I've got a bad feeling about this...

Corporate ownership: one more reason why Jeff Smulyan shouldn't be the Nationals' owner.

Yeah, well, that's not surprising

Jayson Stark brings down the hammer on our favorite shortstop:

National League Least Valuable Player (LVP)
Cristian Guzman, Nationals: Of all last winter's free-agent contracts, has there been a bigger disaster than this guy? Four years, $16.8 million -- and here's what the Nationals have gotten so far, 442 at-bats into Guzman's tenure: a .217 batting average, .258 on-base percentage, .314 slugging percentage, four homers and five steals.

In the last 70 years, only three players have put up numbers that messy in that many at-bats -- Bob Lillis in 1963, Bob Boone in '84 and Hal Lanier twice ('66 and '67). We don't know what it means that all three went on to become managers. But we do know that usually in Washington, when folks are this derelict in their duty, they get impeached. So we hope the Nationals' new owners have some great connections in Congress.

Thanks go to loyal reader JD for the find.

Question

Here's (what we think is) an interesting question: if your team plays in an extreme hitters or pitchers park, are you better off building your team to take advantage of the extreme nature of the park?

Are our bats made of balsa wood?

Capitol Punishment has a great hitter-by-hitter analysis showing just how badly our guys did this year.

That got us to thinking about the whole RFK thing. We've all heard that the Nationals are last in the National League in OPS, SLG, batting average, RBIs, total bases, home runs, and hits. That's pretty pathetic. At RFK the Nationals have a .237 BA, .315 OBP, .362 SLG, and .677 OPS. What's more, the Nats as a team have hit only 44 home runs in RFK, fewer than Andrew Jones, Derrek Lee, Alex Rodriguez, and David Ortiz have hit by themselves.

But the story is different when the Nationals play on the road. If we count only road stats, the Nationals generally are somewhere in the 7 to 9 range in the National League in hitting, depending on the category. The Nationals' road line isn't great, but much better than it is at home: .266/.329/.407/.736.

We suspected that the Nationals have let RFK get into their heads, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Other teams playing in RFK have an OPS that's very similar to the Nationals' home OPS. Whereas the Nationals' home OPS is .677, other teams playing in RFK have an OPS of .681.

This all leads to the conclusion (at least in our feeble minds) that the Nationals need a lot of help offensively, but that RFK is about as bad for hitters as we all thought it was. Maybe the team will move in the fences next year...

Power Surge

What is going on? Why are the Nationals suddenly pounding the ball? 26 runs in three games? It wasn't too long ago when it would take us 7 games to score 26 runs. Whatever the cause, the Nationals beat the Marlins last night 11-7 to sweep the series and ensure that they will do no worse than finish .500.

Nick Johnson and Preston Wilson were the stars, driving in 4 and 5 runs, respectively. Assuming Johnson is healthy next year, it sure would be nice to see him and Ryan Zimmerman anchoring the infield. Zimmerman was 2-4, and he is now hitting .417. His more relevant numbers are awesome: .420 OBP, .604 SLG, 1.024 OPS.

It sure would be nice to pencil in at third base a Marlin who seems to be falling out of favor with the team--Miguel Cabrera. The Marlins seem to be in total disarray and perhaps past the point of a return to tranquility. The team has already banished a very good young pitcher--A.J. Burnett--and may have permanently damaged its relationship with Cabrera, who is one of the game's best young hitters. Cabrera apparently is upset about something, and the Marlins are questioning his work ethic and attitude. It's amazing that a team with so many good young players and such a bright future could let the situation get this bad, but perhaps the Nationals can take advantage of the Marlins' dysfunction and notorious parsimony to get some of the their best young talent.

Another player who the Nationals may rely on next year is Marlon Byrd. That seems incredible given Byrd's pathetic performance before being sent down on August 2, but Byrd came back to the big club a different hitter. We still doubt whether Byrd is good enough to be an everyday player, but he may be good enough to be a reserve outfielder and pinch hitter, and if that's the case then the Nationals would have got some value in trading Endy Chavez to the Phillies.

All in all, it's not a bad finish for D.C.'s new team. With one more series before the season ends, it would be nice to go out on a high note by winning two games against Philadelphia.

Is the fix in?

The Post reports that Jeff Smulyan has added "several influential Washington figures" to the potential ownership group he heads. The new additions include former Redskins and local business executives. Although Smulyan says the locals will bring "a very, very significant amount of equity" to the party, he wouldn't be specific.

Tom Boswell opined recently that it would be a disaster if Major League Baseball selects the Smulyan group over the local groups who have at least as much money and strong ties to the community. It's not hard to conclude that Smulyan added these new partners for the purpose of blunting that argument. Linda Cropp certaintly seems to be wondering the same thing: "The key is to make sure we do not just have people's names on a list, but that they are actually controlling partners."

So, the lines of a potential conflict between MLB, which apparently favors the Smulyan group, and DC politicians, who want local entities to own the team, have been drawn. As Boswell said, if the potential becomes a real conflict, politicians like Cropp may not be so eager to go forward with plans for the new stadium. Hopefully some of baseball's decisionmakers will fall into a moment of sanity.

It all came apart...

Why did everything have to come apart in August and September?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Remember when the Marlins were supposed to wrest control of the National League East away from the Braves? Remember when the Braves were supposed to be too old or too young or too whatever? Well, on a night when the Nationals and Marlins played a laugher in Miami, the Braves clinched the National League East for the 14th straight year. THE 14TH STRAIGHT YEAR!!

The Braves are an amazing organization. They rebuild on the fly, drawing on the prodigious talent their farm system churns out year after year. Sure, they have the Jones boys, but last night's lineup also featured Adam LaRoche, Jeff Francouer, Ryan Langerhans, and Brian McCann. Jeff Francoeur? Who is this guy? We follow baseball pretty closely, but we don't even know how to spell the guy's name. No matter, he just steps into the lineup and puts up a .908 OPS. In July, when the Braves pulled away from the Nationals like Lance Armstrong in the mountains, Franceour's OPS was 1.326.

Why are the Braves so good? It's not because they spend a lot of money. Nine teams spend more money than the Braves, including two in their division. It's not because they have the best in-game manager, either. Bobby Cox is capable of making some of the strangest moves around. It's also not because the Braves have ridden on the back of one of the greatest players in the game. Don't get me wrong--the Braves have had some great players, but they are willing to part company with great players so they can manage their payroll and make room for younger players who, while they may not put up the numbers of the departing players, can help the team win.

I think the Braves win because they have very smart management, both in the dugout and in the back office, who are better than almost anyone at allocating capital and drawing the best out of their players.

The GM--John Schuerholz--is perhaps the most underappreciated person in baseball. He spends money more wisely than almost any GM in baseball, and is every bit the GM that Billy Beane is in Oakland. Remember when Schuerholz unloaded Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine? Everyone questioned Schuerholz' sanity because he was throwing away the one strength that had characterized the Braves' amazing run to that point--starting pitching. But no one saw how Schuerholz was repositioning his team to win in a new era. And with perhaps the best pitching coach in the history of the game--Leo Mazzone--Schuerholz knew that he could find pitchers who could win.

The Braves' manager--Bobby Cox--is as good as anyone at what is a manager's primary role--getting the best out of his players. When was the last time you heard about a problem in the Braves' clubhouse? And it's not like Cox doesn't come down hard on his players when necessary. Remember in 1998 when Cox pulled Andruw Jones in the middle of an inning because Jones didn't go all out for a fly ball? Whatever Cox said worked, because Jones didn't whine or ask to be traded--he just kept getting better. Why can Bobby Cox do that and not upset the clubhouse? Who knows, but the salient point is that at a time when two division rivals--the Marlins and Nationals--have significant problems in their clubhouses, Cox has built an environment in which his players can thrive.

I hope that the Nationals' new owners study the Braves as they try to build a winner in Washington. There's a lot for the Nationals to learn as they look south.

Can we afford Esteban Loaiza?

Esteban Loaiza has said he will test the free agent market after this season, although he says he would like to be back in DC next year. Of course, every free agent says he wants to be back with his team, but then most every free agent goes to the highest bidder. We don't blame players for doing that, but we shouldn't have any illusions about Loaiza's intentions.

Loaiza has been a very pleasant surprise this year. He is arguably the 11th best pitcher in the National League when measured by VORP, better than some very high profile free agents like Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder. So, there's nothing not to like and we need to sign Loaiza, right?

Maybe, but maybe not. Loaiza has been inconsistent over the last five years, with his ERA being 4.56, 5.02, 5.71, 2.90, 5.71, and 3.63 from 2000 through this year. So we'd like to have Loaiza, but not at an exorbitant price. What price will he command? Here is a list of some pitchers who were signed as free agents after last season:

Pitcher	Team	Contract Amount	Contract Years	2005 VORP
Pedro Martinez	Mets	$53,000,000	4	66.2
Esteban Loaiza	Nationals	$2,900,000	1	44.3
Paul Byrd	Angels	$4,500,000	1	38.9
Jon Lieber	Phillies	$21,000,000	3	26.3
Matt Clement	Red Sox	$25,500,000	3	22.9
Derek Lowe	Dodgers	$36,000,000	4	22.6
David Wells	Red Sox	$8,000,000	2	21.7
Carl Pavano	Yankees	$39,950,000	4	-1.0
Russ Ortiz	Diamondbacks	$33,000,000	4	-20.3
Eric Milton	Reds	$25,500,000	3	-27.3

Another free agent--Jaret Wright--signed a $21,000,000 contract, but has been a complete washout.

