Nationals Pastime

Tonight's the night

2005-04-14T05:35:00.000-05:00

I've been traveling, and didn't realize how long it's really been since I've posted. I'm excited about tonight, and will certainly be taking pictures. It's great to have the team coming in over 500 and technically in first place, even though it's a three way tie. It's not going to last, but it's something I expect the news to latch onto, and I expect people will remember. Therefore, it should be good for the team.

Anyway, pictures will probably show up tomorrow.

This spanking didn't hurt...

2005-04-10T14:24:00.000-05:00

Patterson looked great today until he tired, and it's clear why they left him in until he'd given up two runs... they didn't want to have to put someone in just to lift him for a pinch hitter right afterward. Eischen didn't look so good, but he at least recorded an out. As I'm watching this, Osuna has faced 6 batters and hasn't retired any of them (one was an intentional walk). He let two of Eischen's runners score and has plated 3 of his own, giving up a grand slam to Encarnacion.

Oh, he just got his first out. About time. I'm glad Robinson is leaving him in to mop up his own mess, instead of taking it out on the rest of the bullpen.

Anyway, Armas is making progress, and is soon to throw in a minor league game. Let's hope that when he comes back, they send down Osuna and his 42+ ERA. He seems highly likely to clear waivers at this point...

Not so Amazin'...

2005-04-10T10:05:00.000-05:00

First, on the Nats' 3-2 win over the Fish yesterday... I was really pleased to see Guzman dropped to the 8th spot, finally. And, I was even happier to see him walk twice, as I hope that this will inspire F-Rob to keep him there. We should definitely expect to see Guzman making the third out a lot less and walking a lot more from the 8th spot, since people are not going to give him much to hit, with the pitcher coming up. With a hit in two official ABs, he also got his average all the way up to .150! Batting title, here Guzman comes! His defense certainly stunk up the joint, and was responsible for Livan's unearned run.

Now what about the Mets... 0 for 5? I never would have thought it. Sure, any team no matter how good can have a 5 game losing streak or two in the course of the year. But if you start off the season with one, it's easy to believe that there's more of the same to come. I hope they don't make history, but I'll be somewhat glad if a team that looked that good on PECOTA-printed paper doesn't live up to the hype, particularly since it will be an interesting platform to go and look and try to figure out what happened.

I think the Mets are going to be 1-5 after today... it shouldn't be too hard for Pedro to outduel Smoltz, because I don't think Smoltz quite has the stamina built up that he's going to need for the starter role. And, for the first time in my life, I'll be pulling for Pedro (anything that puts us in a better position within the division).

Our first spanking...

2005-04-08T21:01:00.000-05:00

9-0, FLA. Five hits with 2 errors, with nobody picking up 2 hits.

Osuna gave up 6 earned runs, and now has a 37.80 ERA. NICE!

Inning-Endy-O-Meter

2005-04-07T19:14:00.000-05:00

Nationals who have caused third outs to date, from worst to first:

Sledge	6
Guzman	5
Vidro	5
Guillen	3
Castilla	2
Davis	2
Loaiza	2
Hernandez	1
Cordero	1
Wilkerson	1

I'll try to do this periodically... probably on a weekly basis or so. Maybe people would want it broken down per PA, or per opportunity?

Enjoy it while it lasts...

2005-04-07T17:00:00.000-05:00

I preserved it, just in case it's a long time before we see it again!

By the way, Wil Cordero injured his knee during the game, and is now on the 15-day DL. In the interim, Baerga was called up from the minor league camp.

Today's game

2005-04-07T14:25:00.000-05:00

I've gotten to watch parts of today's game. Loaiza looked good early, throwing four perfect innings before giving up a hit to Jim Thome to start the bottom of the 5th. Apparently, Loaiza fell apart in the 6th, giving up 3 runs, tying up the game. I saw the 7th, and he gave up another run before Horgan came in, with two outs and runners on first and second. Horgan gave up a four-pitch walk to load the bases, then induced a pop-up to get out of the inning.

Guillen has looked pretty good today. He hit a line drive to center field that took a sharp bounce past Lofton. Guillen legged out a triple, then scored on a Nick Johnson ground out to tie the game.

Wilkerson is 3-4 so far, and is batting .615 through the first three games. Castilla hasn't looked that good at the plate, but it's just one game. Guzman is hitless so far, and is .154 over the first three games.

Ayala replaced Horgan for the bottom of the 8th, and retired the side. Wagner is warming up in the pen. We'll see how this ends, but it could be the first game to hit extra innings.

Update #1
I forgot to mention that Wilkerson showed how he isn't in his best position as a center fielder, as he made a fielding error in the 6th, basically letting a ball bounce past him. He's now 4-5 though, and stole a base in the 9th. Too bad Guzman struck out pathetically to end the top of the inning.

Update #2
Cordero gave up a hit, but managed to get out of the inning without giving up a run. So we're into extra innings...

Update #3
Vidro untied it really quick, blasting a middle-in 1-2 pitch into the left field stands, with nobody out and nobody on. NICE. This is our third game in a row with 10 or more hits. A small sample size for sure, but it is still a strong start for a team where I was most worried about offense.

Update #4
Castilla is definitely today's goat. Nick Johnson just got on with a walk, and Castilla grounded into a double play on a 2-0 pitch, to end the side. Let's see if we can hold this slim lead.

Update #5
Yes. Even though we didn't win our first game, we won our first series, and currently sit on top of the NL East, uncontested, though by the end of the night we'll be tied with either Atlanta or Florida.

Vidro is the popular choice for Team Hero for his homer. I don't have my probability software running yet (need a few days to finish it... maybe in eary May). However, I think that Wilkerson is more deserving. He went 4 for 5 with a run and a RBI. Without a great Wilkerson performance, Vidro might not even have had the chance to tie it up.

By unpopular demand...

2005-04-07T11:15:00.000-05:00

While Chris clearly doesn't want to see them, here are my pictures of season tickets. The lighting sucks today. The only place in the house where I could get away without a flash was the floor of my bathroom.

The ticket booklet is incredibly nice. The tickets are laminated. I'm wondering if I can get away without using the ticket book. If I log into the online account, it seems like it should be possible to email tickets around. I can add addresses, but can't send tickets. Does anybody have any 411 on this?

The other odd thing is that apparently the Diamond Box gets lot 4 and lot 5. My seats are right by the lot 5 entrance, yet I got lot 4 parking Lot 4 is where I parked for the exhibition game. It was amazingly close, very nice. I think I'll probably want to use the metro most of the time. Hmm, maybe I should sell the whole season of passes.

The lanyards are amusing. Apparently, I'm supposed to poke the hole in the ticket and wear it around my neck to keep it from getting ruined. That's a cool idea, really.

What a win!

2005-04-07T09:45:00.000-05:00

Sadly, I didn't get to see the game yesterday, but that will be the rule, not the exception, particularly for weekday games.

I'm going to watch this one on MLB.TV, though. It is, after all, the Nationals' first win (7-3). And, what win it apparently was! Wilkerson went 4-4, hitting for the cycle for the second time in his career. Castilla also looked good at the plate for the second game in a row, going 4-5. Guzman was 1-5... does anybody know if he got the ball out of the infield?

Robinson's bullpen usage was much different in this second game. Osuna only pitched the end of the 6th, and then Eischen, Ayala and Cordero all pitched a scoreless inning. Cordero gave up a hit, and didn't earn a save, since we were ahead by 4.

My season tickets have now shown up. I'll try to take pictures today and get them posted.

Quick pix

2005-04-06T00:07:00.000-05:00

Out of the 400+ pictures I took on opening day, I present 50 or so, here. Some of the other pictures were good, I just didn't want to overwhelm people. I could make them all available, chaffe and all, if people are interested. If I did that, they'd go up without comments. Not that my comments are worth much this time around, as I didn't really have time to attempt cleverness.

I also didn't have time to fiddle with formatting. The thumbnails are big, etc.

Opening remarks still pending

2005-04-05T10:07:00.000-05:00

I spent the day yesterday on the bus with the Nats Fan Club, going to opening day in Philly. I had a great time, despite the loss. And I took a ton of pictures. I'll try to have another photo essay up in about 24 hours, and make some comments about what I saw.

At a high level, Hernandez' performance was clearly disappointing. Hernandez wrote it off as an aberation. There was also some speculation that it was due to the wind. I just hope that there's no injury, which was the initial speculation by the Phillies' radio announcers when there was a big fuss at the mound. It turned out that Livan had complained about the mound being slippery, and they ended up adding dirt to it.

Other than that, the hitting was good, though Lieber isn't notoriously deceptive... he's the kind of guy who wants you to hit the ball. The exception in my mind was Guzman, who didn't get a ball out of the infield. The only "hit" he got should have been ruled an fielder's choice, and an error. Guzman grounded to the second baseman, who flipped the ball to the shortstop. But the SS ran past the bag, and wasn't there for the flip.

Exhibition exhibit

2005-04-03T19:43:00.000-05:00

My youngest daughter and I enjoyed about 2/3 of the game, and I took a few pictures, one of which you see above (it's of Ohka about to deliver the first pitch).

The rest are here.

I left with the score 4-3 Mets, and nothing happened after that. Ohka made what looked like a stupid play where he took a ball that was going to roll foul and kept it in play, getting an out at first, and letting a run score. It seemed to me that he could have made the play at the plate with no problem if he was going to keep it in play, but he wasn't aware enough of what was going on.

Apparently, Church pulled a groin muscle (maybe hitting that 3-run dinger ;-), and looks doubtful for the opener, though he's unlikely to end up on the DL. The opening day lineup is expected to have Wilkerson in center and Sledge in left.

Today's exhibition

2005-04-03T07:00:00.000-05:00

Well, the season is upon us, and today is our first chance to check out RFK ourselves. I'll be taking my youngest daughter, who is almost 4.

I'll be bringing my camera, so I will post pictures tonight.

Edit (9PM): apparently, Blogger is very broken for me, and this post never published. I'm trying to get any post to publish... I have one with my pictures that appears lost to the ages.

Crummy deal

2005-04-01T04:25:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not talking about any trade that Bowden may or may not have in the works. I'm talking about the television deal that gives Angelos a 90% share in the joint network with the Nationals. The Nationals get money, but the market price will be set every 3 years by comparing to other markets. This seriously limits the earning power of the team in the long-term, in all probability. It's difficult to believe that, without controlling their own ship, they're going to maximize what they're going to get out of this, particularly when they have no negotiating leverage. If the amounts handed down from up on high aren't near what they should be, and we're less competitive than we should be as a result, there is likely to be little recourse.

I find this personally disheartening, but I'll spare you a longer rant.

End of Endy

2005-03-30T10:46:00.000-05:00

Nice, I haven't been able to log into blogger, so sorry if this commentary is less than timely. I wrote up this post last night, and I'm just now getting to publish it (11 AM-ish).

The Nats sent down three more. Gary Majewski doesn't surprise me. He got off to a slow start this spring, and was a long shot in my book, anyway.

Jon Rauch surprised me a little bit, considering that Armas is spending 15 days on the DL. I'd expected to see Hernandez, Ohka, Loaiza, Day, Patterson, Osuna, Ayala, Cordero, Eischen and Horgan go north. I'm surprised that T.J. Tucker sat over Rauch in the pecking order. Anyway, when Armas is healthy, except Tucker to be the one sent down.

The demotion that surprised me the most was Endy Chavez. I'm pleased as punch, as the indication was that the team was going to look past his history and his awful spring.

This is amazing, because from the traditionalists view (i.e., F-Rob), there is no obvious lead-off hitter, and there is no obvious center fielder. This may very well indicate that a trade for a traditional CF is lined up, or otherwise expected. Nick Johnson's name keeps coming up, even though his value is probably near an all time low. With Armas on the DL, I'm less worried about a guy like Rauch being traded, because there is now a depth issue. I don't see people like Majewski and Vargas as off-limits, though, so one of those guys could be packaged up.

If there's no trade, Robinson suggests Ryan Church will get the day to day nod in CF. That's fine by me. I'd also be fine with Wilkerson in center and Sledge in left, or seeing J.J. Davis out there on a daily basis. In reality, I expect him to give all three a lot of time until there is a clear reason to prefer one of the three on a day-to-day basis. Davis is already set up to be the odd man out, since there's always a strong case for Sledge and his bat.

This means that someone is going to be getting some time in CF that one wouldn't want to see there. That might be Wilkerson, who, earlier in the offseason, was all but begging to be put in a single spot and stay there. That would keep Sledge out of CF, who is definitely a guy you would want to keep in the left corner. But Wilkerson himself is
better suited for left.

They could also switch Wilkerson around, or fix him in left and cross their fingers when Sledge is in center. I can't imagine he'd be much worse than the 2005 Bernie Williams!

Beyond our 5 outfielders, 11 pitchers and 2 catchers, we're expected to carry 7 infielders. Barring injury, we can expect to see Johnson, Vidro, Guzman, Castilla, Cordero and Carroll. The last spot is between Blanco and Baerga. My crystal ball is hazy, but I would keep Baerga, myself.

Armas injuried already

2005-03-28T06:01:00.000-05:00

Tony Armas, Jr. pitched only one inning yesterday, after a groin strain. He claims it is minor, and that his leaving the game is precautionary. But it could be a few days until there's a real assessment of how bad it is.

Armas sure doesn't need this right now. It's his contract year, and he needs to create some value for himself, overcoming the perception that he's rediculously injury prone.

Patterson and Rauch both got to pitch after Armas, and neither looked too sharp. If Armas isn't able to start the season, this should ensure Rauch a spot on the roster, but probably Armas will be back on the mound before they need to dip into one of these two guys as a 5th starter.

Fleshing out the 'pen

2005-03-23T10:55:00.000-05:00

Be prepared for Jon Rauch to get sent down. It looks like he's battling for one to two bullpen slots, and there is a lot of reason to believe he'll be an odd man out. Even though I think he's merited the 5th spot, Day pitched very well this week, which seems to be enough to cement his place in the rotation.

The Nats are probably coming home with 6 people in the bullpen, though they'll probably end up with 7 in short order. Corderro, Osuna and Ayala are absolute locks. Robinson seems to be obsessed with the need for left-handed relief to offset the lack of left-handed starters. This isn't the best logic I've ever heard, but it's going to guarantee both Horgan and Eischen a spot, despite the fact that plenty of right-handers are having far better springs. T.J. Tucker and Jon Patterson have both been pitching well enough, and these guys are out of options. That's 7, meaning that either the Nats will go north with 12 pitchers, or one of these guys is going to have to get left behind for a short while. I believe Horgan still has options, so count on it being him.

Meanwhile, if you're in the New Orleans area, keep tabs on Giant Jon Rauch for me. In some ways, it will be fine, because I'd rather he continue to be a starter, and at least he'll get the right amount of work in AAA. But, it's too bad that we're probably not really going to see this guy until there's an injury of some sort.

Day for Pena?

2005-03-20T22:55:00.000-05:00

Scuttlebutt is that Bowden is seriously considering a trade with the Reds that would involve Zach Day and the struggling Wily Mo Pena. Jim Bowden denies it, saying that Rauch and Patterson aren't sufficient if Day were to go, because he absolutely expects injuries in the rotation. That would require more than one injury at once, and it would mean they're not willing to give Hinkley a try if they had to do so. I think that's just talk to raise the asking price. But, there may be some truth to it, considering how big a problem injuries were in the rotation last year, especially since Patterson missed a start due to a hip injury. He'll probably be fine for opening day, but it's just another piece of straw on the camel's back.

Will Mo doesn't want to go, either (free reg required). He wants to play his whole career in Cincinnati.

Let's compare Pena to Chavez. Pena's 2004: .259/.316/.527. Projected 2005: .281/.351/.528. Chavez' 2004: .277/.381/.371. Projected 2005: .272/.321/.382

I don't care if Chavez has a better OBP, he absolutely can't hit for power. Going from an OPS of .752 to an OPS of .843 is a pretty big jump, and so I probably wouldn't hesitate to do the deal. OPS tends to be a highly accurate correlation to performance in subsequent years. Wilkerson had a .872 last year and Guillen had a .849, so Pena compares pretty well.

Defensively, Chavez doesn't look nearly as good as Pena, based on every metric I can find. For example, BP gives Pena a +4 as a CF for 2004, and Chavez a -6. Both are fast, but Pena seems to know how to get a jump and track the ball better.

I think giving up Day for Pena makes sense, considering our relative strengths and weaknesses. I personally wouldn't mind going into battle with Hinkley in a pinch, and I do think that Day should rightfully be 5th in our depth chart, but as long as Loaiza is placed above him, I'd knock him to 6th. And, as far as upside goes, I think Pena's the only one of the three who is a serious breakout candidate.

