Dec 3rd 2008 5:00PM by Pat Lackey (author feed)
When the arbitration decisions were announced the other day, one of the real head-scratchers was Arizona’s choice not to offer Adam Dunn arbitration. The D’Backs gave up three players for less than 200 at-bats of Dunn. Why wouldn’t they want the two draft picks he’d pull in as a Type A free agent? Surely some team would be willing to give up a pick for a slugger like Dunn.

As it stands right now, Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Braves, Mariners, Nationals, and maybe even Yankees are all interested in Dunn while the Dodgers and Angels are keeping him in mind should they fail to sign Manny Ramirez and Mark Teixeira, respectively. That’s plenty of interest and I doubt the Yankees, Angels, Dodgers, or Nationals would be all that worried about losing a draft pick to sign Dunn.

You can say what you like about Dunn, but whoever signs him will know exactly what they’re getting. He’s hit exactly 40 home runs a year each of the last four seasons with an OPS+ of between 129 and 141 in three of those years (and 114 in the other). In the past five years, his OBP has been between .386 and .388 four times. Why the Diamondbacks were afraid that player was going to accept arbitration … yeah, I have no idea.

Nov 19th 2008 11:15AM by Will Brinson (author feed)
The crazy word on the street (and by street, I mean MLB.com) is that the Washington Nationals, underlords of futility, are going to be a major factor in the offseason free agent market. Yeah. Sure they are. (But, no, seriously, there’s talk of them going after Mark Teixeira and Orlando Hudson).
The Nationals still are players in the Mark Teixeira sweepstakes, according to a baseball source, and free-agent second baseman Orlando Hudson has interest in playing in Washington.

The Nationals are looking for a first baseman, and Teixeira is one of the players the team has targeted to replace Nick Johnson and Dmitri Young. Of course, no one actually believes the rumors, including Nats Prez Stan Kasten, who said that, “You’re way ahead of us here,” when the inquired about the possibility of trying to land Teixeira.

Hudson is an entirely different ballgame though — he’s not Scott Boras’ number one super mega offseason client this year, and he’s not expected to be looking for $100 million. Also, he’s apparently interested in playing in D.C., at least to the extent that he said: “I have interest in any Major League team that has interest in me,” before discussing the fact that the Nats have lots of young talent.

I, for one, will believe this kooky talk about the Nats being free spenders as soon as I see it — there is, in my mind, about a one percent chance they land Tex. Hudson is certainly a more viable option (and for the money, probably smarter) because he would actually serve to shore up their defense and isn’t a liability at the plate at all. But yeah, baited breath and whatnot.

Nov 14th 2008 11:00AM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)

You have to search pretty far and pretty wide these days to find a corner of Major League Baseball where there is virtually no hope. Parity is a reality. The Rays reign in the AL. There have been seven different champions in the last eight seasons and 23 different teams have qualified for the postseason since the beginning of the decade.

Heck, even Pirates fans have hope. Just ask Pat Lackey.

Enter the Washington Nationals, one of those few dark corners in the baseball world where it’s hard to find anything to feel good about. They have a shiny new stadium in D.C., but it had one of the poorest first-year attendances of any ballpark in the post-Camden Yards era. The broadcast ratings haven’t been much better either.

Of course, most of that trouble is related to the product on the field, and what an abysmal product it is. MLB’s role as caretaker of the franchise during its last days in Montreal and its first days in Washington has buried it in a deep hole, and general manager Jim Bowden seems to have exacerbated the problem.

No matter what happens this winter, the Nationals have a long way to go.Continue Reading

Nov 10th 2008 10:00PM by Josh Alper (author feed)
The stove is getting warm in advance of the start of free agency on Friday. Earlier today we got word that Matt Holliday is heading to Oakland for a bevy of players, and now two NL East clubs have cooked up a deal. The Marlins sent starting pitcher Scott Olsen and outfielder Josh Willingham to the Nats for second baseman Emilio Bonifacio and two minor-leaguers.

