.

speaking of mr. angelos's sports network, what is the deal with the 8 a.m. replays of so many angelO's game recently?

Posted by: natsscribe | May 20, 2008 3:39 PM
===========================================

That's because the O's rule and the Nat's drool. Just look at the records and see which team has a record over .500 and which has a record under .500

Yes, it has become obvious for a Nats starting pitcher to get a W you can not give up more than 2 runs. Starting Pena in left probably means you start with a one run deficit.

And here's a happy thought, in 2007 we started 9-25, this year we started 19-25. If we ended 2007 at 73 wins we should finish 2008 with 83 wins, right? 10 games better is 10 games better....

And here's a happy thought, in 2007 we started 9-25, this year we started 19-25. If we ended 2007 at 73 wins we should finish 2008 with 83 wins, right? 10 games better is 10 games better....

Posted by: estuartj | May 20, 2008 5:43 PM
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Um for that to work wouldn't you have to take the Nat's record after they had played 34 games in 2008 and not 44?

So, what was the Nat's record this year after 34 games?

or what was the 2007 record after 44 games.

I always hated math teachers. BTW I said they's win 83 games, we might have to wait for May '09

hey, at least we don't have this issue that the mariners do (partially due to the guy we traded to them: vidro).

"A team can pick any player for that spot without regard for his defensive abilities, and yet that position has the worst batting average of any position in the Mariners lineup this season. Seattle's designated hitters have batted a cumulative .193, slightly worse than the .199 that Mariners first basemen are hitting."

hey, if we had a DH slot, we'd probably have better averages at both DH and 1B. up until now, that probably would have given boone regular ABs next to NJ at 1B. and now it would be boone at 1B with regular ABs for meathook. both of whom seattle would probably kill for about right now.

We were 17-29 after 46 last year and played .483 ball the rest of the year.

That means with last year's pace, we win 76.

Operation 81 update: .526 ball required.

(6 words)

The Nats offense reminds me of my favorite expansion Senators team, the 1967 squad that won 76 games despite scoring only 3.42 runs per game. The 67s had only three players who topped 10 HR's - Frank Howard at 36, Ken McMullen at 18 and Fred Valentine at 11 - on the way to hitting 115 for the season. Senators batters walked 472 times, struck out 1,037 times, had a .223 team average with a cumulative .285 (.285!) OBP. Howard led he team with 89 RBI and his outfield mates had Kearnsian seasons. Valentine drove in all of 44 runs while hitting .234/.330 OBP second to Howard's .338 OBP, and semi-regular RF Cap Peterson went 8-46-.240 with a .299 OBP. Under the Pythagorean Theory, that team should have finished 70-91, but instead tied the then-World Champion O's for sixth place in a ten-team league. I knew I had seen this movie somewhere before.

Nat's record in 2007 after 44 games =

16 - 28

Nat's record in 2008 after 34 games =

14 - 20

And here's a happy thought, in 2007 we started 9-25, this year we started 19-25. If we ended 2007 at 73 wins we should finish 2008 with 83 wins, right? 10 games better is 10 games better....

Posted by: estuartj | May 20, 2008 5:43 PM

---------------------------------------

It is the thought the counts. :)

Um, the thought THAT counts.

No thinking here, obviously.

I'm still amazed that our outfield has hit only six homers this year. I really believed that the top four guys, Pena, Milledge, Kearns & Dukes was going to hit 90-100 homers this year. At this point in the season, they should have hit, what, 25 of so?

Amazing.

Kasten took over the team in 2006, right? He said that for two or three years, we'd think he was crazy, because the team would, to paraphrase him, suck, and any money spent on free agents would be forever lost to sign our own prospects, which is how this team would achieve greatness. By my count, we should expect less suckage, much less suckage, yea, a team bordering on greatness in 2009. This year's wins have been a result of miraculously good pitching which is breaking down like Shawn Hill's elbow. And the hitting, oh the feeble hitting! Guzman must get sick of hearing this, since he has been hitting, but. . . .2009 seems a trifle soon, donchathink?

@Beltway

i think one of the problems with the nats outfield is that they are mostly playing three hack masters - righthanded hitters with no discernible plate discipline - and they can all be pitched to and gotten out the same way. but they're jimbow's kind of players - "tools guys." all three (four, if you count dukes) aren't hitting and half of them are defensive liabilities.

Prediction: Wily Mo hits a HR tonight

Musings on the 2009 outfield projections:

Kearns at 8 million per year or 1 mil per home run. Naaaa.

Pena, after 2008's make or break year. Broke.

Dukes, given the benefit of many doubts, will hit 5 times his current average.

Milledge, having regained his "lost" arrogance will ironically become more Church-like, lead the team in doubles and suck less in fielding.

Maxwell, after realizing that there is really no competition at the corner spots will start about 160 games in '09.

leetee - Nice historical on the '67 Senators. Kinda plays to the point that it's never as bad as the stats might look... "Lies, da**ed Lies, and Statistics".

They have two shortstops?

Why do they get to have two shortstops?

*pout*
*pout*

flynnie: If they can get a long-term w/Zim starting in 2009, and a couple of good 2-yr re-signs then no, I don't think Kasten overstated things significantly (taking another sip of kool-aid). By 2009, we can be looking at a stable franchise, with a good minor-league system that is capable of a run at the wild-card slot in the NL.

The wind must really be blowing in tonight b/c everyone thought Zimm got all of that one. He sure as hell didn't say "fudge" back in the dugout.

Awful call on Victorino's "stolen" base. Guz got him on the shoulder before the hand got in.

Just wondering... do other broadcasts still find the need to label the "super slo-mo" replays? Isn't that a technology we're all rather familiar with by now? I figured most stations stopped tagging their slow motion replays around the same time Alcoa stopped presenting "You Make the Call!"

Thanks, BIM, I'd love to get some more takes on Stan's promised 2009 juggernaut. Elijah Dukes just struck out. He was hitting .42. What's he hitting now - .32?

Flynnie, of course, means he was hitting .042. If he was hitting .42 we would be hailing him as the second coming of Ted Williams on this blog.

So how about this Chartese "want[ing] to provide happy endings" to all these people with lymphoma? Inspired by Tatiana?

Also, should we pool some money to outbid Debbie Taylor in order to win Lastings Milledge at the date auction? I know a lot of folks here would love to have an evening to give him some ballplaying advice.

flynnie: I don't believe (sip) that Kasten promised a "juggernaut" (sip) in 2009; Just a competitive team (sip). Come back to the punchbowl, It's not bad!

Anyone know the score of the O's/Yank's game?

Glug, Glug, Glug, just dropped $600 on tickets and they don't even come with a free Noah's pretzel. I'm gargling the Kool-Aid like Homer Simpson watching a "fried in rich creamery butter" commercial. What is Will Mo hitting now .0000teeensyweeensy?

Bergmann mowing them down. Thank you Steve McCatty for shortening his stride. You have the voodoo magic!

i'm available,

That was big Bergmann, at some point we're going to have to get some run support though.

MMMMM... fried butter... arrggllhhh...