The BP summary of Day is almost prophetic on the matter:

...the Expos might do well to move Day for full value soon, before their defense starts making him look bad.

I think Bowden is definitely going after Pena. I wouldn't be surprised if he's trying to unload Patterson or Rauch. I think Patterson instead of Day is probably good, but I'd rather give up Day than Rauch. I saw some speculation about Hinkley, but I think that's crazy talk.

By the way, Vidro's MRI came back fine. In similar news, hyper-extended his knee, but his MRI came back fine as well.

MRI for Vidro

2005-03-18T15:53:00.000-05:00

Vidro is going in for an MRI today, on his hyper-extended elbow. It looks like he may not be ready for opening day. Let's hope it's not much worse than that.

The Revolution will be Televised

2005-03-18T06:55:00.000-05:00

Apparently, MLB President Bob DuPoy has insisted that the Nats will be on TV by opening day, by hook or by crook. This indicates that they've reached an acceptable place with Angelos and are just trying to improve it, or (more likely), that they are prepared with contingency plans for the case where they cannot settle.

I have a feeling that the potential ownership groups, Marion Barry and so on have made themselves heard that they don't want Angelos getting a sweetheart deal at the expense of the Nationals. I think they're still willing to give him at least half of a regional network, but I don't think they're willing to budge any more than that. If so, this could end up being a fun year, as we may be following both a new team and a new lawsuit.

Reason taking over

2005-03-17T06:15:00.000-05:00

Apparently, members of the DC council have realized that the proposed private financing plans are all pretty much illusion:

"It's always cheaper for the city to borrow money on its own," said council member Sharon Ambrose (D-Ward 6).

When did the world start to make sense again? If the District really wants to spend money to reduce their financial risk here, then fine. I think it's silly, but at least they should call a spade a spade, and it looks like that might finally happen. Oh, I also like this one:

"The question is, what is the best deal?" said D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who voted against the stadium package in December. "What we want from the CFO is, what is the most economical thing to do? This ought not be a shell game."

I think Graham must read this blog...

As for the on-field world, it was good to see Zach Day have a good night. It wasn't so good to see Patterson give up five runs in three plus innings the day before (Rauch gave up one run in two innings). In my mind, Patterson is destined for the bullpen. I think that Rauch has an outside shot if he doesn't have a stinker and Day has another one.

In other sanity, Castilla has only gotten two hits this spring, and the Nats are fiddling with Nick Johnson, trying to solve whatever issue has kept him from realizing his on-field potential, even when he's not injured. And, I keep getting more worried about Vidro...

But not all is right with the cosmos, as Guzman is batting .500 so far. Let's hope he keeps that average up, because it's the most likely way for him to keep that OBP up, too!

As for the Most Valuable Network, I decided I'm not going that route. They were looking to merge me into the current blog, which already has a good, highly prolific writer, and then a guy from Montreal who has pissed me off tremendously with his blind hate for D.C. I think there's a reason that I'm pretty much the only other Nats blog linking to them. It's either that, or the silly name.

Hinkley sent down

2005-03-14T13:35:00.000-05:00

Wow, it seems really early for Mike Hinkley to get sent down, but that's exactly what happened. I guess his rough start left him no flexibility to make the team out of spring training, particularly considering how well Rauch and Patterson have been doing.

I'm sure he'll get it together in AA, and then we'll see him as an end-of-year call-up.

Grass on the field...

2005-03-14T10:50:00.000-05:00

These pictures are from today. There are a few more pictures in the Ballpark Guys forum thread where the original was posted.

Weekend in brief

2005-03-14T09:05:00.000-05:00

It's going to be a very busy week for me, so pardon the brevity.

It was an interesting weekend for the Nats. Leaving all game results aside:

Armas and Loaiza seem to be progressing as well as can be expected. I'm starting to build up some hope that Loaiza will be average to very good, at least for a little while, before his arm falls off.
Osuna threw in his first game yesterday. It required 11 pitches for him to strike out the side.
In a vacuum, I wouldn't be worried that Vidro has a hyper-extended elbow. But, with his injury history and the fact that he's only played in three games so far. Is he so fragile that they really have to take it that slow?
Feel badly for Zach Day, who has a lot of scrutiny on him now, since his last two outings were "bad" and "utterly horrible". On the other hand, this gives the very deserving Jon Rauch a better shot of breaking into the rotation. Supposedly, Patterson is also pitching very well, and is getting a serious look. I'm sure Day will make the 25-man roster, even if he continues to be putrid. They'll just stick him in the bullpen until he works out of it, and then he'll make his way back into the rotation when we have a starter break down.
If you didn't see Angelos' ad in the Post this weekend, it was funny. He basically said, "don't blame me for no TV deal", tried to state as fact that his exclusive territorial rights go all the way into North Carolina or so (as opposed to the DC Border) and then said he was being magnanimous in offering to put the Nationals on the O's network. My hero!

All-Baseball

2005-03-11T07:05:00.000-05:00

It looks like MLB's agreement with Bowden ends in April. But, to the inevitable disappointment to many other Nats bloggers, Tavares is working hard to get MLB's permission to sign Bowden through the end of the season. It's likely he will keep the job for at least that long, anyway, even without a contract.

In meta-news, All-Baseball is going to merge into Most Valuable Network. The courtship was, apparently, incredibly brief. It does have an impact on me... I've got a choice to make as to what I want to do, and I haven't made it yet. I'll give more insight *after* I figure out what I want to do!

Ticket time

2005-03-09T04:00:00.000-05:00

Single game tickets go on sale noon on Saturday for the exhibition game and all regular season games, except the home opener. Those tickets will be available on March 26th, if there are any to be sold. Besides mini-plan holders getting opening day offers, I have it on very good word that season ticket holders will be able to purchase an additional two tickets to that game. My reading was that, even if you have 8 seats, you can only get two more tickets. According to the Times, the team estimates there may be up to 5,000 tickets available by March 26th, and they may use a lottery system to distribute them.

On the field, the Nats have looked pretty sloppy. The Post actually says Loaiza looked good yesterday against St. Louis, but he gave up almost 2 hits an inning over four innings, which I say is good enough for this time of year, but not "good" per se. Maybe the Post is just up on him because he gave up no runs!

Chavez hasn't been doing well, as he apparently has only 3 hits all spring. Sledge may replace him, because he's one who seems to be impressing. By the way, I don't believe Bowden is overly reluctant to trade Sledge. I think it's just rhetoric to both pump up Sledge's value and to keep Sledge from worrying about it.

Majewski is also not looking good. I'd say he's quickly becoming a long-shot to make the 25-man, since he hasn't looked good in a couple of appearances, and got shelled yesterday.

Another one who is impressing is Ian Desmond, a short stop who is only a year out of high school. Apparently, his defense is phenomenal, and he might actually be able to hit. While there's no chance of this kid starting anywhere other than A ball, the quotes from Robinson and Bowden make it sound like he's quickly putting himself #2 on the depth chart behind Guzman.

It's just spring training...

2005-03-07T02:15:00.000-05:00

It's tough to comment on spring training, particularly this early. While the Nats have won four of their first five ST games (and, as I write this, are trailing Detroit, 1-3 after 3), that isn't saying anything at all, for a number of reasons. First, people are just shaking off the rust. Particularly pitchers, who will often focus on honing one or two pitches, where nobody (who matters) will care if they get shelled. Also, by the middle of games, everyone who's playing is a prospect that generally won't even make the 25-man roster.

As a result, I'm not at all worried that Day did horribly in his first start. It's a bit more horrible that Hinkley did even worse in his second opportunity than he did in his first, giving up 6 runs and 8 hits in just two innings, spanning 56 pitches. It doesn't matter much, as he was a long shot to break onto the roster, anyway. It just comes close to sealing that return to the minors.

Rauch and Patterson have both looked good so far, but we're a long way from finding out if they can take the 5th spot. Chavez hasn't been doing horribly, and is showing a lot of dedication. For example, I saw on a message board that, after the Mets game on Saturday, he drove 65 miles to pinch hit in the Astros game.

Also, Svrluga posts in his blog that some obvious cuts have already been made, sending a bunch of prospects back to the minor league camp. They're no big deal, as none of them were even a long shot to head up to DC.

Also, the Post points out that the Nats and O's will play each other one way or another next year, because the AL East and NL East will be playing each other. Besides that, I'd be shocked if they're not "natural rivals" after this year, as has been widely speculated. Apparently, pretty much everybody in baseball would be shocked as well.

Injury risks

2005-03-03T17:00:00.000-05:00

Today, Baseball Prospectus had a couple of (subscription only) articles revolving around the Nationals. The interesting one was Will Carroll's Team Health Report. Will focuses on trying to use metrics with a heavy statistical bent to predict injuries. The high-risk players he identifies are:

Nick Johnson. No surprise.
Tony Armas. No surprise here, either.
Alex Escobar, which isn't much of a surprise, considering that it wasn't too long ago he had knee surgery for a torn ACL. He's not going to get much playing time anyway, but Will seems to think he's not going to recover fully, and he's probably right.
Christian Guzman. This one surprised me. I didn't realize he has had back problems, as well as an assortment of other leg and shoulder injuries. Will put it quite well: "Seventeen million bucks for this? Ugh."

Medium risk players are:

Schneider, who Carroll thinks is low risk... for a catcher.
Vidro. I was pleased to see he wasn't in the highest risk group.
Castilla
Hernandez, though Carroll believes his metrics are wrong for Hernandez, and that he's a low risk..
Loaiza... Carroll doesn't mention any of the signs of a possible run-in with TJ surgery that I was fretting about earlier.
Ohka. Not surprising.
Day. Not surprising.

Low risk players that Carroll mentions are Wilkerson, Chavez, Guillen, Sledge and Cordero.

First place in the Grapefuit league!

2005-03-03T02:00:00.000-05:00

I got to watch the first few innings of the first spring training game from work (Nats over Mets, 5-3), but the video was pretty choppy. Now I'm at home and watching the game on Tivo, but I've gotten only 2 hours of sleep in the last 50 hours, so I haven't been as observant as I'd like to be, and I pretty much stopped paying attention to anyone who doesn't have a chance to make the 25-man roster.

Ultimately, of course, one game, particularly the first spring game, is way too small a sample size. But then again, impressions can affect roster decisions, so we can build some insight. The announcers were keenly aware of all the firsts... the first hit, the first HR, etc. I wasn't too concerned with any of it... it's a spring training game, it doesn't mean much!

Tony Armas started, and pitched two innings. His first inning was 1-2-3, but there were a lot of pitches that were stupidly outside. He did seem to put it over the plate when he needed to do so. After falling behind the first batter 3-0, he managed to throw three straight strikes (the third being popped up into the infield in foul territory). In the second inning, he led off with a four pitch walk, but all the pitches were right around the plate. He looked much sharper, and gave up no hits. His fastball topped out at 90.

Jose Guillen had an interesting day. In his first PA, he got hit by a pitch throw by Galvine. He tried stealing second, and he was rediculously slow... it was about as bad as I imagine Roger Clemens would be. Then he hit a monster 2-run shot in his second at bat.

Mike Hinkley pitched second, and also went two innings. He looked fine in his first inning, but fell apart in the second, giving up hit after hit. He even made an error, when he could have gotten himself out of the inning with an easy double play. I'm pretty sure that this won't leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth, and he'll keep getting the ball this spring. Even if he doesn't, we're not going to see him until September, so how he pitches in the minors is what's really going to matter... he could suck the entire spring, and nobody will care.

Jon Rauch eventually got the chance to pitch, and I thought he looked sharp. He gave up a run, but it was unearned. Endy Chavez dropped a routine fly ball in center field, then almost immediately, Jeff Hammons badly misjudged a fly ball, that ended up sailing over his head.

Chavez not only dropped that ball, he went 0-fer, and didn't look too comfortable at the plate. Maybe he feels pressure to have a good spring training, especially because Sledge is already off to a hot start (2-2).

Not long after the two fielding errors, ESPN was interviewing Frank Robinson, who is extremely personable. He was quite stressed about the sloppy play. When asked where he was going to eat, he said it depended on how the game played out, because he wasn't really hungry. They asked whether he was stressing the game, and Frank replied, "Absolutely. Any time you put the uniform on, you don't want to look sloppy." After that, Frank even argued hard with the ump over a blown call (they called the infield fly rule where the fielder had a hard time tracking and couldn't even catch the ball... it certainly wasn't 'routine', and F-Rob was right. But it was fun to see him argue! After the interview, Frank stayed on the headset for most of the game, listening to the broadcast. And, he occasionally chimed in.

Crystal Ball

2005-03-02T07:00:00.000-05:00

In an online chat, in response to a question of starters that may be available around the trading deadline, ESPN's Buster Olney listed Tony Armas, Jr. among the potentials. I wholeheartedly agree that's a strong possibility. A few things have to happen, though:

The team can't be in contention. I don't think this is a stretch!
Armas has to stay healthy and pitch well enough to be valuable to a team that in contention.
I think it'll also need to look unlikely that Armas will resign. If they think he's going to be asking for too much money, or if he expresses overtones of wanting to go elsewhere, I think they'll be far more inclined to trade him.

Basically, if they seem likely to lose Armas, the organization would be foolish if they didn't try to get as much for him as possible, particularly considering the state of the farm system. Getting ownership in a timely manner can make a huge difference here... if Armas likes DC, but is going to command a large paycheck next year, it may take some deep pockets to be able to feel confident enough that we can resign him to ride it out. In short, I say, prepare yourself for this one. It's not inevitable, but it does seem likely.

Next in my crystal ball, Esteban Loaiza. Sometime over the past day or two, I read some analyst (I think it was Gammons, but I'm having a hard time digging up the link), who thought that Loaiza had started off last year looking like his 2003 self. The implication is that there's something to Loaiza's "tired arm" theory, for why he sucked in the back half of the year. One would also have to believe that Loaiza really did become a good pitcher when he obtained a cutter. I'm looking at his per-month ERA splits (no need to look at anything fancier here):

April: 3.71 (34 IP)
May: 3.68 (36.2 IP)
June: 5.35 (38.2 IP)
July: 6.89 (31.1 IP)
August: 8.46 (27.2 IP)
September: 7.62 (13 IP)

You know, there's something to that theory. I don't think a 3.7 quite puts him in line with his 2003 numbers, but it isn't so far off, either. Then, he gets steadily and quickly worse, until he's mostly throwing meatballs (remember that one game for the Yankees where he did their part in setting a team record for runs allowed in a game?).

What does this mean for 2005? I think we might just see something similar. Esteban may start off reasonably well, and then start disappointing in June, and totally suck by July. He might even decline a bit faster this year. I think that, if the theory is correct, it's likely that Loaiza is on the fast track to Tommy John surgery. This all feels to me like the strain of being an innings eater is catching up to Loaiza, after quite a long run.

If that's the case, I can see someone giving the guy a chance when he's done. He could be the next Lieber.

Inning-Endy?

2005-03-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

First, note that ESPN will be airing the spring training opener tomorrow at 1PM. I'll personally catch it on Tivo later in the day.

I feel badly for Endy Chavez, because the fact that he's marginal at best isn't just getting lots of play in the blogosphere, it's all over the press. Today's Washington Post takes a look, and determines that one of his problems is being too good at making contact:

Robinson explains it thusly. In the instances when Chavez is fortunate to work the count to, say, 3-1, his natural aggressiveness takes over. As Chavez said, "I like to swing the bat. It's hard not to." But because he rarely swings and misses or fouls a ball back, swinging at 3-1 can turn an at-bat in which Chavez held the advantage into a harmless groundout or popup. So in such situations, Robinson wants something different from a guy who's supposed to be a leadoff hitter.

"Occasionally, you're going to have to say to yourself, 'I'm going to take this pitch, and I'll go 3-2 and make him throw another pitch,' " Robinson said. "He has to, each at-bat, understand the situation, and then that will dictate what you should do that at-bat. Each at-bat is different, so look at it that way."

In other words, Chavez not only has no patience, he's too good at putting the ball in play. Well, I wouldn't quite be accusing him of that if he were "hitting 'em where they ain't", so to speak (his batting average last year was only slightly above average, and his OBP was well below it). Nonetheless, it is a good skill to be able to wear down a pitcher.

I don't think we will have Endy Chavez in the starting lineup past 2005 (and I suspect he'll be gone by mid year). Robinson's goal is for Chavez to score 100 runs. I think that's a poor metric for performance, but it's still a big stretch for a guy w/ a .318 OBP last year. I hope he makes big strides, since it seems inevitable that we're going to see him every day, but I doubt he's going to have a breakout season with a .400 OBP.

