The Bull-Moose Juju

As the first month of the baseball season drew to a close in 2012, the Gio Gonzalez trade looked like an inspiration. Stephen Strasburg was back and the Nationals had the best pitching in the National League. Davey Johnson was looking for offense and summoned Bryce Harper. Everything Mike Rizzo touched in 2012 turned to [...]

Giving Away Outs to the Braves

It wasn’t the newly arrived Upton brothers that crushed the spirits of 120,000 fans that flocked to Nationals Park this weekend. No, it was a team effort. The Atlanta Braves beat the Nationals in every aspect of the game. They outscored Washington 18-5 for the three game series. After Friday night it never really seemed [...]

Early Look at Possible NL Pennant Match Up in Cincy

The baseball season is the sum of a million small parts, “millions and millions of stars” as Carl Sagan used to say. As with the cosmos, the magic of baseball is both the enchanted aggregate and its many component parts. And that is why even at this early juncture there is no shortage of excitement [...]

Clearing The Bases

Well all of the fantasy rankings have been completed, it’s time to talk about real life baseball. There will be very little fantasy talk in this column as I will be making predictions on how the divisions will end. Predictions are never all that easy and in some cases completely useless once the season begins [...]

Springtimes Past and the Changes They Have Wrought

Watching Anthony Rendon play third base for the Nationals last week in Kissimmee, Florida reminded me of so many past Spring Training games. Osceola Stadium, where the Astros train in March each year, is one of my favorite places to watch major league baseball. It is the closest ballpark to Viera, FL where the Washington [...]

Two Roads Diverged

Seven years ago the Washington Nationals, during their inaugural season in 2005, stood atop the NL east to the surprise of everyone. They had a four-game lead and were playing in Toronto against the Blue Jays. It was the team’s first trip back to Canada and in the Montreal sports pages they celebrated their team’s [...]

Early Thoughts On the 2012 National League Rookie of the Year Race

Last week I outlined how the American League Rookie of the Year race is shaping up and now it’s the National League’s turn. While the NL has also introduced a strong crop of rookies this year, the level of production has not been quite as high as their AL counterparts. Bryce Harper has gotten the [...]

A Rising Tide in Washington

The Potomac River is near flood stage as it boils through the rapids at Great Falls, a crescendo of roaring noise. Further downstream from that much photographed natural beauty, at Nationals Park, a wave of human noise has not even begun to crest as fans of the Washington Nationals cheer a team that has risen [...]

Hal Keller Remembered

Hal Keller, former catcher for the Washington Nationals and baseball executive for the expansion Washington Senators and Seattle Mariners, died this week at the age of 85. Hal was a local product, born in Western Maryland–Middletown to be exact–and started his career at Hagerstown, MD playing in the baseball organization just down the road in [...]

Clearing The Bases

Injuries are probably playing a big part in how your fantasy team is performing this season.  It seems every week we are seeing three to four players land on the DL, and I’m not talking about a long reliever or backup middle infielder that no one cares about, I’m talking about top of the line [...]

Touring the Bases With Bob Wolff

Bob Wolff is one of the most famous television and radio announcers of the second half of the Twentieth Century. He has been inducted to both the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown and the Basketball Hall of Fame as well. His call of Don Larsen’s World Series Perfect Game in 1956 for Mutual Radio [...]

Clearing The Bases

As Fantasy owners we have been complaining all season about one of three things.  Players who are off to slow starts (Albert Pujols, Jose Bautista), injuries (Jacoby Ellsbury, Chris Carpenter, Carl Crawford), and the weekly merry-go-round that has been the closer situation throughout baseball (half the league).  This week however, we are starting to get [...]

Why Davey Johnson Is So Unhappy

One thing about Bryce Harper’s steal of home a few days ago, it brought a smile to the face of his manager Davey Johnson. Johnson has otherwise found too little to smile about during the first month of the 2012 season, despite the overall good performance of his team. Davey was a hitter. That is [...]

Someone Please Tell Cole Hamels Older Isn’t Necessarily Better

With one pitch and a few poorly chosen words, Cole Hamels proved two things on Sunday; older is not necessarily better, and there are no intelligence requirements to make $15 million a year. As reported in a story by ESPN, Hamels hit Washington Nationals super rookie Bryce Harper with a pitch and then proudly told [...]

History in the Making, Or Just Another Ballgame?

Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg were taken in the amateur draft twelve months apart. Each was a Boras client deemed difficult to sign and likely to command a record signing bonus. Each was acclaimed as a unique talent well worth whatever it took. The fact that they came in succeeding years was deemed extremely rare. [...]

Clearing The Bases

Tonight we will continue with another Top 9 list with a look at a few players that have gotten off to a hot start that can’t possibly keep up this pace all season long.  For fantasy purposes these are players that you probably selected in the later rounds of your draft and that are paying [...]

A Flood of Riches

The rain is falling in Washington and it will mean that there is no chance to sweep the Marlins today. There is nothing cloudy or damp, however, about the superlatives being used to describe the Washington Nationals pitching staff. It is dedicated Nationals fans who are most aware of what it all means as they behold [...]

Cardiac Kids Take Chicago

Three tense and tightly contested games yielded two road wins for the 2012 Washington Nationals in Chicago thanks to surprising late inning magic. Call them the “Comeback Kids,” the “Cardiac Kids,” whatever you will, but the Nationals scored nine times in the last two innings during the three-game set in the Windy City.  The late [...]