Loaiza arguably was the best signing of all of these pitchers. Martinez has a higher VORP, but his salary this year is six times as large as Loaiza's. So, it's been great for the Nationals this year, but Loaiza won't come as cheap next year. If the market is about as same as it was last year, it's not hard to imagine Loaiza banking a $5-7 million a year contract (or larger if teams display the insanity on which the Ortiz and Milton contracts were based).

Let's put aside for the moment the issue of whether the Nationals should sign Loaiza to such a contract and focus our attention on whether they can afford it. After all, if the Nationals don't pay that money to Loaiza they likely will have to pay something like it to another starter--if they want to win, that is. The Nationals will pay Livan Hernandez $8 million next year. Assuming that the Nationals pay $7 to $9 million on a free agent starting pitcher, signing Loaiza (or some other pitcher like him) would mean devoting $20 to $24 million to three starting pitchers next year.

Could the Nationals afford all of that? Not if Major League Baseball is the owner of the team and limits the payroll to $45-50 million. The only way the Nationals will be able to afford all three pitchers is if a new owner is willing to authorize a payroll consistent with Washington's status as the eighth largest media market and with the fact that the Nationals' will have the 12th or 13th largest attendance in baseball this year.

Those two facts should support a payroll of about $75 million. Most of the teams with that type of payroll pay three pitchers between $20-30 million. For example, the Astros pay three pitchers (Clemens, Pettite, Oswalt) $32.4 million, the Braves $29.75 million (Hampton, Smoltz, Hudson), the White Sox $22.5 million (Contreras, Garcia, Buehrle), and the Dodgers (not counting Dreifort) $21.45 million (Weaver, Lowe, Penny).

So, paying three pitchers that amount of money wouldn't be unreasonable. But assuming the Nationals want to sign Loaiza (or someone like him) and a free agent starter, they'll probably have to wait for a new owner to do so. Hopefully we'll get a new owner before free agent signings end.

DC is great, AJ

A.J. Burnett is quoted in today's Post as saying that he would "absolutely" consider coming to the Nationals next year. Burnett is a free agent at the end of this year, which, for him, came yesterday when Jack McKeon kicked him off the team. It was an odd ending to what should have been a great relationship between a potentially great pitcher and a young team. Instead, the Marlins look like they're in total disarray.

As Rowland's Office notes, Burnett has had a rocky relationship with the Marlins' seventy-something manager. How do you think that bodes for a Robinson-Burnett combo?

The Nationals nevertheless have to go after Burnett in the off-season. Burnett's 2005 stats are good: 7.92 H/9, 3.40 BB/9, 8.53 K/9, 0.52 HR/9, 3.44 ERA. He'll be the best pitcher on the market, and he has absolutely electric stuff. His fastball regularly reaches the high-nineties, and his breaking ball buckles the knees of many a hitter. On the right team Burnett could be a superstar.

With Burnett as their number 1 or 2 starter, the Nationals would have a rotation of Burnett, Patterson, Hernandez, Loaiza, and Carrasco. That would be an awesome starting rotation and one of the strongest in the majors. We have some doubt about whether the Nationals can or should sign Loaiza, but that's for a post later today.

Hector Carrasco: Diamond in the rough?

Hector Carrasco pitched another gem last night, as the Nationals shut out the Marlins, 4-0. Carrasco gave up only two hits in six innings while striking out six. He was brilliant last night, and he has been brilliant ever since he stepped into the rotation. As a starter, Carrasco's stats are amazing: 0.83 ERA, 4.76 H/9, .37 HR/9, 9.13 K/9. Batters are hitting an anemic .167 against him. The only troubling stat is that he gives up a lot of walks--4.37 per nine innings--but that's a blip on Hector's otherwise fantastic radar screen.

The issue, obviously, is whether Hector can keep this up. He's soon to be 36, and you don't normally see starting pitchers begin a career at 36. Of course, the Nationals don't need Carrasco to be Roger Clemens. All they need is a reliable fourth starter, and, so far at least, Carrasco has given every indication that he can fill that role. If he does, the Nationals have found a low-cost answer to what has been a vexing problem in the second half of this season.

Four-Man Rotation?

Chris Needham wisely asks why the Nationals continue to go with a four-man rotation when they're no longer in the playoff hunt.

It's a good question and one that Frank Robinson should consider. Today's Post makes it clear that Robinson isn't going to let the pitchers off easy:

Robinson said yesterday that he won't leave it up to his starters, including Esteban Loaiza, whether they will make one or two more starts the rest of the way.

Loaiza, scheduled to pitch Tuesday, had said he would start just once more this season. But if the rotation remains the same, Loaiza would be scheduled to pitch the final game of the season, Sunday, against Philadelphia.

Perhaps Frank should take it easy on the pitchers for once.

We'd like that too, Jose

"I just want to be the player that I was a couple years ago. If I stay healthy, I'm going to do that."

That's Jose Vidro quoted in today's Nationals' Notebook. Unfortunately, we think the chances of that happening aren't great.

We're a .500 team, baby!

There's been a lot of talk about the Nationals "collapsing" in the second-half of the season, and we guess they have. It's hard to argue that you haven't collapsed when you go from 16 games above .500 at the All-Star Break to .500 with six games left in the season.

But there's another way to think about this. At the All-Star Break we put up a post pointed out that the Nationals' runs scored-runs allowed differential was an ominous sign of not so good things to come. (We weren't the only ones making this point, but this is our blog, and we tend to think really highly of ourselves, so we'll only site to us.) The Nationals then were 2.5 games up on the Braves, but when you reconfigured the standings using Bill James' Pythagorean Theorem, the Nationals fell to fourth place, 9.5 games behind the Braves and only .5 games ahead of the last-place Phillies. The Nationals' winning percentage in those reconfigured standings? .500.

It was obvious to anyone paying attention that if the Nationals didn't do something to improve their hitting they would fall back to earth, probably before the season's end. The main reason the Nationals were in first place at the All-Star Break was that they were winning almost all of their one-run games. Their pitching was awesome, second only to the Braves in runs allowed in the National League, so the only realistic way for the Nats to improve was to score more runs. Unfortunately, their hitters were hitting at about their expected level, so to score more runs the Nationals needed to get better hitters through trades.

Rather than make those trades, Jim Bowden assumed that the Nationals could defy the baseball gods forever. He berated the hitters and acted like the team was just one more pep talk away from walking into the playoffs. He failed to make the trades at the trade deadline that would improve the team's hitting, so the Nationals went into the second half with a team that didn't score enough runs to play above .500 for long.

Is it any surprise, then, that the Nationals have fallen to .500? Sure, it was possible for them to finish better than this, but you can win all of your one-run games for only so long. It's natural that the players would blame themselves, as Gary Bennett does in today's game story in the Post, but the real blame for this finish should be placed at the feet of the person who was in a position to improve the team, but who failed to do so--Jim Bowden.

Bad News

The news on Rick Short is bad. Instead of using the off season to improve his defense, he'll spend it rehabilitating his shoulder. We hope that he'll still have time to prepare adequately for next season, and we hope that the club won't give up on him, but this is very disappointing any way you look at it. The Nationals need bats like Short's, and they need the flexibility a guy like him gives them. We like Jamey Carroll and Carlos Baerga has surprised us a bit this year, but Short would give the Nationals a bat--either on the bench or in the lineup--that they badly need.

Watch that first step...

Livan Hernandez gave up five runs in the first inning last night as the Nationals lost to the Mets, 5-1. That got us to thinking about all the times Hernandez seems to have started out badly in games this year. And, sure enough, Hernandez seems to have a lot of trouble early in games. Hitters have an OPS of .904 in the first fifteen pitches of a game this year. But Livan improves dramatically from there: hitters have an OPS against him of .692 and .625 over the 16th-30th and 31st-45th pitches, respectively. The OPS against Hernandez doesn't rise above .750 until he gets to the 106th pitch. So, as Ned Ryerson said in "Groundhog Day," "watch that first step, it's a doozy!"

The other notable thing about last night's game--other than Tony Blanco's pathetic defense--was Ryan Zimmerman's 2-3 night against Tom Glavine (he was 3-4 overall). This guy is for real and, as we said about Rick Short yesterday, looks very comfortable at the plate against the league's top pitchers. The team is playing him at short, so maybe the Nationals can have a strong bat at that position next year. Through it all, though, Frank Robinson doesn't appear very enthused. Here's a quote from Les Carpenter's story:

"What is this? The daily Zimmerman report?" he asked sarcastically, then paused looking for his first one-liner of the day. "He's a first-ballot Hall of Famer," Robinson said.

As we said last week, Robinson doesn't have the right temperament for this team going forward.

Cristian Guzman, Superstar!

We've heard a lot lately that Cristian Guzman is experiencing a resurgence and now we need only wait until next year when he surely will return to his historical performance and justify all the confidence The Exciteable Boy showed in him. Harper Gordek has already shown that one month's performance can't make up for five months of Friday the 13th, Part 87, but let's assume for the moment that Guzman does return to his historical level of performance. Would we jump for joy if he did?

In a word, no.