On the surface, it looks like a steal for Washington. Olsen threw 200 league average innings in 2008, bouncing back from a weak 2007 season. That doesn’t sound like much, but such pitchers command a hefty sum on the open market and the Nats had just one pitcher who could boast such results. Olsen’s also just 24 and is a lefty, two more points that make him an intriguing pick-up for a pitching starved team.

Willingham will fit in somewhere in the corner outfield/first base mix for the Nats. He’s no great shakes, but gives the Nats an alternative to the atrocious Willy Mo Pena/Austin Kearns duo as well as a replacement for Nick Johnson’s injury du jour in 2009.

It should be noted that Olsen has had some behavioral issues in the past, which should make him and Elijah Dukes fast friends in the Washingon clubhouse, dawg. That may have brought his value down, as it’s otherwise hard to see why the Marlins gave him up for so little.Continue Reading

Oct 23rd 2008 3:10PM by Mullet (author feed)
Well, the dancing and celebrations that the Mets embrace is a mere part of it. But Phillies GM Pat Gillick so much as admitted, although somewhat jokingly, that part of the reason that the Phils are in the World Series is that they, and the rest of the NL East, hate the Mets. “If you want to know the best thing we had going for us this year, it was the fact that all the other teams in our division hated the Mets’ guts. It started with Atlanta and all the hostility they had with the Mets through the years. Then Fredi Gonzalez left Bobby Cox to manage the Marlins and he didn’t forget everything that went on between the Braves and Mets. Look what Florida did for us the past two years (beating the Mets two out of the three in each of the last series of the season to prevent them from making the postseason)! Washington doesn’t like them very much either, and all those teams seemed to really get up for the Mets.”The lesson here: Take your hatred of the Mets and channel it into something positive like the rest of the NL East has. Heck, right now I’m sure a lot of Met fans hate their team right now … or at least their bullpen. If there was a way that Met fans can channel their hate into doing positive things, who knows what can be accomplished. Better marriages, better jobs, better all around lives. For example, maybe if the people in charge of Wall Street hated the Mets a little more, the stock market wouldn’t be in such disarray.

Oct 21st 2008 2:50PM by Josh Alper (author feed)
Cancer is an insidious disease. Hearing a diagnosis of the dreadful disease can cause all sorts of irrational responses including denial. That’s the route Washington Nationals GM Jim Bowden took when he found out he had skin cancer over the summer.

Doctors recommended surgery within a month so that the disease wouldn’t spread but Bowden ignored them and remained with the team through the end of the season. Just so we’re clear, rather than undergo a potentially life-saving procedure, Bowden chose to remain with a rancid baseball team through the bitter end of a miserable campaign. He’s since had the surgery and now realizes that he made the wrong choice.
“It’s just with baseball, there’s not a lot of time when you have the draft, trade deadlines. Just a lot of things have to happen. I got different opinions. Some said it’s okay to wait, others said you shouldn’t wait. In retrospect, I would advise anybody to get it done as soon as possible. Because that type of cancer can grow extremely fast.”
Something tells me the Nationals wouldn’t have seen a marked change in their fortunes if Bowden had missed a little time to take care of his health. The gap between hideously bad and horrendously bad doesn’t mean much compared to your life, an important lesson for whoever winds up taking the Mariners GM job.

Oct 15th 2008 7:10PM by Mullet (author feed)
Most would assume that Willie Randolph’s next job … if not a managerial position … would land him in the Bronx on Joe Girardi’s bench. But there’s another option out there that seems to have taken the lead. And there’s a bit of role reversal involved:Midweek Insider has learned that the Nationals, who fired five coaches upon the conclusion of the 2008 season, are interested in hiring Randolph as either Acta’s bench coach or third-base coach. (…)

And that would be a situation fraught with irony. For during Randolph’s three-plus years leading the Mets, it was Acta who served as his greatest threat.So would Randolph be considered a threat to Manny Acta? Well, not so much a threat as a contingency plan. Besides, can you really be a threat if the person you’re brought in to threaten doesn’t feel threatened?As for Acta, friends of his believe he’d be fine with Randolph joining his staff, because Acta has his eyes set on the Mets’ job, anyway. And it’s clearly a mutual affection.