Off the Beaten Basepaths: Spring Training 2012

It wasn’t easy going to Florida for a Spring Training sojourn because it was up to us to have as much fun as possible on behalf of all our friends who couldn’t go. Our motto was We’re having fun because you can’t.  It took us 15 days and we drove almost 2,900 miles down, around, [...]

The Impact of Prince Fielder in Washington

Prince Fielder was always one of the impact players in this year’s free agent class, but he is still out there and according to the “industry analysts” the table continues to tilt increasingly toward Washington as his landing spot. This morning Adam Kilgore in the Washington Post summarized the case, saying he is “Washington’s to [...]

100 Years Ago Today

In early December 1911, Washington Nationals president Tom Noyes welcomed his new manager Clark Griffith to town for the first time.  Griffith was given a posh new office in the Southern building and no sooner had he looked over his new digs, than he was off to the winter meetings to hunt for talent during [...]

His Game to Win

Tony LaRussa retires and Davey Johnson returns. It might seem that the trade off leaves the managerial ranks about the same, but there is a changing of the guard occurring in the leadership of Major League Baseball. LaRussa’s 33 years as manager is unequalled except by Connie Mack–whose 53 years in the dugout is one [...]

The Lighting of the Hot Stove

Perhaps the Hot Stove season does not commence until after the World Series. Or maybe it adds fuel to the fire. Either way there are instructive failures from last year to consider. There were Carl Crawford and Jayson Werth–just two of the biggest disappointments among the 2011 free agent class. Then at the summit is [...]

Kimbrel, Hosmer, Hellickson Selected Top Rookies By BBA‏

Craig Kimbrel of the Atlanta Braves easily won the Baseball Bloggers Alliance‘s Willie Mays Award for top rookie in the National League.  The American League award, though, was a much different story. Kansas City first baseman Eric Hosmer and Tampa Bay pitcher Jeremy Hellickson both received 67 points in American League voting, creating the first [...]

Something Stirring Beneath the Surface

The younger set cannot remember one of the iconic pictures of my youth: Nikita Kruschev, Russian Premier and head of the original Axis of Evil in Moscow, angrily banging his shoe on the desk at the United Nations, screaming to the US envoy to the UN, “We Will Bury You!” It was the headline in [...]

Fireworks in the Steel City

With the Pittsburgh Pirates resurgence this summer, I’m reminded of one of the most abysmal pitching performances I’ve ever come across in all my years as a baseball fan. Unfortunately, it happened to my grandfather, Nelson Greene, in the only game he ever pitched in the Steel City. It’s difficult to imagine any modern day [...]

The Clark Griffith Monument

In 1956 a monument was dedicated to Clark Griffith outside old Griffith Stadium just months after the former owner of the team and stadium died.  His passing was marked by every major newspaper, his funeral attended by every official of the game.  He was recognized as a giant of the game whose place in Cooperstown [...]

Wilderness Days Yield to Surge

Six years ago to the day, the Washington Nationals sat atop the National League East with a three game lead over the Braves. They would remain in first place in the summer of 2005 until July 26th. Since the end of July 2005, the Nationals have been lost in the wilderness, searching for team defense, [...]

Q and A: What is Commotio Cordis?

Earlier this month tragedy struck the baseball field in Arizona when a 13-year-old Little Leaguer was trying to bunt and got hit in the chest. He took a few steps towards first and collapsed. He died the next morning. Getting hit by a pitch is to be expected when playing baseball. Dying is not. The [...]

Clearing The Bases

Last week we discussed the most disappointing players at each position, this week we’ll go with the most surprising, players who are playing well and above what we thought they might in spring training.  Some of the players listed are no longer playing at that position but that is where they qualified at coming into [...]

Clearing The Bases

The baseball season is more than 1/3 completed, the weather is warming up, and pennant races are starting to shape up.  We are in mid-June; no longer can any player state that they are in a slump. Slumps don’t last two plus months.  With that in mind we are going to take a look at [...]

Brad Peacock, Selig Man with Upside Heart

Brad Peacock was taken in the 41st round of the 2006 draft as a “draft and follow” pick by the Washington Nationals. For Washington the 2006 draft was a disaster. Conducted when the team was still under management by Bud Selig and MLB, Inc., it might serve as a tutorial on all of the things [...]

2011 Pre-Season Preview: AL Central – Chicago White Sox

White Sox 1B Paul Konerko Chicago White Sox (2010 record: 88-74) The White Sox won 88 games last season and still didn’t get a sniff of the division title due to the success of the Minnesota Twins. During the off-season, GM Kenny Williams decided to re-shuffle the deck to play to his team’s strengths – [...]

Turning the Corner in DC

The future for the Washington Nationals is about to arrive.  The major league team looks vastly improved from the ones that finished dead last among the 30 teams two years in a row.  But Baseball America’s new rankings put the Washington development pipeline at number 13 among MLB organizations.  That climb from the bottom may [...]

2011 Pre-Season Preview: NL East – Philadelphia Phillies

Phillies 1B Ryan Howard Philadelphia Phillies (2010 record: 97-65) The Phillies entered the new year as one of the handful of teams with a legitimate claim to the designation as the best team in baseball. They entered the free agent fray towards the end of the process and lured southpaw Cliff Lee away from both [...]

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