May 4th 2008 1:40PM by Josh Alper
When Major League Baseball first floated the idea of moving the Montreal Expos to Washington, Orioles owner Peter Angelos raised hell. His turf was being infringed and he wouldn’t stand for it! Tens of millions of dollars later, he’s made his peace with it and it will probably hearten him to know that it seems unlikely that a National will break Cal Ripken’s consecutive games streak.

Ryan Zimmerman had a long way to go but, at 205 straight games, he had the second-longest active streak in baseball. He’s asked Manny Acta for a day off today, though, and the manager is giving it to him. With an off day tomorrow, it will actually amount to a two-day break for the third baseman who has been struggling thus far. He’s hitting just .217 and while he doesn’t blame playing every day for his slump, it probably can’t hurt to try something to get his swing in gear. There’s a chance he could enter the game once it begins, of course, but I think we’ve seen the end of his bid.

Jeff Francoeur of Atlanta has the longest current streak at 355 games. If he plays every game for the remainder of this season, he’d still need more than 13 seasons of perfect attendance before he reached Ripken’s mark. Frankly, the chances are better that the free-swinging Francoeur breaks Barry Bonds’s career walks mark which is really saying something.