Here are Guzman's career stats:

Year	OBP	SLG	OPS
1999	.267	.276	.543
2000	.299	.388	.687
2001	.337	.477	.814
2002	.292	.385	.677
2003	.311	.365	.676
2004	.309	.384	.693
2005	.254	.308	.562

These aren't the stats of a consistently productive player. In fact, this season isn't an outlier--Guzman has actually had a season in which he hit even worse than he has this year. His 1999 stats were frighteningly bad. The only adequate year he had was in 2001, in which his OPS was .814. If we take away that year, which he has never duplicated, and his two worst years, we get remarkably consistent performance (when we say "consistent performance," you can read that to mean "consistently bad performance"). If that's what we can expect, then Guzman will have an OPS of about .685, and we'll pay $4.2 million for it.

How does that compare to the performance of other shortstops?

Player	OPS	Salary
Bill Hall	.867	$344,000
Felipe Lopez	.816	$415,000
Russ Adams	.698	$316,000
Neifi Perez	.693	$1,000,000
Angel Berroa	.682	$500,000
Royce Clayton	.669	$1,350,000
Adam Everett	.663	$445,000

In other words, even if Guzman returns to his "historical" performance, the Nationals could get the same or better performance for a fraction of the price. There simply is no argument that Guzman is worth $4.2 million, even if this year isn't representative of what he'll do in the future. That's why Minnesota was shocked when The Exciteable Boy offered Guzman that humungous contract.

Goodbye, Raffy

More evidence that Palmeiro is done.

So long, Rick Short

Rick Short was injured last night and is out for the season. His injury--a temporary, partial separation of the left shoulder--is enough to shelve him for the remaining games, which is too bad because Short needs this time to prove he should be up with the big club. If the Nationals have any brains, they'll give Short a chance to prove he's a productive major leaguer. Whether they do that may depend on who is the GM next season.

Ownership drama

Boswell has a great column in today's Post on the ownership situation. Boswell points out that as owner of the Seattle Mariners Jeff Smulyan, who may be MLB's favorite in the ownership derby, didn't show himself to be an owner dedicated to winning and establishing strong community ties. Meanwhile, other groups, like those led by Fred Malek and the Lerner family, have lots of money and very strong ties to DC. Given that these DC-based groups will meet baseball's asking price, there is no reason why MLB should give the franchise to Smulyan, especially when, as Boswell points out, DC's political leaders would probably back away from a stadium deal if they sensed an inside deal to benefit a member of the old-boys' network.

Let's hope MLB reads Boswell's column and comes to its senses.

How about this guy for GM?

Brian Cashman may be ready to leave the Yankees. It just so happens that Cashman is from this area. And it also just so happens that the Nationals are in desperate need for a qualified, creative GM. That all works out, doesn't it? Now all we need is an owner to pull the trigger on the deal.

The new guys aren't too bad

The Nationals won last night behind strong performances by a new starting pitcher--Hector Carrasco--and two new infielders--Ryan Zimmerman and Rick Short.

We'll spare you a recap of the game and focus on what to do with these three players. Carrasco's performance as a starter raises an interesting question: can he be a back-of-the-rotation guy next year? The Nationals need a pitcher like that, and they may have found him in their bullpen. At a minimum the Nats should position him for the role in spring training.

What about Zimmerman and Short? It's clear that Zim will get a chance to start for the big club next spring. Short is another story. Oleanders and Morning Glories points out that Short is a guy without a position because Jose Vidro will play second and either Zim or Vinny Castilla will play third next year.

That is pretty clearly the direction in which this is headed, but we'll propose another option. How about putting Zim at short, Short at second, a free agent at third, and trading Jose Vidro? Sound crazy? Well, consider that Jose Vidro is 31, will be making something like $7 million next year, and has been trending downward the last four years in both OPS (.868, .867, .821, .762) and games played (152, 144, 110, 82).

Perhaps this is the time to get some value for Vidro and put in his place a low-cost option who arguably might give us similar production. We wouldn't need Short to hit .380 like he did in AAA this year. All we would need is .350 OBP, .450 SLG, and .800 OPS. Could Short do it? We can't expect him to continue his current production (.533 OBP, 1.077 SLG, 1.610 OPS), but it's not out of the question that he could come close to replicating Vidro's numbers. As we said yesterday, players who hit well in AAA tend to do pretty well in The Show. And, if he Short can come close to being an adequate replacement for Vidro, we'll save almost $7 million that we could apply to a third baseman next year we get in a trade or free agency.

There are a lot of questions that would have to be answered before the Nationals tried something like this, but they should be thinking of creative options like this. If the Nationals are to be a long-term success, they have to be thinking first of value, and Vidro's value isn't going up.

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy

The Elias Sports Bureau reminds us that Peter Angelos' team hasn't been good in a while and has collapsed this season after starting strong:

The Orioles' 7-6 loss to the Yankees assured Baltimore of its eighth consecutive season with a losing record. Remember, this was a team that had a .600 winning percentage through 70 games this season (42-28). Only eight other teams in major-league history -- and none since the 1973 Cubs -- have had a losing record after having a winning percentage of .600 or higher at or after the 70-game mark.

Bad free agent signings

Steve Phillips lists Cristian Guzman as the second worst free agent signing this year:

2. Cristian Guzman, Washington Nationals: Many considered Guzman overpaid when he received a four-year, $16.8 million contract in the offseason. Now that he's barely hitting .200 it appears to be highway robbery. Guzman has been a disappointment offensively, defensively and on the bases. His game has gone completely backwards. The big question now is, can he be salvaged? Only time will tell, but the answer will surely be found since he does have three more years left on his contract.

All so true.

It's about time!

Frank Robinson will finally let Ryan Zimmerman and Rick Short get some playing time. Do you think Robinson is enthusiastic about it? Well, consider this quote:

"Let's see what has kept this guy where he's been," Robinson said, referring to Short's long minor league career. "Is he a usable part for next year?"

Frank, the guy was ripping up AAA pitching when your team called him up. What's so frustrating about this is that all of the data Robinson willfully ignores shows that almost any hitter who can hit well in AAA can hit in the majors. The Oakland As have made a living turning players like that into productive major league hitters.

Is there any hole in the Nationals' lineup that a guy like Short could plug? Let's see, I seem to remember something about the eighth spot being a problem...

TK goes to Church

Tony Kornheiser ridicules Ryan Church and his apology in today's Post.

It's Barry's World

"I don't know how he hit it. We were all talking about it after we came in the dugout."

That's John Patterson referring to Barry Bonds' first inning two-run home run, which gave the Giants the winning margin in last night's 5-1 victory. The pitch wasn't a mistake; it wasn't like Bonds hit a hanging curve or a fastball drifting over the plate. No, Bonds crushed a good pitch that one of the National League's best pitchers put exactly where he wanted it. Bonds is so good that he reduced Patterson to acting like a kid in a candy story when he later struck out Bonds twice:

"It's exciting to strike him out. He's probably the best hitter to ever play baseball. You're playing against the greatest. It's like fighting Ali or something."

We could talk about the game, but there's not much point to that. The Nationals lost and are in danger of falling below .500 before the season ends. Do you really want to obsess about that when we can marvel at the feats of one of the four or five best hitters ever to play the game? Like it or not, we live in Barry's world.

That Bonds guy is pretty good II

OPS+ is OPS measured against the league average, and adjusted for ballpark factors. An OPS+ of 100 means that a player performed at the league average. To be mind-numbingly obvious, an OPS+ above 100 is better than average, while an OPS+ below 100 is below average. If you're still reading, here, via baseball-reference.com, is a ranking of players with the highest career OPS+:

Rank	Player	OPS+
1	Babe Ruth	207
2	Ted Williams	190
3	Barry Bonds	184
4	Lou Gehrig	179
5	Rogers Hornsby	175
6	Mickey Mantle	172
7	Dan Brouthers	170
--	Joe Jackson	170
9	Ty Cobb	167
10	Jimmie Foxx	163
--	Mark McGwire	163

That's fairly good company.

In case you're wondering, Dan Brouthers played between 1879 and 1904.

Ryan Church, meet the media

Ryan Church has talked his way into a controversy that isn't going away anytime soon. His remarks about Jews are now the focus of stories in the national media, and the stories aren't favorable. Friends in other cities have emailed the stories to me, which indicates that this is a building story. Who knows where it will go, but Mr. Church may be in for a rough ride.

Not Again!

This is becoming redundant. This keeps happening again and again for no apparent reason.

Oh, I guess those first two sentences are redundant. Well, that's fitting given that the Nationals lost last night in a way they seem to be losing every game these days. Leading going into the opponent's final at bat, the Nationals lost again last night when Livan Hernandez couldn't hold the lead.

Hernandez was pitching a gem when we came to the top of the ninth. His only blemish was a mammoth home run by Barry Bonds in the top of the fourth. It was the kind of blast that silences a crowd, and that's exactly what it did. The crowd bood Bonds loudly at the beginning of the game, but his fourth inning shot seemed to convince the boo birds that they were in the midst of greatness, and they soon fell into a respectful hush.

Other than giving up that home run to one of the greatest hitters ever to play the game, Hernandez shut down the Giants. Going into the ninth, the Nats led 2-1.

Yes, Hernandez lost the lead, but the top of the ninth shows that there is a very fine line between winning and losing in this game. With one out, Omar Vizquel walked. Edgardo Alfonzo flied out to center, bringing up Bonds in a situation in which he could win the game with one swing. We were surprised that Hernandez didn't walk Bonds intentionally, but it was clear that he wasn't going to give Barry anything good to hit, and Bonds walked on four pitches.