BTW, Chris over at Capitol Punishment coined the nickname 'Inning-Endy Chavez'. I like it, but I don't think it'll be true. I don't think he'll have enough of an opportunity as the leadoff hitter to build a solid reputation for ending innings. I suspect that many of the innings that aren't ended by the pitcher will be ended by Guzman (or whoever is mediocre enough to be batting 8th). We'll see!

Learn the faces

2005-02-28T01:15:00.000-05:00

Now that there are official pictures showing most of our players in Red, White, Blue and Gold, let's take a real look at the main characters!

The starting rotation:


Livan Hernandez	Esteban Loaiza	Tony Armas, Jr.

Tomo Ohka	Zach Day

The infield:


C: Brian Schneider	1B: Nick Johnson	2B: Jose Vidro

SS: Cristian Guzman	3B: Vinny Castilla

The probable outfield:


LF: Brad Wilkerson	CF: Endy Chavez	RF: Jose Gullen

The cream of the bullpen:


Chad Cordero	Luis Ayala	Antonio Osuna

Jon Rauch	John Patterson

People I'd much rather see in the outfield than Endy Chavez:


Terrmel Sledge	Alex Escobar	Ryan Church

Particularly when you move to a town that wants you, it's got to be easy to smile before the losses start to pile up! Still, too many of them can't manage it. I can see why Endy Chavez is smiling, but how about Sledge??

All Nationals

2005-02-26T11:00:00.000-05:00

As a blogger, I'm finding spring training to be frustrating, as the articles keep flowing, without any real content. The only things I've learned of note over the past few days is that MLB and Angelos are close to a deal (one that will be unfair to the Nationals) and the radio announcers will be Charlie Slowes (formerly the Wizards announcer) and Dave Shea (formerly the Bruins announcer... we can guess why he's making the move over to baseball).

I do have an announcement of my own. On March 15th, I'm going to be leaving blogger and joining the team over at All-Baseball. The blogspot web address will just point to the old posts, but the nationalspastime.com URL will follow me over there.

I've always thought highly of the team that All-Baseball fields. I've been a daily reader of several of the blogs, particularly Bronx Banter. I know that some of my fellow Nats' bloggers like to knock Will Carroll, but, though he's made mistakes as pretty much all men have, I've always found his writing interesting, particularly his "under the knife" series over at Baseball Prospectus.

Anyway, I'm itching for something to analyze, but (unless something substantial happens) I'll probably return after the weekend to report on more scraps of largely uninteresting news!

The lights are on...

2005-02-23T07:15:00.000-05:00

Here are more pictures of the RFK construction from NatsFanY2K.

There's not much of note going on, as the team marches toward its first spring training game, one week from today. Here's a rundown of everything that's even remotely notable:

Osuna still has not reported to camp, due to his ill father. This is still an excused absence.
Francis Beltran has tendinitis that might require surgery. At best, it will be a few weeks before he's at full strength.
Bowden said the team's expecations for Castilla are in line with his pre-Coors numbers, which indicates that Bowden is not quite as oblivious as other bloggers seem to think he is...
Bowden signed Carlos Baerga to a minor league deal. He'll compete for a utility infielder role.
The perpetrator of the first clubhouse prank? Esteban Loaiza.
Sledge claims he didn't know he was using steroids.
Eight firms have thrown their hat in the ring to design the new ballpark.

Jose Rijo's home for wayward boys

2005-02-21T04:00:00.000-05:00

The mound of reading material that reporters are producing is doubling daily. How many articles will there be to read in 64 days at that rate? According to the Times, Sports Illustrated is going to add to the pile, as they're doing a story on F-Rob, and there's a good chance he and the Nats will beat out the Daytona 500 for this week's cover.

There were lots of items that were mildly interesting at best for people who follow the team obsessively. Much of it you probably know, but there were some juicy tidbits scattered about.

Hopefully, regular readers know that everyone hopes the 2003 Loaiza shows up and that on-base percentage is a problem, particularly with Chavez and Guzman. We know that CF is a bit of a question mark, and that, if Chavez chokes and Escobar or someone else does well, Chavez might not make the cut (we can only hope). We should all know that defense isn't much of a concern.

It's nice to see Bowden paying attention to pitching prospects, but that's not too interesting.

There were new profiles that may be worth a read. The Times looks atJeffery Hammonds(who has absolutely no shot at a major league spot), and the official site looks at Chad Cordero, Esteban Loaiza and Zach Day, who really wants to remain a starter.

Several sources reported that Guzman will have a continual green light to steal more bases than he has in the past. We'll see how that works out. Francis Beltran is shut down, at least until an MRI is done on his sore elbow. His odds of making the team just went down by 90%, leaving them squarely at 0.

F-Rob did an interview with MLB.com, where he admits that Rauch, Patterson and Hinkley are probably not going to make the rotation. If they do well, he'll be wary that it's "fool's gold". It does seem from F-Rob's words that Day is the default, and it would be tough to unseat him.

The Times has an article covering an interesting potpourri of things overheard during spring training. I think that was the one article I really enjoyed end-to-end this weekend.

But, the most interesting thing I picked up came from the bottom of this article. Apparently, Jose Rijo has a huge baseball academy with eight baseball fields in his back yard in San Cristobal. It's now the official Nats acadamy, replacing the one in Santo Domingo. Apparently, these facilities are much better. I'm impressed that the Rijo strategy is already progressing fairly far. Hopefully, this will pay off reasonable dividends within a few years.

Check out the stadium

2005-02-18T13:30:00.001-05:00

NatsFanY2K, a regular poster to the Ballpark Guys forum and a ticket office employee, posted some current photos of the construction, such as this one:

I've been traveling this week, and it's been difficult to keep up with the sea of articles. It's rough, because many of them are mostly content free, but still interesting for the quotes from players that give insight into the people who are coming to town.

The Post reveals some on-the field news today. For example (see bottom): Vargas isn't participating in all drills due to tendinitis. Vargas had a bad year last year, and this problem cropped up in winter ball. Even if he were healthy now, his odds of making the pen out of spring training were a long shot. He's more likely to see some action if he can recover and then tear up AAA.

Additionally, in their profile of Chad Corderro, they reveal that Robinson is worried about Cordero mentally if he's the sole closer, so there's a chance he won't have the job full time going out of spring training. It could be Ayala, or more likely, the two of them will share the duties.

Bill Ladson, the MLB beat writer, has been as busy as the Post in taking a look at players. He's got detailed profiles on Livan Hernandez, Jose Vidro and Brian Schneider.
He also looks briefly at Tony Armas, Jr.

According to the Washington Post's spring training blog, Livan Hernandez and J.J. Davis reported today. Also, they mention that Loaiza had a bit of back stiffness yesterday, but it isn't considered serious.

Nats ink radio deal

2005-02-17T20:05:00.000-05:00

The Nats agreed to a 1 year radio deal today. Z104 (104.1 FM) will carry all but 40 games, missing only workday games. WFED (1050 AM) will broadcast all 162 games, but they have a weak signal. Of course, all will be broadcast on XM radio, as well.

From the sound of it, the Nationals are paying for the airtime, but get to keep ad revenue.

Ex-expos dream team?

2005-02-17T13:45:00.000-05:00

If you haven't seen it, Barry Svrluga and Matt Lee of the Washington Post have started a blog documenting spring training. They're giving people a great inside look at the team. They've got such a good inside perspective on the team, as a fan I can't help but hope they keep it up after spring training. Svrluga clearly likes to work, and here's his profile on Tony Armas, Jr. Here's another article Svrluga wrote for today's Post, in which we learn what everybody expected, that Livan Hernandez will probably be the opening day starter.

Reader Backward K sent in the following:

Here is one waste-of-time project that I started on an airplane that I think you might get a kick out of.

Compose the best 25-man roster you can of former Expos/Nationals.
Roster should be appropriately balanced, players must currently be on 40-man roster of another squad.

Here's mine:

OF: Vlad Guerrero, Milton Bradley, Moises Alou
IF: Cliff Floyd, Mark Grudzielanek, Orlando Cabrera, Chris Truby
C: Michael Barrett, Raul Chavez
Bench: Larry Walker (lefty pinch hitter), Carl Everett, Juan Rivera, and Mike Mordecai (back-up IF)

Starting Pitchers: Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Javier Vazquez, Bartolo Colon, Carl Pavano

Relief Pitchers:
Ted Lilly (long relief lefty, spot starter) Dustin Hermanson (righty) Steve Kline (lefty) Rheal Cormier (lefty) Matt Herges (lefty)

Set-Up: Guillermo Mota
Closer: Ugueth Urbina

The bullpen is loaded with lefties (without regard for arm, I would have put in Graeme Lloyd instead of Hermanson, but I felt I needed at least one righty in middle-relief.) But given righties Mota and Urbina as the set-up and closer, it is not bad to have a mess of lefties in the other slots.

Raul Chavez is the only back-up catcher I could find that is still around. Chris Truby is a bit of a stretch at 3B; the only other choice I could find was Geoff Blum. All of a sudden, Vinny Castilla does not seem so bad anymore!

In general, this "alternative universe" outfield looks very strong and the pitching staff is a dream. It is, of course, a $200 million/year salary team. The infield is not that good, however, which surprised me.
Our current infield is clearly better, especially if Vidro and Johnson are healthy.

Thumb twiddling

2005-02-16T11:10:00.000-05:00

There was a whole lot of nothing in the news today. The only things I found interesting were in this article. Apparently, Vidro is well on track to making opening day... he is fielding grounders every other day. And, Hernandez and Osuna did not report yesterday, for apparently legitimate reasons. Hernandez will be in by Friday, but no word on Osuna, who is taking care of his sick father in Mexico.

Oh, and the Post looks at the rotation. It's a good look, and I like the implication that Rauch is the front-runner for the 5th spot. Nothing in here should be a surprise to regular readers, it basically says that there are a lot of unknowns due to injury.

Spring training begins

2005-02-15T08:15:00.000-05:00

Spring training starts today. The Post is chock full of articles today, mainly thanks to Barry Svrluga (I wonder if he gets any sleep). First, they point out how the team and the city still don't really know each other yet. To get to know them, they offer a list of 10 Nats to watch. The one Nat everyone should know is Frank Robinson, who is "ready for the long run".

Svrluga even does a profile on the Nats Fan Club, saying primarily that, while many of the members know very little about their team, they are nonetheless extremely happy to have them.

Apparently, Svrluga was slacking off, because it took a second reporter to cover another potential ownership group.

But wait, the Post has still more Nats content: Boswell welcomes spring training. And, they have a 'capsule' look at every team in baseball coming into spring training, broken into spring training league. Here's the grapefruit capsule and the cactus capsule.

PS: See if you can decipher the notation in this image from the Post (click for larger image):

Virginia gets Nationals, will build stadium

2005-02-14T02:30:00.000-05:00

No, this isn't a joke post. The Potomac Cannons changed their name last night to the Potomac Nationals, and announced that they will build a new stadium in Woodbridge, right by the old one. The new logo and uniforms were unveiled, but I've seen no pictures yet.

The Post also looks at the NL East, predicting a last place finish for the Nats, which is a pretty safe bet. I think it's amusing to see pretty much every publication pick Atlanta to win the division, since they got so badly burned by picking Philly last year. I will go out on a limb and predict that the Braves will not take the division... I suspect the Mets will.

Washington's own Barry Larkin

2005-02-13T17:22:00.000-05:00

Barry Larkin is officially retired as a player, but is now Special Assistant to the GM. Welcome, Barry!

Minor trade

2005-02-13T16:55:00.000-05:00

The Nationals have swapped injury-prone outfielders with the White Sox, acquiring Alex Escobar in exchange for prospect Jerry Owens.

Owens has been less injury prone, and is almost a waste of a minor league roster spot. PECOTA projected him for 324 at bats and a paltry .233 AVG/.286 OBP/.297 SLG, good for a -16.6 VORP. With the outfield log jam, this guy would have been lucky to see one AB, but the point is, he sucks.

Escobar is absent from PECOTA projections, and it's not clear why (he's going to be ready for spring training). As the article said, he had definitely been considered a top prospect, at least before all of his injuries.

Despite making the outfield log jam even worse, Escobar is definitely going to make the 25-man roster. There's now close to no chance that people like Ryan Church and J.J. Davis will get a bench slot (which is better for their personal development). Escobar is a much needed right-hander off the bench, and he might even do well enough that Robinson will platoon him with Sledge or Chavez.

The Sox made this trade because they were going to have to put Escobar on waivers to try to send him down to the minors when he finally comes off the DL in a couple of days. He'd get picked up for sure, so they are at least trying to get something for the loss.

Lots left to be done

2005-02-11T13:15:00.000-05:00

Here's a good article that touches on the large number of little things still left to do, such as select a mascot, find a cleaning crew, and get a tax ID. The operations side of the house clearly has their work cut out for them.

Pitchers, catchers and Vidro report on Tuesday... there should be more to talk about soon!

Slim Pickins

2005-02-09T02:30:00.000-05:00

The team has announced partial season ticket plans. The good news is that people who are on the MLB.com Nationals mailing list by 11AM (or were on the old WBC list) get early access, having the right to buy starting Thursday at 12:01AM. The general public will get their crack starting on Valentine's Day. Of course, there's nothing except 400 and 500 level tickets.

Apparently, if they can get him a visa, there's a good chance that the Expos' old radio announcer will be the radio announcer. And in the lead for a radio deal is now Infinity Broadcasting, who would put them on WJFK.

Interview with USA Today's Paul White

2005-02-08T13:30:00.000-05:00

Paul White, USA Today Sports Weekly Senior Editor, was kind enough to agree to an interview. Despite the fact that I let my biases show through in the questioning (which I will avoid in the future), I think you will enjoy it-- Paul's answers are deeply insightful.

NP: Cristian Guzman has been rumored to have a poor work ethic, and a resulting weight problem that is affecting his speed. Is this true?

PW: It's no secret the Twins were unhappy with his development. He made little progress at the plate (backslid, actually) and never has been able to overcome the inconsistency that's not so unusual for young shortstops because the guys who get to play shortstop are the best athletes with the best tools and haven't really honed the rest of their skills. Guzman is a quiet guy and often, especially with Latin players, that leads to speculation that is as much stereotyping as it is analysis. Guys who haven't become completely comfortable with the language and the culture often withdraw when they're going through tough periods and too many Americans have a tendency to decide that the players are somehow bad guys. Regardless of the reasons, he often appears pretty emotionless on the field.

All that said, Guzman hasn't been able to apply all the things to make a guy with his tools better. He hasn't learned how to become a basestealer to the point he seems to have little confidence trying to steal. He has had knee problems, which is a factor. He hasn't been able to do much with a poor on-base percentage, which could be a factor of another problem that could become worse in Washington - his general approach at the plate. He seems to have gotten mixed messages along the way, including the idea that becoming a slap hitter reminiscent of the old Cardinals teams of Willie McGee and Vince Coleman would help him on the turf in the Metrodome. It probably created some infield hits, but he seldom drives the ball and slaps at everything, including balls out of the strike zone.

NP: Guzman has a reputation for being good on defense, but not all advanced defensive metrics agree, several ranking him below average. What can we expect on defense, really?

PW: More of the inconsistency. He's an incredibly exciting player ... sometimes. Any reputation for being good on defense probably comes from the spectacular plays he makes sometimes. He still has better-than-average range. I don't know what the stats say about that but, as much as I like numbers for assessing offensive and pitching ability, I still maintain any number that claims to measure defense remains a case of someone trying to justify their own attempt to measure something that drives us nuts because of it's resistance to measurement. Scouts who track the distance he covers with their naked eyes say his range remains exceptional. But Guzman just as often botches routine plays.

NP: What will Vinny Castilla bring to the team?

PW: Castilla will bring better-than-average defense, which will help a pitching staff that won't strike out a lot of people. I'm sitting here looking at another team's (very sabermetrically oriented) analysis of every lineup in the majors and they rate Castilla the second-best hitter on the team after Wilkerson. Castilla also will be a major presence in the clubhouse. One thing this team has missed the past couple of seasons is some quality veterans - I mean quality people - because the core of the team is relatively young and it has been difficult to attract any veterans other than castoffs and the disgruntled. So, Castilla is a big step and makes sense as a guy who can bridge a gap. Remember, there's not a lot in the farm system and this franchise will need to find relatively inexpensive veterans to bridge the gap until new ownership provide a better idea of a payroll budget and until talent starts bubbling up from the farm system. He's certainly an upgrade from Tony Batista.

NP: Do you anticipate Bowden making any significant roster moves anytime soon? If so, what would he be after?

PW: I think they'll do what Bowden has done best in his career - bottom-feed. Given the limited payroll situation, they'll need to watch the waiver wire, look for maybe a veteran utility guy and some more bullpen help. There's a bit of a logjam in the first base/outfield mix but given the questions surrounding a lot of those guys, it would make more sense to let them sort themselves out a bit this spring before deciding who to deal, if anyone.