“Why do you think the Mets gave Manuel only two years?” one official from an American League club queried. “Because they want Manny.”Coming soon on , two men try to fix each other’s bullpens. Who will succeed? Find out in 2011 … maybe.

Oct 3rd 2008 4:46PM by Eamonn Brennan (author feed)
Poor Nationals fans. Now, after the 2008 season, the supposed enthusiasm promised at the season’s inception — and the way the new Nationals Park was supposed enliven the D.C. baseball consciousness — hasn’t really done anything of the sort. Instead, fans seem depressed, the park rarely filled up, and the first night of the season, when Ryan Zimmerman hit a raucous walk-off home run, is a distant memory.

What’s worse? Even those disillusioned Nats fans, the ones driven toward brazen capitalism and ticket scalping — even can’t catch a break. They can’t ditch their tickets:
Mark Menard, co-owner of the 18th Amendment bar on Pennsylvania Avenue SE, bought season tickets partly so he could give them away to his best customers. When the stadium opened, he had lots of eager takers. But as the season wore on, he says, it got harder and harder to hand off the tickets. “I could not unload to my bar customers who lived literally 10 blocks from the stadium,” he says. “Since June, it was painful trying to get rid of them.”
There are a few more examples of people not being willing to even take tickets for free, which, though probably exaggerated, is still telling. When you combine a young franchise, a starless team, and an ingrained crosstown team, you get the 2008 Nationals. It should turn around, but not until the team is actually worth watching. Until then, they’ll be invisible.

Sep 27th 2008 10:00AM by Mullet (author feed)

They couldn’t possibly do this again, could they?

Of course they could. You know they could. And your New York Mets know gosh darn well they could choke away another season … especially after another lifeless late season loss to the Florida Marlins (who are now basing the success of their season on knocking the Mets out of the playoffs … mature) and a Brewers victory which puts the Mets one game behind the wild card lead, and one game closer to another disastrous ending. So in response, the Mets are bringing back Johan Santana on three days rest to try to extend the season to Sunday. Of course, if they get to Sunday still alive, who will pitch then? Jon Niese? Brandon Knight? Frank Viola? Jesus?

That’s silly. Everyone knows that Jesus would be in the bullpen because the Mets pen is so horrible. (And, you know … Jesus saves.)

Continue Reading

Sep 12th 2008 6:50PM by Mullet (author feed)
Elijah Dukes had a bit of a meltdown on Tuesday night against the Mets … he hit a mammoth dinger towards the parking lot, and responded by blowing a kiss to the Mets dugout. Then, after a pitch that came inside by Mike Pelfrey but didn’t hit him (and after blowing a kiss towards the dugout, a drilling was certainly possible), Dukes waggled his bat towards Pelfrey and took offense to the point where he had to be calmed down by Manny Acta for a good five minutes in front of everyone in the park.

The rest of the night saw Dukes get booed by the crowd, then respond by childishly egging the crowd on … both after scoring in the fourth and after grounding out in the ninth. Not good form by Elijah. Today, he showed contrition.”I just wanted to apologize to my teammates and the Nationals organization and the fans for my actions in the game Wednesday. It was wrong. I basically let my emotions just get the best of me. You know, it was just tough for me to take in what I had to endure, basically, and I just shouldn’t have did it and it was wrong. I wanted to apologize about it, because you know, I talked to Jim Bowden and Manny Acta and I let them know that I apologize for it, and I’ll try not to let it again. And for my teammates especially, I just want to apologize again to them for my actions.”I wish he would have went into what he “had to endure”. Was the Mets dugout riding him that caused him to short circuit? Was it the Shea fans? What was it that made you so agitated Elijah? Help us understand you. Let us into your heart … dawg.