The Nats again needed just one out to win the game. With the tying run on second and Moises Alou coming up, we would normally expect to see Chad Cordero up on the mound. But there was no call to the bullpen, perhaps because Cordero has been so bad recently. Instead, it was Hernandez who served up a fat pitch this time, putting one into Alou's wheel house. Alou smashed it over the left field fence, and suddenly the game that seemed in hand now appeared to be another crushing loss.

One pitch. If the pitch isn't out over the plate, Alou probably doesn't hit a home run. Given that a hitter like Alou will get on base only 40% of the time and will get a hit in only 32% of his at bats, the odds favored Hernandez, even though he was tiring. Hernandez needed to stay away from Alou's strengths by keeping the ball down and away. That sounds easy, but we're talking about a matter of a few inches--a few inches one way and it's a great pitch, a few inches the other way and it's a meatball. That's the beauty of this game, and that's what makes the confrontation between a pitcher and a hitter so exciting.

Down 4-2, the Nationals mounted a comeback. With one out, Vinny Castilla doubled and Brian Schneider and Ryan Church (hitting for Guzman) walked to load the bases. Ryan Zimmerman hit for Hernandez. (Let us pause here to say that this guy looks very comfortable at the plate and deserves a chance to play every day.) Zimmerman hit a sacrifice fly that scored Castilla.

Now there were two outs, and the Nationals were down one, 4-3. Brad Wilkerson then crushed a drive to left that looked like it would go over the head of Todd Linden, who was the defensive replacement for Bonds. But Linden made an amazing, diving catch to snare Wilkerson's blast and end the game.

It was a loss, and a depressing one at that, but it was a great game. It's really great to have baseball back in D.C.

That Bonds guy is pretty good

Via baseball-reference.com, here the top 10 hitters most similar to Barry Bonds:

Willie Mays
Babe Ruth
Frank Robinson
Mel Ott
Ted Williams
Jimmie Foxx
Rafael Palmeiro
Mickey Mantle
Hank Aaron
Lou Gehrig

That's fairly good company.

Cristian Guzman: The Phoenix That Couldn't Fly

What he said.

Why Frank Robinson Must Go

We've said repeatedly over the last few days that we've concluded that Frank Robinson isn't the right manager for this team. We've reached this conclusion reluctantly because we think that Robinson brings a lot to the party; how many other managers can say they were one of the best players ever to play the game? That's got to be worth a lot in winning the players' respect. And we don't think it's a coincidence that Robinson was the manager when the Nationals overachieved in the first half.

But we still think that Frank Robinson must go. Why?

1. Most importantly, Robinson refuses to put the best team on the field. As we've said repeatedly, had the Nationals put a replacement level player at shortstop instead of Cristian Guzman, they would be leading the Wild Card Race. We don't want to hear about Guzman's last 50 at bats--for virtually the entire season Guzman was historically bad and Robinson didn't do anything about it. Robinson also refuses to play young players at the end of the season such as Ryan Zimmerman and Rick Short who are putting up better numbers than the players (including those who seem to be mailing in their performance) Robinson continues to pencil into the lineup. There is no excuse for that, and Robinson's only justification--that veterans deserve playing time--shows that he is more concerned with a commitment to particular players than with winning baseball games.

2. Robinson doesn't have the right temperament for this team. Robinson doesn't have the ability to moderate his fiery competitiveness when the situation calls for it. He has materially undermined the Nationals' playoff chances by pursuing a personal vendetta against pitchers he thinks have slighted him, and he seems incapable of being supportive of young players trying to find their way in the major leagues.

3. He seemingly can't moderate disputes or tensions between players. Although the full story hasn't been told, it appears clear that the Nationals' clubhouse is torn by internal conflict. One of the most important jobs for a manager is to moderate those tensions through the course of the season and keep the players focused on winning.

4. Robinson willfully ignores a substantial body of learning he could use to manage more effectively. He is fond of saying that he doesn't manage according to the numbers. That's fine, but ignoring the numbers is nonsensical. Why not at least consider all of the data other managers are using against you?

To be clear, we would not fire Robinson for his in-game moves. Some of those moves have driven us nuts at various times of the season, but that would be true of almost any manager. If Robinson hadn't been guilty of the offenses we detail above, we wouldn't lift a finger because of his in-game moves.

Robinson's Pitching Changes Redux

Capitol Punishment takes issue with our posts regarding Frank Robinson's pitching changes in Saturday's and Sunday's games. We agree with a lot of what Chris says, but we disagree with the conclusion.

Our bottom line is that it's the pitchers' job to get hitters out, and the Nationals' pitchers didn't do that at the critical moment on both Saturday and Sunday. Frank Robinson didn't put those runners on base and didn't give up key hits and didn't throw fat pitches for hitters to blast into the stands. The pitchers did that, and no matter how many changes Robinson made on Saturday we wouldn't be talking about this if the pitchers had just got one more hitter out in the bottom of the ninth.

In other words, it's one thing to say that Robinson made too many pitching changes, but it's a huge leap in logic to say that those pitching changes caused those runs to score. We can't reach that conclusion, no matter what we think about Robinson.

We agree with Chris that Robinson should be blamed for not making a pitching change when it's clear the pitcher doesn't have his best stuff. In fact, we think not making a pitching change in that situation is much worse than making a change that doesn't work out. And we've said that Robinson has lost games this season by not taking out a pitcher who can't get anyone out.

But all of the analysis and research shows that a manager's in-game moves aren't nearly as important as we think they are. I can't remember the statistic, but a manager makes the difference in something like five wins a year, meaning that for the most part it's the players on the field who win and lose games. A manager's most important job is to put the best team on the field and create an environment in which his players can flourish.

We're not enamored with Robinson, either, but we think that blaming him for runs given up by pitchers who can't get hitters out mixes up cause and effect.

Yeah, about that stadium project...

Here's a surprise: District officials can't agree on a design of the new baseball stadium. The disputes appear to relate primarily to sight-lines and the positioning of the stadium relative to surrounding buildings. Not a big deal, right? Wrong. The District is in danger of missing important deadlines, which could push back the sale of the team.

Well, at least the Mayor is still hearing voices:

"It's taking longer than if this was being done by a private developer, where one guy makes a single decision, but it's not longer than one should reasonably expect in a public environment," said Development Director Stephen M. Green, who is overseeing the stadium development on a daily basis for Williams. "This is a public building. There are a lot of voices, and there should be. Ultimately, the mayor makes the call, and he's good at hearing multiple voices."

He had to say it, but...

Frank Robinson says the obligatory: he'll stick with Chad Cordero. Unless Robinson is going to let someone else close, he has to show support for Cordero.

If you've seen Cordero recently you know that his fastball has been drifting over the plate and his breaking ball hasn't been breaking much. Good hitters tend to jump on pitches like those, and that's exactly what they've been doing to Cordero's fat offerings. Cordero's location and velocity aren't what they were in August, and unless he gets back on track quickly, he's not going to be the lights-out closer he was for most of the season.

So much for sticking with one reliever

We were told yesterday that the reason the Nationals lost Saturday was that Frank Robinson made too many pitching changes in the bottom of the ninth. We've soured on Robinson, but we thought then and still think now that that criticism was unfair, but we'll play along. What's the story today? That Robinson stayed with his relievers too long?

OK, fine, we can play that game. So long as we seem to be judging Robinson using a standard of perfect hindsight, we definitely think he stayed with Gary Majewski too long in the bottom of the eighth. He should have removed Majewski immediately after Mark Loretta singled to open the inning. Yes, that's right. No, that's more than right, that's perfect because then Majewski never would have walked Brian Giles and never would have hit Joe Randa to load the bases, and he never would have permitted Khalil Greene to hit a game-tying sacrifice fly. So, you see, had Robinson pulled Majewski earlier the Padres never would have scored in the eighth, meaning that the run the Padres scored in the ninth would have tied the game, not won it!

And so long as we're playing this hindsight game, we think it was OK for Robinson to bring in Eischen to finish the eighth because Eishen got the final out of the inning without permitting any more runs to score. That was a good decision--good move, Frank. But what were you thinking when you brought out Eishen for the bottom of the ninth? Don't you know that Eischen is a situational reliever hired primarily to face lefties? Yes, we know that you were criticized yesterday for pulling Eischen too quickly, but that was yesterday, Frank? Today is a different day, and you can't expect criticism of you to be consistent, can you? Sticking with Eischen was a terrible decision because he allowed Miguel Olivo to single and then hit Robert Fick to put runners at first and second. See, that's what happens when you stick too long with a situational lefty, Frank--get with the program! And even if you were to leave Eischen in for all of that, you definitely should have taken him out before he pitched to Dave Roberts because had you taken Eischen out Joey would never have thrown Roberts' bunt past Nick Johnson, thereby allowing Olivo to score the winning run.

What were you thinking, Frank? Yes, we know you were criticized yesterday for pulling the trigger too quickly, but had you stayed with pitchers longer on Saturday and employed a quick hook yesterday we could have won both games! And had we won both games we would have a more realistic chance of making the playoffs!

Jeez, Frank, why couldn't you have done on Saturday what you did on Sunday and done on Sunday what you did on Saturday?

Jose Guillen: The Offensive Equivalent of Chad Cordero

Hey, Jose, how about helping us out a bit, huh?