NP: What's the likely fate of Nick Johnson? Will he play first, be traded, or warm the bench?

PW: The ideal situation would be for him to live up to his offensive promise from the days when he was in the Yankees system. Second choice would be for him to look good enough - at the plate and healthwise - that he's tradable. He has some value now but the smart move would seem to be to gamble that he can increase his value.

NP: Speaking of first base, how far is Larry Broadway from being major-league ready, and how do you predict he'll enter the majors?

PW: We might see Broadway by the end of this season, just to give him a taste. I think he could start in 2006. Last year was huge for him from a standpoint of improving his approach at the plate. He's a big guy who still has some holes in his swing but he's much more disciplined than he was a year or two ago. He'll probably struggle a bit every time he moves up a level but if he can continue to improve his handling of the strike zone, he has a chance to become a somewhat watered-down version of Jim Thome: go ahead and strike out a bunch, as long as you walk often and crank out a bunch of homers.

NP: Jose Guillen and Juan Rivera had very similar years last year, with Guillen hitting for more power, but Rivera was better at getting on base. Considering the salary differential and the fact that Guillen is soon a free agent, was this a good trade?

PW: It's a gamble for sure. Guillen says he would like to stay and there have been some discussions about a new contract. We'll see. You're right that their production is similar but the one advantage Guillen brings is a little more experience. How he performs off the field probably will be more important in the long run. The key for me in that deal was Maicer Izturis. It won't be long before they wish they had him in the middle infield.

NP: What would have to happen for Endy Chavez to not make the starting lineup?

PW: If he reverts back to some of the stuff he was doing last spring and before that, all of which landed him in Frank Robinson's doghouse. He got a quick trip to the minors because Robinson didn't feel Chavez was applying himself to do the things a leadoff hitter must do. Unlike Guzman, Chavez seemed to get the message in a hurry. Speed remains his best top-of-the-order credential but the other stuff is improving. As it stands now, I still think Chavez, Johnson and Sledge and going to eat into each other's playing time when everybody is healthy.

NP: Do you think Ryan Church will make the 25-man roster, and if he does, will he see any playing time?

PW: He is going to have to bash his way in. With all the other bodies, it will be tough on Church. Actually, this is a guy who would be better served playing every day at Triple-A than sitting on the bench in the majors.

NP: Why does the press seem to think that the team has good offense and poor pitching, while stat-heads think the opposite?

PW: I'm not sure who you're referring to - statheads or press - but I know what the stat analysts for several teams think and here's sort of a consensus of their views: Only Guzman and Schneider are below-average offensive players among the starters and there is some disagreement about where Chavez fits. The bench, however, is very thin. As for pitching, they perceive Hernandez, Day and Ohka as solid and Rauch as a sleeper. I think the pitching perception comes from the fact the bullpen doesn't have a lot of names recognizable to the general public and media members who are, shall we say, casual observers of baseball. But most of them are pretty effective. I don't think they realize Ayala and Eischen will be solid setup guys.

NP: Is Chad Cordero ready to be the full-time closer? If not, what should the team be doing?

PW: I'm usually reluctant to say a young guy is ready. Cordero clearly has the talent but the mental step is like nothing else in this sport. There's no way to measure that but he seems like the kind of guy who can handle it. This is an area where they probably ought to look for a more experienced guy who could become available during spring training, a guy who could close now and then but still can be useful setting up.

NP: Considering the large number of 5.00+ ERA seasons Loaiza has had, is this guy going to be better than any of the people who could have
otherwise gotten a 5th spot?

PW: He's no more or less of a gamble than any of those other guys. Rauch is the most interesting coming off a small sample late last year. But nothing about any of the other possibilities should give anyone reason to get excited.

NP: At this point, our starters seem to be Hernandez, Loaiza, Armas, Ohka and Day. Who is at risk if they have a bad spring training?

PW: Probably Loaiza and Armas, though I think it's more likely anyone with a bad spring will get more time than that to lose his job.

NP: In the same vein, who is a dark horse to make the rotation?

PW: Rauch, as I mentioned. We'll probably get to see Mike Hinckley before the year is over but he could create some discussion among the staff with a big spring. Still, he probably would go back to the minors at least for awhile.

NP: Ayala, Cordero and Osuna are safe bets to be in the bullpen. Is this where we expect to see Rauch and Patterson go if they don't make the
rotation, or will either of them be sent to AAA?

PW: Both could pitch in the bullpen and be kept as a swingman/spot starter. If Rauch looks good enough that he makes himself next in line to start, it makes more sense to put him in Triple-A to build up some innings.

NP: Who else do you expect to see in the bullpen when opening day arrives?

PW: I still think there might be another guy or two from the outside. Assuming Eischen is healthy, he'll make it. I'd rank T.J. Tucker and Gary Majewski next, maybe Claudio Vargas.

Shawn Hill status

2005-02-07T16:45:00.000-05:00

Shawn Hill used to be our top pitching prospect, except that he recently had Tommy John surgery, leaving Mike Hinkley with the title. But, Shawn Hill is well on the road to recovery. He's throwing 45 feet, and is expected to show back up in the minors in June, probably starting off in low A. If everything goes well, he could end up in AAA by the end of August, and might see a few innings out of the pen as a September call-up. Check out this article on him, it's a nice profile of the guy and his recovery effort to date.

Day to the bullpen?

2005-02-07T12:45:00.000-05:00

According to the Sporting News, the Nats are considering moving Zach Day to the bullpen, in favor of either Patterson or Rauch (with Hinkley likely being a dark horse in that scenario).

I wish I had time to analyze the stats to see how much of a jump his ERA takes subsequent times through the batting order, compared to other people in the rotation. But, I suspect that this is probably a good move, as it will keep him from tiring, and thus help him keep his sinkerball down. Ultimately, I think this is good news for the pitching staff, as I'd rather see either Rauch and Hinkley in the rotation than Day. Under this scenario, I'm wondering if the guy who doesn't make the rotation gets placed in the bullpen, or demoted to AAA, to keep them on a regular rotation. I'm starting to think that the later may happen, because the bullpen is starting to get crowded.

In this scenario, Cordero, Ayala, Osuna and Day are destined for bullpen spots. I'd expect Eischen to be the left-hander out of the pen, and would be a bit surprised if T.J. Tucker got dropped. Will the last spot go to the guy who doesn't make the rotation, or will it go to Gary Majewski or Joe Horgan, both of whom pitched well enough last year to merit competition for that spot.

Also in that article, Ken Rosenthal states that the Nats weren't willing to give up Wilkerson, but would have put together a package including Brendan Harris, Terrmel Sledge and maybe a minor leaguer. Considering that, and considering the amount of cash that the Cubs ended up ponying up for Sosa's salary, I'm a bit surprised we didn't get him. While it is easy to assimilate everything published on this and say, "Bowden wasn't going to spend a cent of his $6-7M budged on salary", I am starting to believe Guillen, who claimed last week that it boiled down to Sosa choosing which team he wanted to join. The other option is that Bowden valued Brendan Harris enough to not make it worth the cash to Bowden, which would make me extremely happy, because Harris is the guy on our 40-man roster who should really be playing 3rd base.

All in all, I think Bowden probably did a reasonable job, from the sound of it. Despite the fact that people still seem to think Bowden focuses on things like RBIs to make his decisions (instead of using those things as a way to try to sell his decisions to the public), I am still giving Bowden the benefit of the doubt, willing to tell myself for the moment that he's likely doing the best job he can, considering he's got no budget, and has had a difficult time attracting interest from talent, even in his price range. Though, I'm still stumped on Guzman... maybe every other SS on the market who was better gave Trader Jim the finger...

Other than that article, it was a very slow news weekend. The Nats Fan Club meeting went well, with the Washington Post's Barry Svrluga there, interviewing people. It looks like the club will get a plug in the Post soon! I enjoyed meeting people from the Ballpark Guys forum there, and was a bit disappointed that none of my fellow bloggers showed up! By the way, the Nats Fan Club has taken over natfanatics.com... give them a look!

Guillen, Sosa and Bowden

2005-02-03T09:20:00.000-05:00

MLB also has a piece on yesterday's ESPN Zone event that focused on Guillen. I like what I read:

I'm looking to buy a house here. I've already talked to Jim and we already had some great conversations," Guillen said. "I'm looking to be here for many years.

Guillen weighed in on the Sosa trade, saying he talked to Sosa, and Sosa had the ability to choose whether he was going to Washington or Baltimore. That conflicts with all other reports. Most of the reports say that the Nationals didn't want to give up the player that the Cubs were after (either Sledge or Wilkerson), and never got serious about a counter-offer, but kept discussions alive up until the end. Unlike the conspiracy theory, this seems logical.

I give Bowden both the benefit of the doubt and credit, here. I think he takes too bad a rap in the blogging community on the whole. I think pursuing a deal for Sosa along the lines of what the Orioles gave up was worthwhile. I also think it's commendable and quite probably the right decision not to mortgage our future by shipping off one of the two people on that short list.

I've been reasonably ambivalent to happy with most of Bowden's moves, with Guzman and Castilla being the big exceptions. I can start to see some justification for Castilla based on clubhouse leadership, but Guzman is still a mystery (particularly when you factor in the four year deal). Even Loaiza, with the dollar amount involved, it's hard to brand it a bad deal. While I think it needlessly pushes an equal to better arm into the bullpen (or even AAA), I'm still close to neutral on it.

I'm not saying that I'm Bowden's biggest fan, as my comments on his previous transactions will show. I'm just trying not to view his actions through the filter of a skeptic. I think he's probably an intelligent man who had reasons for the moves he made that were reasonably sound. For instance, even going beyond Castilla's "leadership qualities", I can seem him thinking the guy was worth taking a chance on, because while his away numbers were a big step down from his recent past, he magically learned how to take a walk, doubling his walk total from each of the two previous years. Maybe he thinks the guy is worth the risk, particularly considering we supposedly have a good hitting coach. Once you throw in the leadership qualities, the deal starts feeling more sensical. I'm not saying that it's what I would have done, but I at least believe there might be method to Bowden's madness (though I'm still trying to explain Guzman).

Who wears the pants?

2005-02-03T08:50:00.000-05:00

Down at the bottom of this interesting profile of Jose Guillen over at the Washington Times, we learn that Bowden received sage council from his children:

"I didn't have a choice," he said. "Tyler and Chad, two of my boys, said, 'Dad you have to bring Guillen. He throws the best [batting practice] of any of the players we had.' That is why we made the deal."

What I want to know is whether these kids were also responsible for the Guzman and Castilla signings, in which case, someone needs to give these kids a lesson on stats, fast. If not, well, then they out-performed their dad, and we have to figure out how to get them more involved!

The Times also reports that the city CFO is likely to soon endorse multiple private financing proposals. They confirm that partial-season plans go on sale next week, and that pretty much all of those tickets are going to be in the upper deck. April 16th will be Kids Day, and the new mascot will be unveiled then. I guess I'll have my daughter in tow two games in a row. The opening day game will have fireworks and a concert.

For those interested, the National Press Club will be having a D.C. baseball event, with Nats president Tony Tavares scheduled to sit on a panel from 8 to 9:15PM. Tickets are free, but seating is limited; mail mlindsay@gwu.edu with requests.

D.C. City Council commits an error

2005-02-02T08:30:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the D.C. City Council almost deprived themselves of $10M, when they tried to take a symbolic stance against the new ballpark.

The buzz today is something we reported on over the weekend, Cal Ripkin being courted to be the face of an ownership group, which would certainly be mud in the eye for Angelos. Ripkin seems to be a good businessman, which would probably translate to being a good President. However, I like Tavares and Uhlich so far, and would hate to see them get displaced, even though their jobs were quite clearly labeled as "probably temporary".

Meet and Greet tomorrow afternoon

2005-02-01T00:10:00.000-05:00

The Post reports that Cristian Guzman, Jose Guillen, Chad Cordero and Zach Day will be at ESPN Zone tomorrow, Wednesday, February 2nd from 1PM to 2PM. Moreover, you'll also be able to meet the guy in the organization I'd most like the chance to meet... GM Jim Bowden. Sadly, I'll be in a meeting.

The Post also looks at how injury plagued the Expos' season was last year, but things are looking up on that front.

Interestingly, the New York Times thinks there might have been a conspiracy within MLB to keep Sosa out of Washington, to help appease Angelos. The link requires free registration.

SABR meeting report, part 2 (Paul White)

2005-01-30T20:30:00.000-05:00

Paul White, USA Today Sports Weekly senior editor, spoke about our roster, our prospects and a few other topics at yesterday's SABR meeting. For regular readers of this blog, much of his chat about our roster and prospects has been covered, but I'll still repeat what he said here, because much of it can boil down to opinion.

I'll say up front that White agrees with many other people (including me), in that he'd be shocked if our team plays 500 ball this year. He does think there's at least a 6 year honeymoon period, before the team really needs to be competitive to avoid hurting the franchise, and thinks there will be a good ownership group in place (more later).

About the people currently in contention for a spot in the rotation, he doesn't see a single star among them, with one asterisk that we'll get to later. All of them are nibblers, not real power pitchers. Livan Hernandez is obviously solid and a big innings eater. His weight "problem" isn't much of a problem, he's just a big guy. Basically, in the media, when he's doing well, "he's just big", and when he's not, "it's a weight problem". But the guy is a good all-around athlete who can both field his position well and hit. And, like Vidro, he also was extremely enthusiastic about being part of the franchise's new start, re-upping before anyone even knew where the team was going.

Ohka pretty much has no stuff at all, but gets quite a lot out of it, anyway, because he has very good control. But there's no chance this guy will ever be a number 1.

Zach Day is someone you could get a bit excited about, but in that transaction, we gave Cleveland everyone who is going to make them good in the next few years, so there's a lot to be disgruntled about there (more later).

Tony Armas, Jr. is not bad, but has been plagued by a ton of injuries, the implication being that this is likely to continue to be a problem. Certainly, it's hard to say how well he's going to pitch, but he's probably never going to be a #1.

Jon Rauch is the asterisk. Recently, he hasn't had the chance to be healthy, but now he does, so maybe he'll go back to being a guy with superstar potential, like he was when he was with the White Sox. This is a guy who must really be disappointed by the arrival of Esteban Loaiza, who pushed him out of the rotation in Chicago, and probably is doing it again here, since he probably would have won the 5th spot, if not for that acquisition (particularly because F-Rob liked what he saw from Rauch last year). As is, he's a sleeper to break into the rotation out of spring training, and if he does, it will be at the expense of Zach Day.

Our starting pitching may not have any superstars, but it's also not bad. What our pitching staff lacks is depth, particularly by the time you get to the minor league system. The only guy in our entire system right now with potential to be very good at the major league level is LHP Mike Hinkley, who White thinks absolutely needs a major league look this season. He didn't bring up Clint Everts, but it's unsurprising, since the guy is a complete unknown, recovering from Tommy John surgery (the only thing we know now is that we won't see him in 2005).

Depth plagues our entire organization. He said it was clear that when Omar Minaya was GM, he gutted the farm system, because those were the only valuable bargaining chips that he had, in order to remain competitive. Before Minaya, the Expos were becoming more and more statistically oriented (i.e., a Moneyball team). When MLB put Omar in charge, he reversed that course, because he's a gut instinct / 5 tools guy, who wants absolutely no part of any spreadsheets being placed in front of him. He also was willing to take big risks and come up a big loser on someone, preferring, for example, someone he felt had a chance to be a #1, even if he also had a big chance to become a bust, over someone he knew would be a #3, but probably would never be much more.

Minaya shouldn't take the full blame for the poor depth throughout the organization, though. His strategy for keeping us competitive was fine, but it's MLB's fault that "this team is not going to be as good as they could have been", because, for all the talent taken out of the system, there was virtually nothing put back into it. MLB would never pony up for anyone who required any sort of signing bonus, so we haven't been able to do well in the draft.

Whatever the reasons, the end result isn't pretty. Our minor league system does deserve to be ranked among the worst in baseball, particularly at the lower levels. He mentioned that the official scorer of the class A Potomac Cannons was in the room, and offered the advice, "Good Luck!" We really do only have 2 or 3 prospects who are way above average, Hinkley being one, and Larry Broadway (a power hitting 1B we've mentioned before) being another.

He spent some time on the starting lineup. Vidro should be Vidro, good for about 20 HRs and overall solid play. Brian Schneider is solid, but not spectacular (except on defense). Wilkerson is the one guy who does it all, currently, and is the only real star in the group. The issues with Castilla are obvious, the fact that he looked pretty bad outside of Coors last year, and that he's had a lot of bad years recently. Bowden didn't miss that. But, Castilla was brought in because he's a personality. He's already got a career in broadcasting, having been a color commentator for playoff games and the World Series, for Mexican Television. Supposedly, he's really good. He's certainly expected to provide some veteran leadership, and help some of the younger team members grow. White didn't say much about Guzman, other than the obvious, that he doesn't hit much.

White said, "Nick Johnson is theoretically the first baseman. If you're a moneyball kind of guy, you used to love Nick Johnson. Now, he still knows how to take a walk, but he seems to have forgotten the rest of it." The question is, if he doesn't get traded, whether Nick Johnson will play, or get benched in favor of Wilkerson playing first base. Frank Robinson's ideal lineup would include Johnson, Wilkerson and Endy Chavez. Robinson now loves Chavez because of the way he responded last year at this time, when Robinson hated him. Basically, he needed a ton of plate discipline, and he took it seriously, and made big strides at taking walks, in Frank's mind, at the very least. "Frank rewards people who are in his favor this week." Basically, if you play hard and play 'the right way', you'll make him happy, even if you don't always perform so well.

Apparently, Jose Guillen is a great guy. For example, he goes out of his way for people working at the ballpark and for the team, and has regularly gone out of his way for people like secretaries, buying them things they need, etc. There may be two sides to the guy, but it sounded like White likes him, and he'll do fine under Robinson.

Talking about players who might make the 25-man roster, White likes Ryan Church, and thinks he'd be good, but needs an everyday job. If he somehow were able to beat out both Sledge and Chavez for the third outfield spot, that'd be good for him, but it wouldn't make any sense for his development to be the 5th outfielder, and warm the bench.

He felt similarly about Brendan Harris, who is "an average speed white guy, but he produces... a decent little player". He's major-league ready, but since his two primary positions are taken by Vidro and Castilla, he's better off in AAA than warming the bench, even though he could very well end up a utility infielder.

Who are natural rivals for the Nats? White said to forget about the Orioles and the Phillies. It's the Marlins! The players despise the organization (he said they think it is evil), because of the way things were handled when Loria sold the Expos to MLB and bought the Marlins. Loria stole away anyone good from the Expos organization who had any clue, and was pretty unfair about it, using the fact that "MLB couldn't guarantee jobs for those people", which was somewhat disingenuous. Basically, Loria caused much of the organizations' front office to be gutted in a way that should never have happened.

He talked a lot about team ownership. He thinks that it's going to get pretty complicated, and that there's no way it will be settled in the first half of the season, and said that "we might even get through the whole year". He predicts that the ownership group that wins the team is likely not the be anyone we've heard of so far. There may end up being a big chain of moves that is complicated to pull off. He's heard some amazing rumors, one, for example, having Larry Lucchino coming back. Associated with that seemed to be a complex chain of events that would include a swap of L.A. for Boston (John Henry is from L.A. and Frank McCourt is from Boston, owns the land that a new park would probably be built on and lost out on that bidding in the weird deal that went down).

That rumor had a lot of facets to it. L.A. and Boston have vastly different values, because of NESN, the sports network that the Red Sox own outright. There's talk of John Henry selling this off, making a ton of money and balancing out the value of the two franchises. What would happen to NESN? The rumor there is pretty interesting... people are looking into building a big conglomerate mega-baseball cable outlet that covers the east coast. It would basically see YES, NESN and whatever network is being put together for the Nationals / Orioles being brought in under one parent company.

As for other ownership possibilities, there are feelers out to Cal Ripkin, who wouldn't be a majority shareholder, but would be the face of the organization, with really big wallets in the background. The question Ripkin's got to be wrestling with is "do you dive right in there and stick it to Angelos?"

Frank Robinson's also expressed interest in being an owner, which is part of the reason why he originally only wanted to stay on for a year. It sounds like that has slacked off some. White recounted an anecdote of a game where Robinson's comp seats were being occupied by some mega-celebs with deep, deep pockets, including Bill Cosby. White knew F-Rob was interested in ownership, and asked about those people sitting in the seats (which would definitely make MLB excited, as they're in dire need of good minority ownership groups). Robinson's answer was, "If you ask your friends for money, you lose your friends." It didn't sound like he'd really be in the mix.

Somewhere in there, he talked about Northern New Jersey being a more fertile baseball market than even Washington. He said that Loria has been pushing to get into that market for quite a long time, but probably will never get it, because not only do the ex-Expos hate him, but so do most of the rest of the owners. But, there is some possibility that someone will eventually get that territory, and White thinks it would be far more effective than the luxury tax for enforcing competitive balance. He thinks it would be a good idea to split any sort of expansion fee between the Yankees and the Mets, and be done with it. Even so, the Yankees will still be the Yankees, and will still have plenty of fans supporting them in N.J.

There were some interesting discussions in the Q+A period. Someone asked about whether a return to a 4-man rotation would ever make sense. White thinks that the 4 man rotation probably wouldn't be a bad thing for the game or for too many individuals, but it would be incredibly difficult to do. He thinks that, in order to do this effectively, an organization would have to make a big transition to get people adjusted to it, starting by putting a 4 man rotation in rookie ball, and then the next year instituting it in AA, and so on up to the bigs. Clearly, the people left in the rotation who didn't work their way up through the system would also need their endurance built over a period of time as well.

Here, there was a long discussion about teams babying pitchers too much in the minors, because the investments are getting so big. It makes it difficult to build the kind of endurance needed for a 4-man rotation, when every prospect is pitched so little, for fear of hurting them. It also means, they have to develop with far less opportunity to get up there and throw in a game situation. Every organization now has a binder for each player, with detailed information of how much he's allowed to pitch, getting down to, for example, how many breaking pitches of each type he's allowed to throw in each game.

There's a problem here, not only in getting to a 4 man rotation, there's a problem in promoting people into the bigs for a full season. By August, most such players hit an inevitable wall, and their numbers start declining, because they've never done anything like it before.

As a tangent here, he pointed out that pretty much all major league pitchers are starters in the minors. Closers in the minors don't turn into good major league closers. "If you see someone with 30 saves in the minor leagues, ignore him. He's got one pitch, probably a curve". Clearly, success for minor league closers has a lot to do with many minor leaguers having big trouble with breaking pitches.

He was also asked about the draft, and said that our first pick will probably have to be for a pitcher out of college. Ultimately, our depth in pitching is worse in the minors than our offensive depth. But, whether we improve our minors quickly will have more to do with how well we pick in later rounds.

SABR meeting report, part 1 (Kevin Uhlich)

2005-01-30T00:15:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I went to the annual meeting of the D.C. chapter of SABR (the Society for American Baseball Research). There were three research presentations, three invited speakers and a couple of trivia presentations. The first speaker was Stan Brand, VP of Minor League Baseball. Second was Kevin Uhlich, special assistant to Tony Tavares, who primarily handles team operations. Third was USA Today Sports Weekly senior editor Paul White, who discussed our roster and our farm system. I also met loyal reader Backward K and Colin Mills, who is running the Nats fan club.

All three speakers were great. Brand talked about the economics of minor league ball. He talked about the recent history of the agreement between the Majors and the Minors, and how the current minor league system is made possible by the anti-trust exemption (because it is the reason for the reserve clause, without which you'd have free agency earlier in people's careers, and the economics just wouldn't work for the current system). I'll cover Paul White's talk tonight.

Kevin Uhlich gave an overview of the business side of the team. He started by giving his history with Baseball, which started as a batboy for the Angels when he was 16. After a short detour in radio, he came back to the Angels organization and moved to operations. He moved up the rung, ending up as a VP under Tony Tavares. When Tavares left, he took over as president, and stayed there until a few months after Disney sold the team. While at the helm of the Angels, he was responsible for the large amount of red in the uniform, the rise of the rally monkey and a world series ring, which he sported on his right hand.

He then talked about how Tavares coaxed him to do this, when he was enjoying a year off, and contemplating a job in football. He then talked about everything that the organization has done so far, including hiring, ticket sales and the RFK renovation (among other things).

The RFK renovation is going better than could be expected, given the massively compressed time frame. RFK was actually in reasonable shape... they were expecting, particularly because of our climate, for many things to be wrong, such as the concrete to be all cracked and broken.

The sliding seats had been damaged from years of people shaking the seats at football games, but now work as originally designed, sliding back and forth "like butter". The dugouts have been expanded, they're building bullpens, the sprinklers and drainage system didn't work, the soil needed replacing, the press box needed replacing, there was no office space inside the stadium (thus the trailers), the concession facilities needed $2M of work, ...

They've made a massive amount of progress, and should have no problems getting the thing done in time. The field is already 80% done, despite the weather, thanks to the "field guru" from Chicago, I think he said his name was Roger Bosner (but a web search turned up nothing). They've got drainage and sprinklers done, and will be laying grass the first week of March. Bosner is very confident that their plan for converting the infield for D.C. United will work like a charm, but Uhlich will be skeptical until he sees it work.

He also talked about the "Ring of Stars", the banners celebrating local sports legends. As the Post reported, this has disappeared. The reason is because the ring takes up primo advertising space they need to sell. But, they have got the support of Charlie Brotman (former Senators PA announcer), who is responsible for the Ring of Stars. What they're going to do is find a prominent place in RFK to hang at least some of them, and then they will take them and display them in the new stadium. By the way, Charlie Brotman is confirmed as the P.A. announcer for the exhibition game against the Mets and the home opener, at least.

Uhlich's enthusiasm for embracing franchise, the area and the history of both was perfectly clear, not just in his concern for the Ring of Stars, but in the anecdotes he told about his experiences to date. He is quite fond of the city, particularly its architecture. He likes how nothing is built taller than the monument, so even when you're downtown, you don't feel like you're downtown. But, he doesn't get the diagonal roads (who does?), and was thrown off by having the same address exist in multiple parts of the city. He and the rest of the temporary team (Tavares and Bowden) would love to continue doing the job when new owners come on, but are realistic, and understand that new owners may very well want to install their own guys in those key positions.

For the exhibition game, he confirmed that he had originally wanted to get the Yankees, so they could finish the game that never got finished when the Senators moved to Texas (due to fans rushing the field with one out left, with the Senators up two runs). He was hoping to get Senators that are still around to go take their positions with the appropriate Nats starter.

The guy who was on the mound when the fans rushed the field still has the ball that was in his hand at the time. Uhlich still wants to get him to bring it down and present it to the President, so that ball can be the first pitch, thus bridging the past to the present.

He talked about the rich history of the President throwing out the first pitch, even though, as is fitting to his role, he also sees it as an operational nightmare. He hopes it goes back to being an annual tradition, and is how MLB kicks off the season every year, even if, due to the RFK renovations, they couldn't play the team's first game in Washington.

Also, he talked about how, in 1904, the Washington franchise was the first to wear their nickname on their Jerseys, when they put "Nationals" on it. The first game was on April 14th 1904, meaning that the Nationals will return 101 years to the day of their original premiere.

The TV and radio deals are both close to being announced, even though the radio deal has indeed unraveled a bit. After the talk, he said that they haven't done anything in the way of selecting the radio team... he's got several boxes of tapes that he'll go through, but, while the team will pick the person, they want to give a lot of weight to the desires of the station they end up using.

Of course, Uhlich talked about tickets. Once they merged the Washington Baseball Club and MLB lists, they had 21,000 names on the ticket list. When the Post reporter called and asked if someone messed up, he said they didn't at all, it was a simple case of supply and demand. He reiterated what was reported, that there are 5,000 infield box seats, and there were 10,000 requested. Plus, most people had been on one of the two lists giving them "priority". And, of course, DC has a much, much larger VIP list than most teams (and certainly small market teams).

But, the VIPs didn't get all the best seats. They spread out the VIPs and have seats for the general public in every section, even in the front rows of every section. They've done their best to give the general public a good experience.

But, he said that there are far more good seats in RFK than people may realize. He thinks that RFK is poorly numbered. When people hear they have seats in the 300s, they expect to have nose bleeds, but in RFK they're good seats in the main bowl.

While due to the construction, they can't have an open house, they are being as accommodating as they can be with angry fans. They have taken some people to see their seats, but can only do so on a case by case basis.

Someone complained about not being able to get a refund on their $300 deposit. Uhlich explained their refund policy. If you listed three preferences, and you didn't get one of your preferences, they'll work with you. They'll try to get you into a seat after the 4th, or, if nothing they can do makes you happy, they'll give you the refund. But, if you got a seat in your third preference section, they'd appreciate you honoring the preference.

They can't do much for people unhappy with their seats until they know who is or isn't paying for seats (thus, Feb. 4). Even then, they "Can't promise anyone is going to move, but we're going to do our best".

When they know exactly what seats are gone to full season holders, they can open up ticket sales for mini and partial plans, so they'll probably come the week of February 4th. As for single game ticket sales, they will probably go on sale the second Saturday in March, and Uhlich hopes to have a festival around it.

He talked a bit about the new stadium, and alluded to the politics, but didn't address them or the ownership issue directly, beyond saying that they believe in local ownership, and that, the one ownership group he's met (the Malek group) would make wonderful owners. He likes the Anacostia site and pointing the stadium to have a view of the monuments, and reinforced the recent Post article, which said that nobody in the city or in the organization wants another Camden Cookie Cutter. He wants the new stadium to set a new benchmark for how stadiums get integrated into the area.

The funniest moment was in the Q+A period, one guy told a story about how the Expos would cart in local prisoners to make Olympic Stadium appear to be a more popular place. The prisoners wouldn't be unshackled, and they would, on cue, clang their shackles on the seat in front of them, since they couldn't clap. To that, Uhlich said, "That's not in our marketing plan".

All in all, Uhlich was a charismatic guy who is clearly doing a great job at an impossible task. He cares a lot about fans, and was happy to talk to the Colin Mills afterward about working with the Fan Club. He even said he'd try to help the fan club arrange tickets for the game on April 4.

Saturday activities

2005-01-28T10:30:00.000-05:00

The D.C. chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is having their annual winter meeting tomorrow, at the Key Bridge Holiday Inn, in Rosslyn. Tony Tavares is a special speaker, and there will be research presentations, etc. It's $30 at the door and runs from 9:30 till 4:30.

I'm going to be going to this. If people are interested in meeting up, I think drinks and dinner afterward would be good. Just look for me at the convention. There's a small picture of me here. Or, you can email me today, and I'll send you my cel number so that we can coordinate once we get there. I suspect being a Holiday Inn, they'll have free wireless, so you probably could also email me tomorrow. See the comments of my last post for my email address.

For people who are excited to meet the players, Brad Wilkerson and Brian Schneider will be at the D.C. Health and Fitness Expo from 3pm till 5pm tomorrow. That event is being held at the new convention center.

I suspect you'll have to get there quite a bit earlier than 3 to stand in line to meet the players. I remember standing in line for hours to meet Bucky Dent as a kid... I never did get to meet him, because one of my parents took me out of line after a few hours, but my grandfather kept waiting, and eventually got me an autographed picture that I still have to this day, even though it's pretty banged up.

Ticket update

2005-01-27T23:15:00.000-05:00

It looks like I'll be blogging from the Diamond Boxes until the cost drives me into bankruptcy, and they come repossess my computers!

The Nats ticket office had sympathy for that snafu that befell me, and found someone who wasn't going to keep their seats. I ended up with two seats in section 113 (first base side). I'm in row 7 (there are 10 rows in that section).

Of course, I shouldn't really spend such a tremendous amount of money on these seats, so people who want to pay to go to an occasional game in my place and are willing to pay face price should let me know in private. Ultimately, I'd like to unload about 1/2 the dates on the calendar, primarily weekday games, and certainly not opening day, or anything like that.

All in all, I'm very happy, but still a bit apprehensive about the possibility of having to eat thousands of dollars I don't really want to eat :-)

Cellar Dwellin' with PECOTA?

2005-01-26T14:45:00.000-05:00

My ticket snafu hasn't been resolved yet. I haven't heard anything since Monday night other than, "sit tight". But, in the meantime, I got inspired to post again because Baseball Prospectus released their PECOTA projections for the 2005 season. Since it's a subscription service, you won't see me regurgitating all the raw data.

Before I look at their projections, though, I'd like to say thanks for the nod this blog got in the Washington Post, while I was off pouting about my ticket situation.

Their projections are a useful way to compare teams, except that their projections didn't capture the last week or so of transactions. Here are the problems I see with their projections in the NL East:

Loaiza and Osuna are not considered in the analysis of the Nationals.
Delgado is not considered in the analysis of the Marlins.
Worse, Delgado is credited to the Mets!
Smoltz' projection is befitting a closer, not a starter, to the detriment of the Braves.