That's not good

Up 5-0 in the bottom of the ninth, the Nationals needed only three outs to take the first two from San Diego and move into a tie with the Marlins in the Wild Card Race, 2.5 games behind Houston. The Nats couldn't ask for a better situation because their bullpen has been the stalwart of the team pretty much all season.

Barry Svrluga in today's Post criticizes Frank Robinson for using "fancy pitching changes" in the bottom of the ninth, the implication being that that's why the Nats gave up the tying runs in the inning. We've been very critical of Robinson lately, and we've even suggested that the proper course of action is not to invite him back next season, but Svrluga's criticism of Robinson seems more than a little overdone.

The inning started well enough. Jason Bergmann walked Eric Young, but struck out Ramon Hernandez. Frank Robinson then brought in Joey Eischen. Bergmann is a young guy who may prove one day to be a good major-league pitcher, but he's not there yet. As we saw last week when he couldn't find the plate against the Braves, sticking with him can be a risky proposition, so replacing him seems like a good decision. Eischen has been a situational lefty all season, and we don't see much reason for changing that in the bottom of the ninth against the Padres. Bringing him in to face a left-handed hitter was eminently reasonable.

Eischen got Giles to fly out. Now there were two outs and a runner on first. Piece of cake, right? Wrong. Xavier Nady singled, and Robinson brought in Travis Hughes to replace Eischen.

We can't criticize Robinson for taking Eischen out at this point, because he had done what situational lefties are supposed to do--he had faced down the lefty. Unfortunately, Joe Randa singled off of Hughes to score Eric Young and put runners on first and second with two outs.

With the score 5-1 and with the tying run on deck with two outs, what should Robinson have done? We would have done exactly what he did do: bring in Chad Cordero. What did Cordero do? He walked Mark Loretta and then gave up a game-tying grand slam home run to Khalil Greene.

Bringing in Cordero was, in retrospect, disastrous, but does that make it a bad decision? No. If you can't count on your closer in late September you don't deserve to be in the playoffs. We now know that we can't count on Cordero right now. As Svrluga notes, Cordero has been awful in September, chalking up more home runs than strike outs. His ERA in September is 12.00, which isn't the kind of performance you'd like to see from your lights-out closer down the stretch. Cordero has now blown three saves in September, and his last two are the type that get a closer fired. Giving up a game tying home run to Chipper Jones and then a game winning home run to Andruw Jones was bad enough, but this latest home run ball to Greene seems to confirm that Cordero is a shell of his former self.

Who knows whether that's because of all the innings he's thrown this season, but it really doesn't matter at this point. We needed Cordero to close out this game against the Padres and last weekend's game against the Braves. Had he done that the Nationals would be 79-70, one game behind Philadelphia and 1.5 games behind Houston. Instead, the Nats are 3.5 games behind Houston and in, to put it mildly, a very precarious situation.

Lost in all of this is another stellar performance from Hector Carrasco. He shut out the Padres over six innings, giving up only three hits, striking out three, and walking none. It was a brilliant performance when the Nationals needed it most, and it seemed to poise the Nationals to continue their assault on the wild card. Until the disastrous ninth inning, that is.

Free Rick Short!

Why isn't this guy playing more? He's got an OBP of .500, SLG of 1.000, and an OPS of 1.500. Yes, he's only had 12 plate appearances, but he was flirting with .400 in the minors, for chrissake! Give the guy a shot! Even if you assume that Cristian Guzman has morphed into Miguel Tejada, Deivi Cruz hasn't looked Ruthian in his last 11 at bats: .364 OBP, .364 SLG, and .728 OPS.

Here's a thought: let's put our hottest players on the field on the theory that better stats suggest better performance.

It's nice to have you back, John

If the Nationals are going to continue their assault on the Wild Card Race, they will need strong pitching performances from John Patterson. Last night, they got one. Patterson pitched a complete game while giving up only one run on three hits in a 5-1 victory. Patterson gave up one in the first and then shut down the Padres the rest of the way. He faced only two batters above the minimum, gave up only two hits after Ramon Hernandez' first-inning home run, and retired the last 14 batters he faced. It was another dominant performance from Patterson.

The Nationals' offense was also operating in high gear, led by an unlikely source--Cristian Guzman. Guzman doubled in two in the fifth and tripled in one in the ninth for three RBIs. He is now hitting .207 and suddenly everyone things he's Derek Jeter. The Nationals scored four times off Jake Peavy, who is becoming one of the best pitchers in the National League. In other words, this was a very good offensive performance against a very good pitcher.

Houston won, so the Nats remain 2.5 games back. They are .5 games back of Philly and 1.5 games back of Florida. Their odds of making the playoffs have risen, but were still in single-digit territory--about 4.5. The chances are still slim, but if the Nats keep playing this way they can play themselves back into the race.

Go Nats!

Has TB lost it?

This is from Tom Boswell's Washington Post chat today:

Burke, Va.: Boz -- does Bowden return next season or do you see a guy like Gerry Hunsicker being here?

Tom Boswell: As I pointed out, Bowden did not make a mistake on Castilla. He got his money's worth. So everybody can just drop that one.

On Guzman, he's hitting .302 in September! He has 10 extra-base hits in his last 71 at bats! He may be the team's hottest hitter. I don't think __after watching him hit .270+ of the last three weeks__ that you don't give him a chance to be the starting shortstop next spring, assuming he continues to hit decently in the last 15 games.

As Earl Weaver always told us, "Stick with 'em." Guzman's home run yesterday may not be the last of the surprises from him. You may even see him batting second __and approve of it__ before October 2.

...

But OVERALL I had seldom seen a GM get so little credit for so many moves that were very good to decent. And even Guzman is not a total disaster __yet.


Um, Tom, Cristian Guzman is one of the worst players in baseball this year. If the Nationals had even an average everyday shortstop there is a good chance that they would be leading the Wild Card Race at this point. Any player with an OPS of .546, especially one being paid $4.2 million, is awful, putrid, pathetic, or any other derogatory word you want to use.

As for the future, what choice do the Nationals have but to give Guzman a chance next year? They're paying him $4+ million/per! You can't trade him because no one in their right mind would take on that contract, so the Nats either have to sit him or play him. Sitting him and his huge contract is so painful that the Nats will give him every attempt to win the shortstop job next year.

God help us!

A-Rod

Do you think Yankee fans will stop whining now about A-Rod not hitting in the clutch, not hitting meaningful home runs, not hitting home runs late, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah....

Here's an interesting fact

This just in from the Elias Sports Bureau:

Cliff Floyd's grand slam on Thursday was the first by a Mets player at Shea Stadium since Robin Ventura hit one off Houston's Jay Powell on May 1, 2001. The Mets' streak of 382 home games without a grand slam was a franchise record and the longest streak in the major leagues since the Padres played 498 games without at slam at Jack Murphy Stadium from 1977 to 1983.

Boswell

Boswell's column focuses, as we all should, on how great it is that the Nationals are in the playoff race in late September. No one thought it would be this way at the season's beginning, and, although the team squandered a big opportunity by not capitalizing via trades on its overachieving first half, a playoff race this late in the season is something to celebrate.

The Nationals are not likely to win the Wild Card Race, but if they are in it when the Nationals return home on September 20 to play Barry Bonds and the Giants, we hope that RFK will be filled to capacity with happy, screaming, raucous fans. It isn't often that a team like the Nationals is in this position, and it's not something we can plan on happening every year. If you doubt that conclusion, you should consult a Cubs fan.

Good thing he's a free agent

Frank Robinson is upset with Preston Wilson, and, given Robinson's actions this year, Wilson might be thinking about his trade destination were he not a free agent at the end of the year.

From mlb.com:

At first, it looked like the 10th inning was going to be a disaster for the Nationals. With the score tied at 5 and no outs, reliever Roberto Hernandez on the mound and Nick Johnson on first base, Preston Wilson singled to right-center field. Johnson went all the way to third base, but Wilson was tagged out in a rundown between first and second.

Robinson was very upset at Wilson. In the fact, the TV cameras panned to Wilson and Robinson, while Wilson explained the situation to his skipper.

"It was a bad read on my part," Wilson said. "I didn't realize that Gerald Williams was playing as deep as he was and he didn't come up throwing to third. He ended up throwing the ball into the middle of the field.

"My thought there was we got Nick on first and he doesn't really run that well, so I wanted to be aggressive and I wanted the middle infielders to cut the ball off so he would get to third. Johnson made it to third easier than I thought."

Robinson didn't buy Wilson's explanation. The mental mistake spoiled a great game for Wilson, who went 4-for-5 with two RBIs.

"I don't buy excuses very easily. There are certain things that you expect from your players, basic things in this game that you are supposed to do. He didn't do that today," Robinson said of Wilson.

The Race

On the heels of their sweep of the Mets, the odds of the Nationals making the playoffs have risen to about 2.5%. Those odds are still long, but we're still in the race. Here are the standings:

Team	Record	Pct.	GB
Houston	78-68	.534	---
Florida	78-69	.531	.5
Philadelphia	78-69	.531	.5
Washington	76-71	.517	2.5

One of the interesting aspects of the race has been the total collapse of the Mets. Once poised to make a run, the Mets are 1-9 in their last ten games. They are now seven games behind Houston and totally out of the playoff picture.

You're right, Jose

"You know, if we lose, none of this would be as fun."