Without adjusting for those people, here is how PECOTA projects the division (remember, VORP is a relative indication of total value towards winning):

Mets (596.8)
Phillies (538.6)
Braves (448.7)
Nationals (437.4)
Marlins (434.9)

Adding in Delgado to the Marlins would seem to bump them up to about 60 points (Delgado himself is worth about a 45, then he'd probably replace a corresponding value of about -15). If we can just trade Delgado's VORP for Mientkiewicz, the Mets only drop about 30, and the number is probably less considering that he'll play a full year for NY, whereas he'd be sharing duties should he remain in Boston. Let's give them a -25.

PECOTA actually thinks our entire pitching staff is "better than replacement level", which is good, but adding in Osuna's 22.9 and Loaiza's 17.9 doesn't offset any negative numbers. In fact, Loaiza's projected value probably balances out a nearly similar effort from other starters. I think we would gain no more than 30 points from these two additions. A +30 for us.

Smoltz is a bit of a wild card. Just in a closer role, he'd rack up a 20.8 VORP. I get the feeling that PECOTA would have projected him above a 40 if he'd been considered a starter. Let's say +20 for ATL.

Adjusting for this, we get:

Mets (571.8)
Phillies (538.6)
Marlins (494.9)
Braves (468.7)
Nationals (467.4)

One way or another, we're clearly going to have to fight hard not to end up in the basement.

Not only are these numbers just projections, I do think these numbers are really only valid for projecting possible 1st half performance. They can't take into account what moves are going to be made in the middle of the summer, which can have a big impact.

Interestingly enough, while PECOTA doesn't think our rotation has a superstar, it's in line with everyone except the Mets. And, our bullpen gets a lot of credit in comparison... it's the thing balancing out the fact that PECOTA thinks we have a horrible offense. Let's look a bit closer.

Without adjusting for recent additions, here's what the system thought about overall pitching staffs:

Mets (256.4)
Phillies (231.7)
Nationals (224.6)
Marlins (218.9)
Braves (178.7)

Once you add in Osuna and Loaiza, we look to have the #2 pitching staff overall. Just looking at the core set of starters, we rate #3, behind NY and FLA (though Smoltz brings ATL up above us, if I'm right about him). But, PECOTA doesn't think Armas is going to pitch very much, so if he's healthy and effective, we might not just have the second best pitching staff and bullpen, we might have the second-best rotation.

The offensive picture is bleak. Here are the rankings, before adding in Delgado:

Mets (340.4)
Phillies (306.9)
Braves (270.0)
Marlins (218.9)
Nationals (212.8)

Once you credit Florida for Delgado, we're way behind everyone else in terms of offense. Clearly, PECOTA doesn't like the Guzman and Castilla signings any more than we do (Castilla is projected to be the bigger bust for 2005, having a projected VORP just barely above 0).

And, to think, some people on the Ballpark Guys forum took offense to my calling our offense anemic! At least I have the best statistical projection model to date on my side!

Talk me off the ledge... or convince me to jump!

2005-01-24T18:00:00.000-05:00

Update (10 PM): The lady I talked to in the ticket office insists they did give priority to people who signed up early. I tend to believe her (I probably shouldn't have jumped the gun in reporting this before talking to a human myself). While this has restored my faith in the club, I believe there was still something a bit wrong with the process, though. More info in the comments, and I'll continue to update as I learn more, or as my status changes.

I just saw my season ticket invoice. I am seriously thinking about canceling, and stopping this blog in disgust.

I was one of the people who signed up long, long ago with the Washington Baseball club. I was in the group that was supposed to get priority treatment. According to message boards where people have talked to a human being:

When I talked to the TO they didn't deny that the group 1s and group 2s were simply tossed in together and one drawing was performed.

What does this mean to me? I got about the worst possible seats in my third choice seating area.

My seats are in Row 2 of section 227, which is in the right field corner, pretty much. Click on this morning's picture to see where that is, but it's nowhere near where I wanted to be. If I had to get my third choice, one would expect they'd at least give me a good seat in my third choice, like somewhere in section 126.

Now, I'm sure TicketMaster doesn't know the amount of time and energy that I've spent on this team, nor do they care. But it still pisses me off that they didn't actually give me any priority at all for being long-suffering loyal D.C. baseball fan. I was basically willing to pay whatever price for great seats. I'm not happy about paying $35 a seat for crap, when I was promised priority that I didn't get. Pissing me off even more, I tried calling the ticket office, and it just rang and rang.

Anyway, I'm seriously considering canceling my order, and just moving on with my life. Please let me know your thoughts... what would you do? Talk me into it or out of it, as your opinion may warrant. I'll monitor this discussion, but I may or may not post again, depending on how I feel when I get a bit farther away from this.

It's quiet

2005-01-24T06:45:00.000-05:00

It was another quiet weekend. The Post looked at some of the 15,000+ people who have applied for 45 front office jobs. They also had a mildly amusing look at the 2005 season, featuring gems such as:

April 14: As Mayor Anthony Williams prepares to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before the Nationals home opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks, D.C. Council Chairman Linda Cropp blindsides him, snatches the ball and hurls it into the RFK stands. The Nats win, 3-2, on a double that lands in a pothole in left field and gets stuck.

On Friday, MLB published an update on the winter leagues, mentioning that Ayala is getting pounded, with opponents hitting .313 off of him. Guzman is also doing poorly, hitting a mere 2 for 22.

The new seating diagram for RFK mentioned in Friday's comments is also making me salivate... season ticket seat assignments (and, sadly, invoices) should arrive this week. Click the picture for a bigger version.

Bush-league ballgame

2005-01-21T05:00:00.000-05:00

George Bush is confirmed to be throwing out the first pitch at our home opener on April 14th. My 6 year old daughter will sure be excited to see the President. Mayor Williams will probably get the nod for the exhibition game on April 3rd.

In other news, the Post looks at RFK, and declares that it will be neutral, or at least pretty close. I tend to agree, even though the general word is that it will play as a bit of a pitcher's park. I think the edge will be slight.

Antonio Osuna signs

2005-01-20T05:45:00.000-05:00

Osuna agreed to a one year, $.8M deal, and was attracted mainly by the other mexicans on the team (Castilla, Ayala, Loaiza). The downside to the signing is that it pushed Sun Woo Kim off the 40-man roster, who is one of those who hasn't yet lived up to his potential, but still has the potential for extremely high upside.

Osuna only pitched a mere 36 2/3 innings last year for San Diego, posting a 2.45 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, .232 BAA, 8.84 K/9 and a 12.2 VORP, which gave him a very nice VORP rate for the time he was pitching (2.99 VORP per 9 IP), but it's a small sample size, due to time on the DL (he normally goes about 65 innings per year). In the two years prior, he put up about the same VORP over 20-30 more innings, which means that we shouldn't expect him to quite match last year's numbers. But lifetime, he still looks decent with a 3.50 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, .235 BAA and 9.27 K/9.

I expect he'll do better than that career line for ERA, a bit worse on K/9 and somewhere right around it for everything else. All in all, he should be a solid reliever, though he's a bit of a DL risk.

For those of us who ordered season tickets and were wondering why the additional delay in getting seat assignments, apparently Ticketmaster was delayed due to its handling inauguration tickets. Invoices will be put in the mail from Friday to Tuesday, so everyone should get them next week.

Partial ticket plans still haven't been announced, but an announcement is expected in less than two weeks.

It's official :-(

2005-01-19T09:55:00.000-05:00

"E Lo" is signed. Bowden designated Brandon Watson for assignment, who never would have made the 25-man roster anyway.

If we weren't already the laughing stock of the statistically-inclined baseball world, we are now!

HelLoaiza (damnit)

2005-01-19T00:45:00.000-05:00

Apparently, pending results of a physical, Bowden signed Loaiza for "a $2.9M deal that includes incentives". My first thought was honestly, "I should pass on my season tickets".

What does the rotation look like, then? Probably Hernandez, Ohka, Armas, Loaiza, Day. Patterson, Rauch and Hinkley all have some small chance of pushing someone out, but I wouldn't count on it. Patterson and Rauch will likely end up in the bullpen, and I suspect Hinkley will spend another year in AAA.

I wouldn't feel so bad if Loaiza were destined for the pen. But there's no way that'll happen, I fear.

The article mentions that we're getting close with another option for the pen, as Bowden is also talking major league deal for Osuna now, instead of a minor league deal. I think that's a reasonable move, as I've said before. Osuna definitely adds some depth we've been lacking.

The money will roll right in

2005-01-18T22:30:00.000-05:00

Applications for purchasing the Nats must be submitted by January 31, in an effort to get the team sold by opening day.

Also, the deadline has passed for submitting private financing packages. Eight groups submitted offers falling into three categories: Parking revenues in exchange for cash, development rights for nearby land in exchange for cash, and tax sheltering investment schemes. I predict that any scheme where investors make out via tax shelters will be unpopular with tax payers, and are non-starters. The other two seem reasonable... one of the development projects would build a town center just north of the park (right across the street from it and the metro stop there). They would provide enough money to cover many infrastructure costs, too. I suspect the city will go for that one, and maybe even a parking plan. As I've said before, it's hard to say that the city is going to get the best possible deal, considering the pressure to get something done here.

Also, the official spring training schedule for 2005 has been released. Included is confirmation that the RFK exhibition game on Sunday, April 3, with game time at 1:05pm.

Ohka avoids arbitration

2005-01-18T18:45:00.000-05:00

Tomo Ohka agreed to a contract for 1 year and 2.75M. Currently, our opening day roster will cost us a shade under $44M, with our two highest paid players being Livan Hernandez at $8M and Jose Vidro at $7M.

Also, the Post has a good introduction to why our farm system sucks.

Anger Management is great!

2005-01-17T10:55:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not talking about the banal movie where Adam Sandler proposes to his girlfriend at a Yankees game. here's an article on Jose Guillen, in which he expresses that very sentiment, although he isn't at all remorseful for "the incident". I think we should cut the guy some slack, and welcome him with open arms.

Pitching, Pitching, Pitching

2005-01-17T06:50:00.000-05:00

In today's Post article that reports on the Armas contract for 2005, they mention a couple of other nuggets. First, they continue to talk with Loaiza's agent... 3 times on Saturday and once on Sunday. Ugh. I'd stick the guy in the bullpen.

Second, they are talking to Antonio Osuna about a minor league deal. He's had some on-and-off groin injuries, but has pitched reasonably well on the whole, when he pitches.

I remember watching him in his short stint with the Yankees. He started off looking pretty good for a middle reliever, then seemed to crack under the pressure of being in NY. He did well for San Diego last year, but he didn't pitch much (36.7 IP, 1.17 WHIP, 2.45 ERA). I think he'll be a nice pick-up, and expect he'll have a good shot of ending up in the bullpen out of spring traning, if he's healthy, particularly since that's a place where we lack quality depth.

Only one arbitration case...

2005-01-16T22:45:00.000-05:00

The Nats signed Tony Armas Jr. to a 1 year, $2.26M contract. They signed Nick Johnson to a 1 year, $1.45M contract. The only hold-out for arbitration eligible players under team control is Tomo Ohka, who Bowden has previously said isn't going to come to terms before that happens.

It was really a slow weekend: The TV deal is still in progress. The Post had a good article about the RFK renovation. And, they had a long article recommending road trips for Nats fans.

Sosa for Sledge

2005-01-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

It's nice of Blogger to finally let me post (the few times I tried yesterday, I was getting a page not found error). There is talk of the Nats once again pursuing Larkin for a bench role, since no one is going to offer him a starting job (a shame, since he's better than our starter). It sounds like it may either be Nats or retirement for him.

The major rumor from yesterday is that talk of a trade for Sosa is happening again. According to some sources, we may be willing to pick up some of Sosa's salary. Other sources report that we'll take him off the Cubs' hands, as long as it costs us nothing.

I can't believe talks would turn back on if we hadn't budged from our position, which, from the Cubs' perspective is 100% unreasonable. Since we're probably not going to end up breaking the bank for pitching (there's not much out there worth having, even through trade), and since Bowden has a wad of cash burning a hole in his pocket, this all seems a lot more realistic to me than it did a month ago.

I already commented on this rumor when talk was for Wilkerson, not Sledge. That was a bad move from a numbers point of view, but I would have understood it from a marketing perspective. Whereas Wilkerson is clearly more valuable on the field than Sosa, Sledge is another matter. Last year, they had about even OBPs, and Sosa had an OPS that was 50 points higher. To be fair, Sledge got off to a slow start last year, but Sammy was still more valuable, even throwing out the first month.

The question is, how much will Sledge improve, and how much will Sosa decline? I think there's a good chance that if he is in an environment where he feels happy and welcome, Sosa won't be any worse than last year (by far, his worst year in a long, long time). Sledge will probably be incrementally better next year, but he's pretty much at his peak, which, while good, still isn't quite as good as Sosa in his decline. Sledge has more long-term value, since Sosa will retire within a few years, but if money weren't an issue, I think Sosa would be the choice.

And then there's the value Sosa brings to the club, simply because he's Slammin' Sammy. More people will come to see a superstar. They'll sell more jerseys. Yes, optics are incredibly important and valuable. With the Mets making so many splashy moves, bringing in Sosa will at least make it look like we're doing everything we can to not get left behind in the dust. Heck, if the Marlins land Delgato instead of the Mets, we'll need to make this move just to appear like we're keeping pace with them!

In so far as the deal goes, Sosa is owed $17M in 2005, and $18M in 2006 if he is traded. Reports are that, to get out of Chicago, Sosa is willing to budge on the 2006 numbers, but I doubt the player's union would be too happy about that. More than likely, he'd have to restructure it, deferring a big chunk of it into 2007 and maybe 2008, then sign an extension at a below-market value. That way, the dollars are nominally 2006 dollars, but really go to his 2007/2008 contract.

If something like that makes sense to all parties and actually comes to pass, I could imagine we'd ship out Sledge and a prospect to Chicago in exchange for Sosa and $9 to $10M of his salary. Then, I could see sammy getting a 2 year, $8-$12M extension keeping him in Washington through 2008, and deferring $8M of his 2006 money over two years.

From a pure perspective of production per dollar spent, this probably wouldn't be a good deal, but when you consider the offset in additional revenue, it seems like it could be a reasonable move. It certainly wouldn't be the deal of the century, but I would probably pull the trigger, if I were Bowden.

More on Loaiza

2005-01-12T06:20:00.000-05:00

It seemed that my fellow bloggers were generally hopeful yesterday that the Loaiza situation was a rumor created by his agent, and that Bowden would be a little bit smarter than that. For example, from Ball Wonk:

Or so Barry Svrluga says. What he doesn't say, at least not out loud, is that neither Bowda nor Trader Jim confirms Svrluga's account of things.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the MLB article asserts that we're in the picture:

Jim Bowden said Loaiza is a pitcher who could "eat innings" [...] According to Bowden, the Nationals don't feel Loaiza's price should be in the same range as that of Perez or Jaret Wright [...] "If Loaiza doesn't knock his price down, we cannot compete".

If that isn't enough proof, this morning's Post confirms it:

Washington Nationals General Manager Jim Bowden spoke twice yesterday with the agent for free agent pitcher Esteban Loaiza, and the team could know whether it will land the pitcher within the next few days.

"I think it's something we'll find out soon," Bowden said.

If Bowden was willing to pay Shawn Estes about $7M for two years, I suspect that he's willing to pay the same for Loaiza, even though he seems to be looking for that on a per-year basis. I assume Loaiza isn't going to get the same kind of crazy deal that Derek Lowe got (i.e., far, far more money than he's worth), and Bowden does seem to be willing to overpay on the wrong people, so I'd say we have a good chance of landing Loaiza (my guess is 1 yr/4M or 2 yrs/7M). I'll just keep my fingers crossed hoping that he ends up in the bullpen, and performs well there, although he's more likely to push out someone who is more deserving of a chance, such as John Rauch or Mike Hinkley.`

The Post reports that Bowden is also exploring trades for Colorado's Shawn Chacon and San Diego's Brian Lawrence. Lawrence is someone I'd consider a legitimate innings eater. He has been pretty consistent the past couple of years, posting a dERA of 4.58, 4.56 and 4.07 over the last three years, which is in the same range as any of our other starters, but with 200+ innings pitched in each of those years.

The guy has no upside... he isn't expected to improve very much, but he would add more of a known element to the rotation. He's got mediocre K/9 rates, but doesn't walk more than a couple of batters a game. His WHIPs over the past three years: 1.35, 1.21, 1.31.

Chacon would be a bad move. My suspicion is that Bowden selectively recognizes the Coors effect... he didn't give Coors enough credit with Castilla, but he's going to give it too much credit with Chacon. When you look at his dERA (park adjusted, league adjusted, defense adjusted), he doesn't look so good (6.20, 4.02 and 5.47 over the last three years). WHIPs: 1.83, 1.30, 1.50.

By the way, Brian Schneider and Brad Wilkerson are going to be making their first public appearance with fans... at Space Coast stadium. In other news, it sounds like the Nats will be on WTEM, and the exhibition game on April 3rd will likely be with the Mets (yawn, let's get a team in that we're not going to see over and over again throughout the year).

Is this a bad dream?

2005-01-11T01:15:00.000-05:00

Life with Jim Bowden is far worse than any nightmare I've ever had. Just when he started saying things I could respect (such as, he's not going to pay big money for bad starting pitching), he gets worse.

Let's not even talk about the fact that he offered the miserable Shawn Estes $6 to $7M for 2 years. That's water under the bridge, as he's going to Arizona. No, my beef of the day is that we're in the mix for Loaiza. Everyone who is a regular reader knows that I am down on this guy, who has really only had one year that didn't totally suck (it just so happened that one year was outstanding). Paying this guy anything is overpaying him, even if it's a meager amount that gets up to the $3M range with performance-based incentive clauses. Plus, Loaiza would push someone who is better out of the rotation, though maybe only for part of the year.

Oh, and ESPN has updated their scouting reports for the new year. To see the reports on our players, start at the team roster page and click on the individual player names. Then, if you look down a bit under the stats, for most players you will see a "scouting report from STATS, Inc."

Meet Allen Lew

2005-01-10T02:30:00.000-05:00

The Post has a profile of Allen Lew, who is the head of the D.C. Entertainment and Sports commission. He built the convention center, and now he's renovating RFK and building a stadium in Anacostia, we hope.

There's also a tremendously interesting editorial from Ralph Nader, who suggests that D.C. should buy the team. I think it's a great idea, but I doubt the city will listen!

There hasn't been any recent on-field news of note, though it will be good to have Beltran in town frequently throughout the year (though maybe not from the perspective of the Nationals W/L record). There was a rumor coming out of Arizona that we bid on Shawn Estes and "lost" to AZ, but I don't think there's any loss in missing out on a guy who had negative VORPs the past two years, despite pitching full seasons. Not only is he worse than the average AAAA-type player, in 2003 he was a lot worse, posting the fourth-worst VORP in the league (-16.6). Why would anyone want this guy over Rauch? Okay, maybe prior to 2002 he put up numbers becoming of a #4 starter or so, but those days are long past...

Cannons in Washington

2005-01-08T03:00:00.000-05:00

If the Nats can't find a major league team for the April 3 exhibition game, the Potomac Cannons would love to play. I saw speculation that they were going to try to get the Yankees, but the Yankees and Red Sox open the season on ESPN2 that night. I wouldn't mind getting to see some of our prospects...

There's a Washington Times article today that I would have thought said the obvious... that the team will carry forward franchise records from Montreal, but will also recognize Washington baseball records that span some records that are franchise records for the Twins and Rangers (the Ravens do the same thing).

Apparently, prospects that are nearly ready for the bigs are going through a rookie orientation program here in the D.C. area, including Larry Broadway (1B), Ryan Church (OF) and Michael Hinckley (LHP). The last two certainly have a real chance of making the 25-man roster, or would if I were GM ;-)

Another winter league update

2005-01-07T14:30:00.000-05:00

When the level of competition is as low as it tends to be in the winter leagues, a good AAAA player trying to get a starting spot has no excuse for hitting under .300, IMHO. I hope that means that Endy Chavez will end up on the bench, as MLB reports that he is hitting .285/.372. His SLG happens to be .392. Actually, that OBP is okay, but the SLG is a stinker.

J.J. Davis, on the other hand, is hitting .313/.383/.595. I would love to see Chavez play the whole year in AAA, with Davis taking his spot on the roster.

Wilkerson avoids arbitration

2005-01-06T19:58:00.000-05:00

Wilkerson agreed to a one year, $3.05M deal, avoiding arbitration. The team has also posted times for most games on the official schedule. The home opener is an evening game.

Mr. T's state of the union

2005-01-06T11:05:00.000-05:00

Tony Tavares, interim president of the Nationals, gave an interview to MLB.com. It's an interesting read. He details what needs to be done at RFK, and says that the main point of the charity exhibition game before their first real game is to make sure that, if something is really wrong with the stadium they can identify it (and hopefully fix it) before opening day.

He also indicates that he expects Bowden to make a "creative move" for pitching, which should surprise nobody. I would expect that he's trying to trade Nick Johnson (and maybe then some) to a team who has a decent but not stellar starter but is looking to dump salary. Without asking the other team to kick in any money, he could probably go for someone in the 8-10M range, depending on how much he trades away. I don't know of any good candidates for a scenario like this, though. The only one that comes to mind is Kevin Brown, whom the Yankees would very much like to dump. I could see them trading Johnson and a pitcher (I'd say Ohka due to the potential for losing arbitration) and a prospect if the Yankees kick in $5-6M a year of the $15M per year he's owed. Trading away Johnson and Ohka should keep the team from going over budget. Brown seemed to be losing velocity last year. I doubt he'll be as dominant as he had once been, but in a pitcher's park in the NL, I'd bet that he can still post about a 3.30 ERA, which means he'd probably be better than Odalis Perez. I wouldn't want to

Remember, this is pure, utter speculation. Do you guys know of anyone else out there who would make a good target?

The drama will continue...

2005-01-06T08:45:00.000-05:00

From today's Post:

[Former mayor Marion Barry] plans to organize boycotts and picket lines when the newly christened Washington Nationals start playing at their temporary home at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in April.

Barry noted that Williams must return to the council to seek approval for construction contracts and revenue bonds. Barry said he, for one, plans to vote no.

2005-01-05T17:30:00.000-05:00

MLB has a couple of minor pieces that are primarily fluff, but it's a slow news day, so hey. First, they have a piece on Brian Schneider, which basically just points out he is one of the best defensive catchers in baseball, and that, even though he really has only had one full year as a starter, he hits pretty well, though still has some things to work on. Second, they have a piece on Vidro, mainly saying that he's going to show up to spring training early to do extra work on his knee.

No Odalis for you

2005-01-04T19:35:00.000-05:00

It looks like Odalis has all but re-signed to the Dodgers for 3 years (ESPN reports $24M), but finalization and the announcement is waiting official completion of the Green trade.

Spring training

2005-01-04T17:10:00.000-05:00

The schedule for spring training has been announced. Our spring training facility is Space Coast stadium. You can get a great photo tour here.

Also, following up with the minor league scouting, Baseball America had a chat session that is very enlightening if you want a better sense of what we've got waiting in the wings.

Go to Nats games for free

2005-01-04T13:40:00.000-05:00

MLB.com is currently hiring for someone to be a regular columnist for the Nationals, probably primarily writing game wrap-ups. They're also looking for someone to enter in Gameday information ("stats stringer").

I'm 100% qualified for the later... I've already learned every single thing there is to know about their 'proprietary coding language'... it is very close to the Retrosheet format, for those familiar with it. I can say that you shouldn't *need* to know the language... they should have a better GUI that produces the codes automatically. It's clear they don't currently have such a GUI though, because there are some plays that are scored in different ways, depending on the scorer and how he feels at the moment!

Ah, if it weren't for the day job...

Top 10 Nationals Prospects

2005-01-04T03:45:00.000-05:00

Baseball America lists our top 10 prospects. Getting a scouting report on each will cost you extra. I guess I was duty-bound to pony up for that service and report back to you the gist of what I learned.

Overall, about five are major league-ready, or at least close (i.e., if they have a good year, expect a late-season callup). The rest have a good way to go, still. The fact that so many people in our top 10 are recent draftees, often out of high school, indicates that we don't have much depth beyond this list, which is why our farm system ranked dead last in 2004.

Our #1 prospect is Mike Hinckley, a LHP who did very well in A and AA ball last year, allowing 2 runs or fewer in 19 of 26 starts. His K/9 ratio was 7.56 and his WHIP was about a 1.09 (don't know how many of his walks were intentional). Unlike most young leftys, he's got command of his fastball, which tops out at 94. They think as he fills out, his fastball will be faster more often. He's also got a decent curve and change-up, but they lack some consistency. He'll probably be promoted to AAA quickly, and we will probably see him called up around the end of the year, baring major disasters. Baseball America projects him to be a quality #2 or #3 type guy within a few years.

Despite a poor April coming off of injury, Larry Broadway (1B) hit .270/.362/.451 in AA last year, w/ 22 HRs. He's a power hitter who can hit for average, and is close to major-league ready. He's not a good runner, but he's good defensively. He'll start the year in AAA (New Orleans).

Ryan Church is often mentioned in our outfield logjam. In AAA last year, he hit .343/.428/.620 w/ 17 HRs. He got 63 ABs in the majors, where he only hit .175/.257/.238. If he has a strong spring and Wilkerson ends up at first, he may get platooned with Chavez (spit) or Sledge. Otherwise, I suspect they powers that be would rather have him playing every day than taking up space on the bench, so AAA seems more likely.

Clint Everts, a right handed starting pitcher, is still #4 despite the fact that he'll miss 2005 recovering from Tommy John surgery. He was our #1 prospect for the two years prior to that. In 2004 his velocity dropped to 84-88mph (down 4 mph), probably due to his elbow problems. Yet, he still did very well, thanks to a plus curve and plus change, posting a 2.45 ERA, ~1.04 WHIP and 9.98 K/9 over 110 innings. If he rebounds to his old form, he'll project to an eventual #1 type.

Brendan Harris (3B, inf) may not have Vinny Castilla's power, but he's better at hitting for average and consistently hits line drives with some power. He's got a plus arm for a third baseman. Certainly a better value than Castilla, at the very least, he may end up a utility infielder, or back in AAA. Last year in AAA, he hit .311/.353/.531 in 254 ABs at Iowa and .269/.317/.454 for Edmonton (130 ABs). He didn't far as well in 9 ABs with the Cubs and 50 ABs with the Expos, hitting .169/.222/.271.

Our first round pick last year, Bill Bray was a closer at William & Mary with a 89-95mph fastball and a late-breaking slider, but the Nats like his changeup enough that they are going to try to convert him to a starter in A ball (he'll be playing locally, in Potomac). If he doesn't make it as a starter, he'll advance more quickly as a reliever.

Drafted out of high school in 2003, Daryl Thompson (RHP), isn't hitting the majors anytime soon. In 2004 he played in Low A ball, and posted a 5.08 ERA, ~1.43 WHIP and 6.90 K/9 over 103 innings, mostly as a starter. His fastball is currently in the 89-94 range, and may get faster as he fills out. He is still developing his secondary pitches (curve and change), though. Baseball America thinks his curve may become a plus pitch. He's a local boy, from Mechanicsville, Md.

Darrell Rasner (RHP) is a sinker-ball pitcher whose change and curve need work. He has no strikeout pitch, but has good control. He "turned a corner down the stretch" last year, giving up more than 1 earned run only one time in his final 11 starts, 5 of those starts coming in AA ball. Baseball America expects he might get a callup this year, but doesn't think he will ever be more than a back-of-the-rotation guy. He posted a 2.78 ERA, ~1.30 WHIP and 6.22 K/9.

Kory Casto (3B) is poor defensively. He spent 2004 adjusting to breaking balls and left-handed pitching, but was driving the ball consistently by the end of the year. He apparently has an outstanding work ethic. In low A ball, he hit .286/.337/.474, and he'll probably start out 2005 in Potomac.

Collin Balester (RHP) was drafted out of high school last year (4th round pick). He's got both command and power (his fastball is consistently 91-92mph, hitting 94-95). He's also got an average late-breaking curve, but needs to develop his changeup, and beef out a bit. He'll probably spend much of the year in low A Vermont.

MLB.com on-field overview

2005-01-02T20:10:00.000-05:00

MLB has posted an overview of what's been going on roster-wise. One interesting point is that they leave Nick Johnson off the list of starting players. They note rightly that everyone in our rotation minus Hernandez has at least some type of question mark. They massively over-credit the offensive moves Bowden has made in the offseason. Nothing new for regular blog readers, but a good overview.

By the way, the "official" URL for this blog is now www.nationalspastime.com. One reason I did this is because I may eventually move off of Blogger, though I have no plans to do so at the moment.

The Angelos travesty

2005-01-02T10:15:00.000-05:00

Apparently, Angelos' patience with MLB has been wearing thin. There are rumors that he is prepared to sue and that the state of Maryland is prepared to sue.

Many baseball fans have considered this a hollow threat, and have wondered what Angelos and the state could possibly sue over, since the Orioles clearly do not have territorial rights to Washington. I think the sense from fans is that any lawsuit either of these two groups were to bring up would be quickly viewed as frivolous and thrown out. But the Baltimore Sun offers this nugget:

Among the issues Angelos could raise in a lawsuit is whether he had been given assurances by baseball's leaders that he would not face competition inside the Washington-Baltimore market. The state of Maryland, too, could make a claim that the security of the debt it issued to construct Oriole Park could be put at risk.

I can see where each of these could potentially give leverage. In the case of Angelos, assume that there is no basis for a verbal contract (particularly, if Angelos gave nothing up in exchange for assurances that Washington wouldn't get a team). He may still be able to argue, for example, that Selig's actions have essentially defrauded Angelos. For example, if he didn't think he had a lock on the area, maybe he would have sold high in the late '90s.

Ultimately, I don't think the merits of the case matter too much. MLB is predisposed to cut a deal that is favorable to the Orioles, at the detriment of the Nationals. Let's say that Angelos settles for what MLB has on the table right now. He'll get personal assurances from MLB about sale price and revenues, which don't matter much to the Nationals unless MLB actually has to make up a shortfall somewhere, in which case other teams are affected as well.

Angelos would also get half of the television revenues from the two teams combined, even though D.C. is the larger market, and would probably get the better deal (at least, once the team has an established audience). This more or less means that the Nationals do not get to enjoy the benefits of a free market to the extent that they would otherwise be able to do... we'll always be on an even revenue footing with the Orioles (more or less), even though we are in a much larger market.

Television revenues are such a huge chunk of change that it is almost impossible to make the missing revenue up in other ways. I doubt we're going to make it up in ticket sales, particularly when the Orioles still do pretty well at Camden Yards with a ticket price that is undoubtedly much higher than ours is going to be with all of those $7 seats. Even if we can do better in the short term on radio deals and other outlets for revenue, we're not likely to make up for the lost revenue from having to share with Angelos. We might eventually be able to keep our revenues higher than his, but not by much.

So, while we're in a bigger market and will probably be responsible for a lot more revenue in the short-term than the Orioles can bring in, we're going to have trouble just getting our revenues slightly ahead of theirs, which I find particularly inequitable. And, if Angelos gets what he wants, he may end up getting 60% of the revenues from television.

That part is a bit unclear to me. From older articles, I got the impression that he might be willing to settle for 50% of the revenues, but asking for a 60% equity share in the venture, which would probably make a real difference only when he wants to sell his share of the company.

Either way, I would love to see MLB stop catering to Angelos and gives him a big goose egg. I know this is unlikely, not just because Angelos and Selig are buddies, but because it will drag out the sale of the team, potentially by years. If they give more ground than they already have, I'll be sorely disappointed!

Happy new year!

2005-01-01T13:15:00.000-05:00

The Washington Times has a piece on Frank Robinson. It's largely comprised of quotes from Robinson about how excited about the move he is, and his role as manager.

Winter league update

2004-12-30T15:30:00.000-05:00

Rotoworld is reporting that Tony Armas, Jr. pitched 5 scoreless innings in a postseason game yesterday in the Venezuelan Winter League. In 19 innings in that league, he's struck out 18, and given up only two earned runs, giving him an ERA of 0.95. While the competition is far less fierce than in the majors (particularly considering he hasn't gone more than five innings in any of those appearances), that's still a great sign.

Luis Ayala, who may end up closing for the team in 2005, has also performed well too, giving up one earned run in 8.2 innings in the Mexican Pacific League, for a 1.04 ERA.

More season ticket info

2004-12-30T13:40:00.000-05:00

According to WTOP, for those of us who have already plunked down our deposits on season tickets, we'll be getting invoices and seat assignments in mid-January (they'll be mailed between Jan. 7 and Jan. 13).

Also, the Nats will start telemarketing to try to sell season tickets, starting the 3rd week of January, with a goal of getting to about 20K seats.

Frank Robinson profile

2004-12-30T06:25:00.000-05:00

The Hardball Times has an... interesting look at manager Frank Robinson's impressive life in baseball.

Marlins trying for Perez?

2004-12-30T02:00:00.000-05:00

Bowden says that our pursuit of Odalis Perez is on life support. The news here is that his list of suitors grows... the Marlins may quietly have the inside track. Perez improves the Marlings far more than he would improve the Mets, who may still be in the running.