That's Jose Guillen in today's Post. We can't think of a better quote to sum up the Nationals this year. When they're winning, everything is grand. When they're losing, they're coming apart at the seams. This is a team whose elements are like volatile chemicals--combine them and you get either a brilliant concoction or spontaneous combustion. There isn't a whole lot of middle ground.

Sweep!

One in the ninth to tie it and one in the tenth to win it! When was the last time the Nationals managed something like that! Great win after a crushing grand slam of a blow in the bottom of the fifth. Now we can dream of a playoff spot for a few more days!

Ugh!

First and third, one out, top of the ninth, 5-4 Mets. Up comes Brad Wilkerson. Great at bat--an 11 pitch battle that ends with a ground ball to second. Thank the maker that Kaz Matsui makes an error that allows Kenny Kelly to score from third. Now, it's first and third, one out, 5-5.

Up comes Carlos Baerga, batting for Jamey Carroll. All we need is a fly ball, Carlos! What do we get? Ground ball, double play, end of inning. Ugh!

We're not going down without a fight

The Nationals are pretty nearly out of the Wild Card Race, and most teams would probably have given up by now. We'll be honest--it seemed to us that the Nats were on the verge of giving up a few times over the last two weeks. But every time it looked that way, the Nats found some way to win and stay in the race, even if only barely.

Last night's win was another such effort. The Nationals' 6-3 win pulled them within three games of Florida and Philadelphia at the top of the race. While we're dreaming, we'll point out that if the Nats can sweep the Mets, their schedule is favorable for a bit--they play the Padres, the Giants, and the Mets before having to face Florida and Philadelphia to close out the season. They'd have to win each one of these series and probably sweep more than one and, yes, that's a lot to ask, but it's possible, right? And so long as it's possible, let's remember that we can watch playoff race baseball in DC!

Go Nats!

Jose Guillen: Distraction?

There is a fine line between an intensely competitive player who challenges his teammates and one who is so disruptive that he becomes an unwanted distraction. For much of the season we regarded Jose Guillen as the heart and soul of the team. He seemed the successor to Frank Robinson's combative and ultra competitive personality. When the Nationals needed to step up to a new level in June, Jose Guillen led them there.

But we're not sure that Guillen has remained a productive presence in the locker room. Barry Svrluga's game article both recounts Guillen's outburst last night in which he littered the field with equipment and suggests that Guillen may have become a distraction to the team. Combined with his run-ins with Brad Wilkerson, Esteban Loaiza, and Brian Schneider, this latest episode hints at a clubhouse problem.

There is really no way for any of us to know whether Guillen has crossed this line, because only someone in the clubhouse every day can understand the effect of Guillen's conduct and how the players regard it. We do know, however, that Guillen and his antics are now the subject of a lot of discussion both within the locker room and in the media. That's not good.

Boswell

Interesting column from Boswell re the Nationals and Orioles. His main point is that while the Nats have outperformed expectations and the future looks fairly bright, the Orioles are headed for another sub-.500 season and things look pretty bad for the foreseeable future.

This season has been great for the Nationals, so we're happy, but we think the season could have been so much more. And all of the uncertainty about the team and its ownership leaves us with more than a little anxiety about next season.

But, apparently, all of that pales in comparison to the anxiety of Orioles fans. We don't follow the Orioles, but we assume that Boswell is right. If so, given Peter Angelos' antagonism toward DC baseball, we have only one thing to say: it couldn't happen to a nicer guy!

So that's why we don't have rallies!

Baseball Prospectus analyzes the frequence with which a batter hits into double plays. Among BP's metrics is NET DP, which is the number of additional double plays a player generates versus an average player with the same number of opportunities. The lower the NET DP the better. To give you some context, Bobby Abreu leads the National League in the NET DP category with -12.11. Abreu has hit into only 5 double plays despite the fact that he's come up in 131 potential double play situations.

BP has statistics for 579 National League hitters. Only 48 of them have NET DP scores of 3.00 or higher. Unfortunately, five of those 38 are in the Nationals' starting lineup:

Rank	Player	NET DP
532	Marlon Byrd	3.12
543	Preston Wilson	3.51
551	Brian Schneider	3.99
562	Vinny Castilla	4.85
569	Jose Vidro	5.34

And where does Cristian Guzman rank? He's at 478 with a NET DP of 1.16.

The strategy finally worked!

Using no starters and five different bullpen pitchers, the Nationals eked out a 4-2 victory against the Mets last night. Because the Marlins won, the Nats remain four games behind in the Wild Card Race with only 17 games to play.

The committee approach hadn't worked before last night, but the strategy looked brilliant in Shea Stadium. Hector Carrasco started and pitched four innings, giving up "only" two runs. We say "only" because the relievers who have been forced into starting haven't done nearly as well as Carrasco did last night. Hector threw 74 pitches, which is probably a lot more than he's thrown in one outing in a very long time. Jon Rauch, Joey Eischen, and Gary Majewski held the Mets scoreless over the next four innings, and Chad Cordero managed to keep the ball in the park on the way to his 45th save.

We don't understand why the Nationals continue to let their promising young guns sit on the bench while Vinny Castilla, Cristian Guzman, et al., continue to stink up the joint. Yes, Guzman got two hits last night, but there is only so many times that you can draw an inside straight.

In any event, the Nationals managed to score three runs in the third off of Tom Glavine, and that was enough for the victory.

The pitching situation brightens for the next three days as Loaiza, Hernandez, and Patterson will start Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Let's hope that they're able to give the bullpen some much needed rest.

Playoff Chances

The Nationals have only a one percent chance of making the playoffs. Has any other team ever conquered such long September odds and made the playoffs?

Yes. On September 14, 1964, the St. Louis Cardinals were six games behind the Philadelphia Phillies and had only a 2-3% chance of making the playoffs. (In 1964, there were no divisions and no wild card playoff spots.) In other words, the Cards then were in a position much like the Nats are today. In one of the greatest collapses in baseball history, the Phillies went 6-13 for the rest of the season and between September 21 and 30 lost ten straight games. Needing a win and a Cardinals loss on the final day of the season to make the playoffs, the Phillies won but missed the playoffs because the Cardinals won also.

Can it happen again? Yes, but it's not bloody likely!

The Logic of Frank Robinson

Now that Cristian Guzman is hitting .204, don't we have to bench him? Frank Robinson has said that he wants to save Guzman the embarrassment of having the first digit in his batting average be a "1." Given that Guzman is hitting above The Mendoza Line now and given that the odds of Guzman raising his batting average to the point that the second digit is a "1" are about the same as the odds of a dry summer in Washington, isn't the only rational course of action to bench him for the rest of the season?

Where should we go from here?

What he said.

In Praise of Mike Piazza

He's in the last moments of his career so we tend to focus only on his decline, but it's worth remembering that Mike Piazza is probably the best hitting catcher ever to play the game. A whole bunch of articles have reached this conclusion, so I won't belabor the point. (For example, look here and here. Bill James reaches the same conclusion.)

There a lot of ways to measure Piazza as a hitter. He has the most career home runs for a catcher and was the best hitter on his team for a very long time. But the thing I will remember is that Piazza hit the ball harder than anyone I ever saw. The barrel of his bat always looked larger than any other bat, and his swing permitted the barrel to whip through the hitting zone at an incredibly high speed. He once hit a line drive to the left-center field wall in an All Star Game (I don't remember the year) that traveled faster than any ball I had ever seen. It reached the outfield wall in what seemed like a nanosecond and was hit so hard I thought it might crash through the wall. It was like a scene out of "The Natural."

It was quite a career for a kid from Norristown, PA, who was drafted in the 62nd round by the Dodgers only because Tommy Lasorda was showing a favor to a family member. Piazza wasn't the defensive equal of the other great catchers, but a bat like his can make up for a lot.

Salt on the wound

After sitting through Sunday's utterly depressing top of the ninth, when the Jones boys blasted homers that put the nail in the Nationals' playoff coffin, I thought I had seen the worst. Then in the bottom of the ninth I saw something that summed up why the Nationals were never able to sustain their wondrous first half.

Up to the mound to close out the game came Kyle Farnsworth. He's not a great pitcher, and no one would say that he is a difference-maker to any significant degree. But he was closing out the game for the Braves, and it was a game that demonstrated why the Braves and Nationals have switched positions in the standings: the Braves are deeper than the Nationals. When Brian Jordan and Raul Mondesi didn't work out, the Braves called on youngsters--e.g., Jeff Francouer and Ryan Langerhans--who provided enough offense to keep the Braves' train running. And when injuries opened up spots in the pitching staff, the Braves called upon Jorge Sosa and Horacio Ramirez, both of whom plugged holes in the rotation.

The Nationals don't have the same depth in their minor league system as do the Braves, so the Nationals needed to add depth via trades. As the trade deadline approached, Jim Bowden said he couldn't trade for the players he wanted because he wasn't willing to give away his quality minor leaguers. We didn't think that was an adequate excuse for failing to improve the team's playoff prospects, but even assuming that it was there were other trades Bowden could have made to bring the depth that the Nationals so badly need now.

For example, Bowden could have made a trade right before the trade deadline to shore up his bullpen. Bowden wouldn't have had to give up serious talent in the deal, either from his major league roster or from his minor league system. In other words, there was no reason why Bowden couldn't have made this deal. But he didn't. Unfortunately, the Braves did, and they did so because they have a better GM, and their GM saw that they would need this pitcher down the stretch. The pitcher's name? Kyle Farnsworth.

How about a two-man rotation?