While we probably could have gotten Perez for $6.5M right about the time when Cropp put the team on hold, his price tag has probably gone up due to the competition, closer to the $8M range. Pay it, Jim!

On the plus side, the Post indicates that Bowden isn't likely to go after any of the remaining free agent pitchers out there. Considering they all either had a 5.00 ERA or above last year, or did not play at all, that's a good thing.

How badly do we need Odalis?

2004-12-28T01:15:00.000-05:00

I was reading an article yesterday that said the Mets are going to take a run at Odalis Perez (see 2nd blurb), trying to sell him via the "Minaya's also a Dominican" tactic that successfully lured Pedro (though, while I was writing this, articles started appearing claiming the Mets' rotation is set for 2005). Perez basically said he's looking for a contract in the range of $7.25M per year over 3 years, and I was wondering if Bowden should just be throwing the money at him now, because I think that, if he doesn't, Minaya will give him the best deal, and he'll be in New York next year.

If Baseball Prospectus 2005 were out now, this would be reasonably easy for me to answer. I'd look at all of the starting pitchers on the roster, sum up the PECOTA-projected VORPs and then look to see how our sum ranks, and figure out the level of confidence. If it seemed to be a big improvement relative to the rest of the division, I'd be all for it. Unfortunately, BP 2005 hasn't come out yet.

What I decided to do was a back-of-the-napkin analysis, based on performance over the past two years, and a bit of knowledge about the pitchers. To level the playing field, I assumed all rotations would have their starters pitch exactly 30 games over the course of the year. I took my best guess on the number of innings pitched per game started and the VORP rate (i.e., VORP/9) the player would post in 2005. This is pretty similar to my analysis early in the month based just on dERA... the dERA is well-correlated with VORP, but doesn't try to measure overall value, just the expected number of runs per inning. That is, it doesn't take into account how many innings a guy will pitch in an average outing, and there can be tremendous value in that.

I'll share all my data below, but let me start with conclusions. First, here are projected VORPs from the starting rotations w/o Odalis for all 5 teams:

Atlanta	207.1
New York	167.5
Florida	160.5
Washington	135.8
Philadelphia	135.7

The number I have the least amount of confidence in is our number. While Hernandez and Day have been pretty consistant all things considered, Ohka is a bit of a wild card, Armas is quite a wild card, and our 5th spot is a total crap shoot. I tried to be fair in my estimates (e.g., I recognized Pedro Martinez will probably have a tick up vs. his 2004 numbers if he stays healthy, but still not even approach his 2003 numbers), with a tendency toward optimism when there were widely varying years.

For Armas, I made what I feel is a conservative assumption, but there is still room for him to go down, even if he's healthy. For the fifth spot, I assumed that Patterson would get the nod. I think if Rauch gets the 5th spot, you'll see us move up to about a 155. Remember, Florida might yet slot someone useful from the minors in their 5th spot, so while we'll definitely end up better than Philly, we'll still be some way behind everyone else.

With Patterson, I have to expect that, if he can't match last year's numbers, they'll go with Rauch, who will more than make up for it. With Smoltz, it was impossible to predict how he'd convert from closer back to starter, but even if I underestimated, the Braves are just that much farther in front of everyone else.

Odalis himself is somewhat difficult to project. In 2002, he looked like an ace, even considering that he was lucky that year. In 2003, he looked neither lucky nor unlucky, and pitched well, except that he gave up way too many home runs. In 2004, he was still giving up too many home runs, but seemed more like an ace again, anyway. I more or less assumed that he would maintain his 2004 performance in 2005, instead of projecting him to do as well as he did in 2002 or to be as nondescript as he was in 2003.

Honestly, I think he may take a bit of a slide, but he is much closer to a sure thing than the back end of our current rotation. If we were to get Perez, and between Armas, Rauch and Patterson they could string together a season like the one I've projected being pessimistic for Armas, we'd still be well behind the Braves, but with a 173.7, I'd take our rotation over the Mets in a heartbeat. The overall numbers would be similar enough to make the rotations look about as good as each other, but Pedro Martinez is, by far, the biggest injury risk in that bunch.

If New York gets Perez, Trachsel probably leaves the rotation, moving them closer to Atlanta than they would be to the rest of the NL East.

Anyway, I think I see a story peering out of the numbers, as rough a guide as they are. The story is that, we have a reasonable shot of ending up with the 2nd best rotation in the NL East if we sign Odalis Perez. If we had him, we'd only need to get "very good" seasons out of any two of Perez, Armas and Rauch (I don't believe you'll ever see a good season from Patterson).

If we don't sign Perez, we could still end up in the #2 slot, but it's more of a bit more of a stretch, because it not only requires Armas to have an exceptional year, it also requires Rauch to beat Patterson handily and have a spectacular year, which is hard to project based only on scouting reports.

If Perez had more even numbers, it would be an absolute no-brainer. As is, I think it's clear that our risk level goes down with Perez, and the quality of the rotation will likely go up a reasonable amount, particularly if Patterson was the option.

If it were me, I would absolutely pay the money. If Benson can get $7M+ for 3 years, that should be about the market price for Odalis. In that light, and considering the effect it would have on the quality of the rotation compared to the rest of our division, I think it's worth it, even if we overpay a little. You wouldn't hear me complaining if we gave him 3 years at $25M.

Anyway, for those of you interested in my guessing, here are all the numbers I ran. I started out by looking at the following data from 2003 and 2004:

*Last 2 years for projected 2005 starters*
?
	2004				2003
Player	GS	IP	IP/GS	VORPr	GS	IP	IP/GS	VORPr
Odalis Perez	31	196.3	6.33	2.28	30	186.7	6.18	0.93
Washington
	2004				2003
Player	GS	IP	IP/GS	VORPr	GS	IP	IP/GS	VORPr
Livan Hernandez	35	255.0	7.29	2.06	33	233.3	7.07	2.14
Tomo Ohka	15	84.7	5.65	1.51	34	199	5.86	0.90
Tony Armas, Jr.	16	72	4.5	.64	5	31	6.2	3.08
Zach Day	19	116.7	6.14	1.67	23	131.3	5.71	1.31
John Patterson?	19	98.3	5.17	0.46	8	55.0	*	-.70
Atlanta
	2004				2003
Player	GS	IP	IP/GS	VORPr	GS	IP	IP/GS	VORPr
Tim Hudson	27	188.7	6.99	2.26	34	240	7.06	2.94
John Smoltz	0	81.7	n/a	2.94	0	64.3	n/a	4.35
Mike Hampton	29	172.3	5.94	1.27	31	155.7	5.02	.77
John Thomson	33	198.3	6.01	1.54	35	217	6.2	1.21
Horacio Ramirez	9	60.3	6.7	2.18	29	182.3	6.29	1.19
Florida
	2004				2003
Player	GS	IP	IP/GS	VORPr	GS	IP	IP/GS	VORPr
Al Leiter	30	173.7	5.79	2.39	30	154	5.13	1.83
Josh Beckett	26	156.7	6.03	1.63	23	142	6.17	2.27
A.J. Burnett	19	120	6.32	2.01	4	23	5.75	.59
Dontrelle Willis	32	197	6.16	1.24	27	160.7	5.95	2.27
Ismael Valdes?	31	170	5.48	.21	22	115	5.23	-0.40
New York
	2004				2003
Player	GS	IP	IP/GS	VORPr	GS	IP	IP/GS	VORPr
Pedro Martinez	33	217	6.33	2.28	29	186.7	6.44	3.59
Tom Glavine	33	212.3	6.43	1.78	32	183.3	5.73	.79
Victor Zambrano	22	128	5.82	1.45	28	188.3	*	1.05
Kris Benson	31	200.3	6.46	1.01	18	108.3	6.02	0.00
Steve Trachsel	33	202.7	6.14	1.15	33	204.7	6.20	1.47
Philadelphia
	2004				2003
Player	GS	IP	IP/GS	VORPr	GS	IP	IP/GS	VORPr
Jon Lieber	27	176.7	6.54	1.39	0	0	n/a	n/a
Randy Wolf	23	136.7	5.94	0.95	32	200	6.06	1.15
Vicente Padilla	20	115.3	5.77	0.85	32	208.7	6.52	1.64
Brett Myers	31	176	5.68	-0.02	32	193	6.03	1.08
Cory Lidle	10	62.3	6.23	1.72	31	192.7	6.22	-0.12

In a couple of cases, people spent a lot of time in the pen, in which case I didn't calculate IP/GS. There were a few cases where a guy came out of the pen once, and I ignored that, instead of figuring out how many innings he pitched in that one relief appearance.

After looking at these numbers and doing some other reading, I made the following guesses for 2005:

*2005 guesses for a 30-game season*
?
Player	IP/GS	VORPr	VORP
Odalis Perez	6.33	2.25	47.48
Washington
Player	IP/GS	VORPr	VORP
Livan Hernandez	7.1	2.10	49.7
Tomo Ohka	5.67	1.25	23.5
Tony Armas, Jr.	6.3	1.00	21.0
Zach Day	6.0	1.6	32.0
John Patterson	6.3	.45	9.6
Total VORP			135.8
Atlanta
Player	IP/GS	VORPr	VORP
Tim Hudson	7.0	2.5	58.3
John Smoltz	6.3	2.3	48.3
Mike Hampton	6.0	1.25	25
John Thomson	6.2	1.5	31
Horacio Ramirez	6.67	2.0	44.5
Total VORP			207.1
Florida
Player	IP/GS	VORPr	VORP
Al Leiter	4.75	2.4	38.0
Josh Beckett	6.1	2.1	42.7
A.J. Burnett	6.33	2.0	42.2
Dontrelle Willis	6.1	1.75	35.6
Ismael Valdes?	5.5	0.0	0.0
Total VORP			160.5
New York
Player	IP/GS	VORPr	VORP
Pedro Martinez	6.33	2.75	58.0
Tom Glavine	6.33	1.5	31.7
Victor Zambrano	5.75	1.45	27.8
Kris Benson	6.33	1.0	21.1
Steve Trachsel	6.2	1.4	28.9
Total VORP			167.5
Philadelphia
Player	IP/GS	VORPr	VORP
Jon Lieber	6.67	1.5	33.4
Randy Wolf	6.0	1.0	20.0
Vicente Padilla	6.25	1.25	26.0
Brett Myers	6.0	1.0	20.0
Cory Lidle	6.23	1.75	36.3
Total VORP			135.7

You can probably question a lot of the guesses. For many of them, I focused on the last two years of numbers, but also looked beyond them. Feel free to change things around and draw your own conclusions as a result.

2004 Recap

2004-12-27T10:34:00.000-05:00

The official Nationals site has an interesting month-by-month recap of the organizations 2004, focusing mainly on the field.

It mentions Ohka batting 8th on May 30th, when he went 0-2. Apparently, this was the first time that a pitcher batted somewhere other than 9th since Matt Morris, on September 27, 1998.

Post profiles Bowden

2004-12-25T21:00:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm posting on xmas. I don't want you to miss these great articles when you finally make it back to your computer ;-)
The Post has a bit of background on team GM Jim Bowden. It is interesting to read... he comes across as someone who gets off on the thrill of making deals, and isn't as good at interacting with people. I think he's clearly a smart guy, and, while you won't get it in this article, I hope that we can eventually get more insight into his thinking on some of the moves he has made.

By the way, while not Nationals news, MLB has a good article about some of the best players that won't ever make the hall of fame, because their careers were too short.

Batting Practice jersey

2004-12-24T14:15:00.000-05:00

The online store now has the batting practice jersey, along with a drawing of it. Click on the image for a larger version.

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Scrooge has nothing on this guy

2004-12-24T10:45:00.000-05:00

In other Christmas-y news, potential owners are jockeying to be the one to get the only 300M+ toy that they have in stock. Local favorite Fred Malek has already plunked down his deposit.

Unfortunately, Ebenezer Angelos is whispering to everyone in sight that he's "prepared to sue" if MLB doesn't give him what he wants... and what he wants is not just some ridiculous value guarantees, but also more than half of the television revenues. This is a huge roadblock for ownership groups, even though Ebenezer has no territorial rights to Washington, and would probably lose any lawsuit.

And, Angelos would like to remind you that there's one more hurdle to keeping the Nationals long term. By March 15, the city CFO has to re-estimate land acquisition and infrastructure costs. If the estimate comes in over $165M, then the legislation demands the city find a new place to put a ballpark, which MLB would reject. Fortunately, the original estimate was $115M, so a nearly 50% increase is pretty unlikely.

But, the feds are in the Christmas spirit... they're going to be kicking in about $6M a year to stadium costs, via a utility tax.

Restocking the minors

2004-12-24T10:00:00.000-05:00

The Nationals signed a ton of players to minor league contracts, and invited 10 to spring training. Rickey Henderson didn't get an invite. Read the article for details on the 10 invited, and a list of the rest.

There's a fluff piece at MLB, interviewing backup infielder Jamey Carroll about Christmas. All Jamey should want for Christmas is to make the 25-man roster. Happy holidays, and all that.

Speaking of people hoping to make the roster for Christmas, the Bladen Journal, covering Bladen county, NC, has an article on Rule 5 draftee, Tyrell Godwin, the guy who can run, and that's about it. I have sympathy for the guy, and I hope since he's focused so much on his education, he becomes a better hitter, and displaces Endy Chavez...

Only one arbitration case?

2004-12-23T05:30:00.000-05:00

This morning's Post reports that Schneider signed for $2M in 2005, and that the team is close to terms with all other free agents, except Ohka, who is far enough apart to be certain for arbitration.

Ball-wonk and I in the LA Times

2004-12-23T03:00:00.000-05:00

The article is here (registration required).

I'm not all that quotable, but the reporter from the LA Times found something to salvage. Often, when the press calls, they'll go ahead and make up stuff they think is in the spirit of my babble to make me sound far more eloquent than I am. I'm amazed that the LA Times reporter didn't need to do that! I think I said that stuff, anyway...

Oh, and here is proof that I am a big dork:

They showed up the day before the meltdown, so they just went on the car yesterday.

Other news...

2004-12-22T15:35:00.000-05:00

Brian Schneider has come to terms for 2005, so won't go through arbitration. The press release does not disclose financial details, but I'm sure we'll see them in the Post soon. And, the Expos have divided up their archives and artifacts to a few Canadian organizations.

Adventures in the Trailer Park

2004-12-22T15:30:00.000-05:00

I took a trip to the team store this morning to get myself a fitted road cap and a jersey. I got there at about 10:30, and they had a line well out the door, and around the corner. They were metering people going in, and the line for the register inside the store wrapped around the entire inside. I should have brought a camera, it was quite a sight.

On display were the actual Day and Sledge uniforms that the athletes would have modeled had the ESPNZone thing happened. They looked pretty good. The links I posted last monday work again, and Ball Wonk is showing the same images. They're just drawings, though, and don't show off the gold in the design well. Here's a picture of the lettering (click for bigger picture):

The road uniform looks damn good, and has similar gold trim but I didn't buy one, so no pictures right now.

I found the patch on the home jersey really interesting (again, click for more detail):

Established 1905, eh? I'm surprised those guys in Minnesota didn't object to that.

I also sauntered over to the season ticket trailer, and had a chat with a sales rep. There's still time to change preferences, add seats, etc. before they assign seats and mail out invoices in early January. There will be some program for trading in seats to get other seats... e.g., I will want to bring a group of four people occasionally, even though I'm only buying two tickets. The rep didn't know how many extra tickets season ticket holders would be able to buy for opening day, though (they haven't gotten that far, yet). She also didn't know what was so special about the infield loge box to make it just as expensive as the field box.

This morning's news

2004-12-22T04:25:00.000-05:00

Here are tidbits scraped together from various articles in this morning's Post:

The Nationals will play the Orioles three times this year... in spring training. The first date will be March 5 at the Orioles' spring home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Then, two home games in Viera, Fla., first a split-squad game on March 13, then a game on March 25th.
Seat assignments for season tickets were expected to be out by now, but due to the downtime, it won't be until January.
Mini-plans will still go on sale in January, and single-game tickets will go on sale in February.
No deal yet with Angelos. It's still a tribute to how Bud takes care of his friends, as the post cites yet another independent legal expert saying that it is "unlikely a court would rule in his favor".
Some guy involved in the stadium timeline said finishing by '08 is pretty much out of the question, and even an '09 opening is "50-50" (though the Post believes this is a pessimistic view). The Post notes that the quickest park in recent history took 28 months from breaking ground. '09 seems more likely than anything.
I found this quote from the mysterious "highly placed baseball executive" interesting:
They were happy [with concessions] last night. Then we only get a 7-6 vote? I'm nervous about the future [in Washington]. What's the next Machiavellian twist?

Original articles here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Whew!