Today comes news that John Patterson won't be able to start tonight. Without even a fourth starter, the Nationals will, once again, have to take the committee approach to tonight's pitching matchup. Frank Robinson says that he'll take a "different approach" than he did in Sunday's game against Atlanta, meaning, we guess, that he won't start Jason Bergmann and won't pitch John Halama. Other than that, we're not sure what can be different about his approach.

Robinson doesn't have a lot of options, which brings us to our real point. Few, if any, teams have a quality fifth starter, but most teams, especially those in a playoff race, have a quality fourth starter. We don't mean a fourth starter who is dominant or who has a sub-4.00 ERA, but we do mean a starter who can throw a quality start more than infrequently. The Nationals don't have such a fourth starter; in fact, they don't have a fourth starter at all, which puts them at a serious competitive disadvantage in the Wild Card Race.

The Nationals argue that injuries have decimated their rotation, and it's true that Ryan Drese and Tony Armas are injured. But neither pitcher was an adequate fourth starter in the first place. Given the lack of quality arms on the staff, the Nationals should have been trading for a better option for the fourth spot in the rotation. Instead, they clung to the hope that Drese and Armas would somehow turn it around. That was a bad decision.

Frank Robinson

In his Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James rates Frank Robinson as the 3rd best right fielder of all time and the 24th best player of all time according to his Win Shares rating system. The comments James reprints about Robinson portray a guy who was competitive, combative, angry, and a spectacular player. How you weighed those elements determined whether you loved him or hated him--there wasn't much in between those two extremes. Does that sound familiar?

He plays the game the way the great ones played it--out of pure hate. -Jim Murray

He was a super guy who didn't give anybody any trouble. He got along well with the sportswriters. What could they write bad about him? He was an outstanding player. - Art Fowler

There were several black players on the Reds [but] only Frank Robinson emerged as a leader. He was a quiet guy, but he was definitely a leader because everyone admired him. -Johnny Klippstein. (Klippstein and Fowler quotes are from We Played the Game, Danny Peary)

I thought that Frank was a terrible example for a young team off the diamond because of his social behavior. He could be very crude. There was a lot of drinking on that team, period, and Frank did nothing to help the situation. -Joe Tait in The Curse of Rocky Colavito (Terry Pluto)

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The time has come

Can anyone think of a rational argument in favor of benching Ryan Zimmerman and Rick Short? Here is a comparison of the two and the players they could replace:

Player	OBP	SLG	OPS
Zimmerman	.333	.533	.867
Short	.455	1.000	1.455
Castilla	.318	.393	.712
Cruz	.314	.303	.617
Carroll	.331	.274	.605
Guzman	.245	.284	.529

Fine, Zimmerman and Short don't have many at bats, but if you've seen them hit they look a lot more comfortable and professional at the plate than any of the alternatives. And why not give them a chance to prove that their numbers aren't a fluke?

What's the worst that can happen? If they hit .200 we'll send them down to the minors.

Oh, wait a minute, we don't do that on this team. We give .200 hitters a starting position and a $16 million contract.

Choke

Here, for the benefit of Frank Robinson and the Nationals, are some tips about how to win when you're facing a great pitcher like John Smoltz.

1. If you're a pitcher like Jason Bergmann, don't walk the leadoff hitter and then hit the second batter to get to a great left hander like Chipper Jones when left handers have an .900 OPS against you. See, what happens in a situation like that is Jones smokes your fastball into right field to score the batter you walked.

2. If you're Frank Robinson, don't pitch John Halama under any circumstances. He'll only get bombed and give up runs you can't afford to give up.

3. Be opportunistic on offense because you won't have many opportunities. You should take walks, move runners over intelligently, and wait for the hit to drive in your runners.

For example, let's say its the bottom of the second and with one out and one man out and your rookie third baseman has the presence of mind to go the other way for a double. Yes, you have the misfortune of the ball jumping the fence for a ground-rule double, which prevents the runner from scoring, but those are the breaks. You still have men on second and third with only one out. If you're a hitter in this situation, YOU MUST EITHER HIT A FLY BALL OR A GROUND BALL TO THE HOLE! That way you can score the runner from third even on an out! Do not, we repeat, DO NOT strike out. See, all that does is bring up a hitter like Cristian Guzman who can't hit his way out of a paper bag.

4. To get Smoltz out of the game early and get to a Braves' bullpen that is as bad as it's been in ten years, you have two options. (A third--pounding the ball against him--isn't available because you're offense is so bad.) First, you can go deep into pitch counts to raise his pitch count and tire him out. Unfortunately, your hitters probably aren't disciplined enough to do that. Second, you can play a version of the Rope-a-Dope Muhammad Ali employed against George Foreman.

To do this, ignore steps 1-3 and make it appear that you're one of the worst teams in the major leagues. Let your pitchers get banged around, let your hitters go down 1-2-3, and squander any offensive opportunity you have. See, this will put you down by anywhere between four and six runs, and you'll convince Bobby Cox that you're so bad that you can't possibly make up a four-run deficit.

5. Once Smoltz has left the game in the seventh despite throwing only 74 pitches, go back to step 1 and follow steps 1-3 religiously.

6. When you go up by one because you're now playing much better against a mediocre Braves bullpen, bring in your sure-fire closer to win the game and send the fans home with a smile on their faces.


The Nationals followed these tips, up until number six, that is. When Chad Cordero came in, I was sure that the Nationals would win. But when The 2000-Year-Old-Man, Julio Franco, line a single into center, I had the sinking feeling that something was very wrong. I felt better when Furcal and Giles flied out, but Chipper Jones scared me. Sure enough, Cordero left a fat fastball over the plate and Jones smashed it over the left-field wall to put the Braves up 8-7.

What had been a great comeback suddenly became one of the most depressing games I've ever seen. Everyone was silent, as if all of the air had been sucked from their bodies. What had been a celebration was now a wake, and I knew that the season had just effectively ended. Two minutes earlier I'd thought the Nats could still win the Wild Card Race. I'd thought they could ride this amazing comeback victory to rip the lead from teams like Houston and Philadelphia that didn't want it bad enough. We did want it bad; we wanted this playoff spot so bad that we'd just done the impossible--win a game against the Braves after being down 6-0.

Now, standing silently, watching Cordero look like he was about to cry, I knew the playoffs were almost certainly out of reach. A team that always seemed to come back when it was down for the count, was now lying flat on its back, and I knew that it wasn't getting up.

And then Andruw Jones hit a Cordero pitch into the upper deck, and I wanted to cry.

September 11

Four years ago today I was in Rye, New York, just outside Manhattan, when news came that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center Towers. It's one of those moments we'll never forget--where you were when you heard that a plane had flown into the tower? Like everyone else, I didn't know what to make of the news amid all the confusion about what had happened and why. But as the morning unfolded, as the second tower was hit, and as it became clear that this was an attack on the United States, confusion turned into devastating sadness, paralyzing fear, and bitter anger. And when the towers came down I, like millions of other Americans, watched in disbelief as I realized that probably thousands of Americans had died in a symbol of our economic might that was cascading down into rubble.

There was pandemonium in the conference center in which I was working. No one knew what to do because no one had ever experienced anything like this. We all woke up that morning with one unstated and yet powerful assumption: the United States would not be attacked. Now, we will never again make that same assumption, and we will remember that date--September 11--for the rest of our lives, despite what some historians may say.

My biggest concern was getting back to my family in Washington. There were wild rumors circulating that the State Department, the Capitol, the White House, and even some schools had been attacked. I cannot describe the profound relief and utter joy I felt when I finally talked to my wife and learned that everyone in our family was safe. In retrospect, my fear for the safety of three people living in Rockville, Maryland on a day when the symbols of the United States were under attack seems preposterous, but "safety" had suddenly become much more of an uncertainty that it ever had been before.

I was able to get a car to go back to D.C., and I must say that that was the strangest drive of my life. It wasn't clear that I would be able to get out of New York because all of the bridges were rumored to be closed. Thankfully, the Tapanzee Bridge was still open, and it served as my escape route out of New York. As I crossed it, I saw one of the most horrific things I hope to ever see: all of lower Manhattan was engulfed in a dirty cloud of smoke, dust, and debris. Nothing was visible; it was as if someone had bombed the entire lower half of the island.

No one was on 95. Everyone was with their family or friends, which made the drive home depressingly lonely. My only company was news radio, which broadcast news of horrible destruction, of the heroic efforts of rescue workers, and of the extraordinary leadership of Rudy Guiliani, who seemed to be everywhere at once, imploring New Yorkers to find safety and reassuring everyone that the city and the country would survive this attack and emerge even stronger.

There was no baseball team in Washington four years ago. I'm not one of those who believes that sports solves our problems or tells us something about ourselves that we don't already know, but sports does enhance our sense of community. I will never forget watching the Yankees memorialize the victims of September 11 before playing a game in front of tens of thousands of New Yorkers, all there to remember and even celebrate their fellow citizens while watching a game they loved.

Watching the Nationals play today can't possibly match the emotion of the baseball games played in the wake of the attack, but it will be meaningful in every sense of the word to stand today with thousands of other people from the Washington, D.C. area and pay tribute to those people who lost and gave their lives on this day four years ago. Having a baseball team in Washington will enhance that sense of community, and for that we should all be thankful.

This what the absence of a real owner does to you

Esteban Loaiza and the Washington Nationals have a mutual option on his $2.9 million contract, meaning that either side can opt out of the next year. Loaiza, not surprisingly, wants a long-term contract, and there is no question that other teams will be willing to give it to him. The rational thing for the Nationals to do would be to sign Loaiza to a long term contract and move on to resolving other problems, like firing the GM.

The problem is that the Nats don't have a real owner, and until they do they won't be in a position to make these significant decisions. No one wants to lock in the future owner to big contracts when MLB tells us that it will select the owner really, really soon. The Nationals' inability to enter into big contracts in Reason No. 83 why MLB should get off its butt and pick an owner pronto!

It's a huge game, so of course we're starting Jason Bergmann

Four games back, desperately needing a win, and facing John Smoltz, one of the best pitchers in the game, who do the Nationals call on to pitch this pressure game? An All-Star? A proven winner? A gutsy veteran? No, the starter will be Jason Bergmann, a 23-year old up from AAA New Orleans who hasn't started a game since 2004 when he was in Class A Savannah.

So, which team do you think has the advantage in this must-win game for the Nats?

Boswell said it would be like this, but now that we're here it really stinks. The plan, apparently, is to pitch Bergmann for three innings (hopefully!) and then rely on the bullpen to hold down the fort. It's really the only thing the Nats can do at this point, but it would be nice to have a fourth starter during the stretch drive. Not only do we not have a good fourth starter, we don't have a fourth starter at all!!

You got to hand it to the kid, though, he's been good so far. He's absolutely lights out against right-handers: in their 20 at bats against him, righties have only a .200 BA, .174 OBP, .050, SLG, and .224 OPS. Those are awesome numbers; we especially love the .050 SLG. Unfortunately, Bergmann hasn't been as good against lefties. In 15 at bats, their stats against him are very good: .400 BA, .500 OBP, .467 SLG, .967 OPS. Ouch! Let's hope Bergmann sees a lot of right handers today!

Other than the top of the fourth, it went really well!

Livan Hernandez pitched seven brilliant innings, holding the Braves scoreless on only four hits and two walks. Hernandez was surprisingly dominant, allowing only one batter to reach second base.

In the midst of this dominance, there was one slight problem: Hernandez pitched another inning, and things didn't go so well in that inning. Someone disguised as Hernandez must have pitched that fourth inning because that person was awful, totally unlike the guy who pitched the other seven innings of the first eight. Whereas Hernandez was sharp and managed to discipline and fool the Braves' lineup, this imposter kept throwing up fat pitches that the Braves crushed. Don't believe us? Look at the stats: the imposter gave up four runs on three hits, two of which were home runs, and a walk. One of those homers was by a guy (Brian McCann) whose OPS this season is only .397. Does that sound like the work of the guy who pitched the other seven innings of the first eight? Certainly not. Maybe Hernandez had to go to the bathroom or make a call when it came time to pitch the fourth.

It didn't help that the Nationals hitters looked like they were in elementary school. Of course, you can't expect much when you're infielders have OPS's of .776 (Wilkerson), .683 (Cruz), .532 (Guzman), and .716 (Castilla). No lineup with that production is going to do consistently well. Why the Nationals don't take some chances on players like Ryan Zimmerman and Rick Short is beyond us. They're already here with the big club so why not play them? What do we have to lose? It's not like we'd be benching Albert Pujols and Barry Bonds.

Anyway, we'll know later today what this loss does to the standings, but it sure would've been nice to skip that fourth inning!

You've got to be kidding

Cristian Guzman spends much of the season below .200 and is a very big reason why the Nats are not leading the Wild Card Race and only now does Frank Robinson consider sitting him? And only now because he wants to give Guzman the chance to keep his average above The Mendoza Line? That is just pathetic.

Are we being too harsh? We don't think so; we're not the only ones to place a lot of the blame for the Nationals' likely finish on Cristian's shoulders. Rob Neyer has written that the Nats would be leading the race if only they had a replacement level shortstop.

So why wasn't Guzman benched months ago? That's a question every Nats fan should be asking The Excitable Boy and Frank Robinson because both sat by and watched as a horrible player undermined the team's playoff chances.

Here's an interesting fact

This just in from the Elias Sports Bureau:

Atlanta led Washington 6-2 on Friday night before the Nationals rallied to win, 8-6. The Braves had won each of the last 76 games in which they took a lead of at least four runs, which was the longest current streak in the majors. That distinction now belongs to Washington; the Nationals' franchise has won the last 67 games in which it has gone ahead by four runs.

And in the category of That Cabrera Guy Is Pretty Good, Elias says this:

Here's one that slipped through the cracks Thursday night: Miguel Cabrera became the youngest player in major-league history to record back-to-back seasons of 30 or more home runs. At the age of 22 years, 143 days, Cabrera was 80 days younger than Albert Pujols when Pujols posted his second consecutive 30-homer season in 2002. There were only two previous holders of this record: Babe Ruth from 1921 to 1930, and Jimmie Foxx for 72 years prior to Pujols.

We're still hanging on!

Thanks to an amazing comeback that seemed completely beyond their capabilities, the Nationals remain in the Wild Card Race, if only tenuously, three games back of the Astros.

On a night when another one of the Nationals' big three starting pitchers didn't have it, the bullpen saved the day. Esteban Loaiza gave up six runs in six innings on ten hits, but Jason Bergmann, Gary Majewski, and Chad Cordero shut down the Braves in the seventh, eighth, and ninth to keep it close and then preserve the win.

Down 6-3 in the seventh, the Nats started their comeback with a two-out Vinny Castilla homer. That made it 6-4. In the eighth, Church and Guzman walked and Jamey Carroll advanced them with a sacrifice bunt. Brad Wilkerson then doubled both of them home to tie it at 6. Baerga walked and then was replaced as a runner by his alter ego--Kenny Kelly. Jose Guillen then doubled both Wilkerson and Kelly home and the Nationals had scored four to make it 8-6.

A four-run inning is so out of character for this team that every Nats fan had to think the game was over going into the seventh. But every time they seem to be one loss from being out of the race this team finds a way to get back into it. Yes, we know that they're not likely to win the Wild Card, but they're still in it in mid-September, which is pretty amazing if you ask us.

Attendance II

All of our posts regarding attendance got us to thinking about this subject in more detail, so we decided to sort the numbers by day of the week. Here is the average attendance by day through yesterday's game:

Day of Week	Average Attendance
Monday	31,702
Tuesday	33,058
Wednesday	33,774
Thursday	34,016
Friday	34,524
Saturday	38,644
Sunday	36,765

A couple of things jumped out at us. First, attendance builds with each successive week night. The fluctuation is material if we include Monday, with almost 3,000 more fans attending Friday's games than Monday's games. However, if we exclude Monday's games the attendance is pretty much the same on weeknight games, with only about 1,000 more fans attending Friday's games than Tuesday's games.

Second, Saturday's games have the highest attendance. We expected Sunday's games to bring out the most fans, but perhaps we're stupid.

Third, far fewer than the average number of fans attended this week's games against Florida. Almost 6,500 fewer fans attended last night's game than attended the average Thursday game. As I write this a woman with whom I work is telling me that I'm stupid for not realizing that many fans would stay away from this week's games because it's the first week back at school. When I pointed out that more fans attended the games in April and May when school was still in session she looked at me like I was an idiot and said that there was more enthusiasm for the team then because it was a novelty. When I said that there should have been a lot of excitement this week because of the pennant race, she rolled her eyes and walked out.

I can't win.

Uh oh

Les Carpenter's game article contains some ominous signs of a clubhouse that is coming apart at the seams.

Carpenter's questions to John Patterson about the moment when Patterson threw his glove into the air after the second-base umpire missed a call elicited this:

"It was a combination of everything," he said. "When you're making pitches and all the balls are finding holes, and when you go through everything else that's going on around here, you saw frustration tonight."

Which is why he tossed his red glove into the air. And why [third-base umpire Tim] McClelland came running over from third base, jabbing a finger in Patterson's face and the pitcher looked so blankly at the umpire in return.

"I shouldn't have done it," he said before offering a string of apologies -- to his teammates, the umpires, the fans.

But he added, "I was frustrated."

When asked what he meant by "everything else that's going on around here," he shook his head. "Don't get into that," he said.

Still, it seems obvious that the mood has changed significantly around the Nationals' clubhouse these days. The pregame music went last week in Atlanta, turning the happy room into an afternoon tomb. But the smiles left this team long before that. The joy that seemed to bounce off the walls with the winning in May and June, was replaced with somber mumbles and shuffled steps in July and August.

We've heard a lot about problems in the clubhouse, but there clearly are important aspects of this story we haven't heard. Patterson's comments hint at serious issues that have to be addressed. It doesn't make sense to speculate on what those issues are, but management needs to resolve them quickly.

The problem is that the Nationals don't have a real management team. It's not clear that Tony Tavares, Jim Bowden, and Frank Robinson will be back next year, or in what direction the new owners will take the team. Until the ownership issue is resolved, the Nationals will be plagued by uncertainty and inaction, which is precisely what kept them from making significant trades this season. It's a bad situation, and Major League Baseball must carry much of the blame for its failure to choose an owner before the season and for waiting until the end of the season to do so.

Still, through it all players like Patterson have endured and remained optimistic:

"We can make this a miserable last three weeks of the year or we can salvage it and make it a great season," Patterson said.

It sure would be nice to see MLB finally do something right and select an owner this week so the team can get on with its future.