Nationals Arm Race

A quick thought, stemming from the comments of the previous post.  I’m looking at the starters that the Nats have gone up against to contribute to their current .500 record and they’ve gotten beat by some pretty tough guys.  Johnny Cueto, Adam Wainwright, and Matt Harvey (despite his small sample size) are all “Aces” in this league, among the best in the game.  Meanwhile guys like Tim Hudson, Homer Bailey, Shelby Miller and Paul Maholm (not normally, but so far in 2013) are all “near aces” or what I like to call #2 starters in the game.

The Nats have gone up against all of these guys and come away with 7 of their 10 losses (as of 4/24/13).  There’s no shame in losing to a dominant starter like Harvey or Wainwright.

(Now, as for why the Nats other three losses are against such pedigree’d pitchers as Dillon Gee, Julio Teheran and Alex Sanabia, well, that’s probably another blog entry…).

Anyway, the opposing pitchers have highlighted this blog post’s point: The Nats have had a very tough April schedule.  I didn’t really notice it until last week when I saw who the next three opponents were: St. Louis, Cincinnati and Atlanta.  Nothing like 11 straight games against 2012 playoff teams while you’re struggling to make your fanbase nuts.

Here’s a quick monthly broken-out guide to the Nats schedule (and a link to the entire schedule in list form) when looking at 2012 playoff teams to get a sense of how tough April is for us:

Look at how front-loaded this schedule is, and then look at what this team is up against in June and July.  15 of 27 games in April against 2012 playoff teams; Cincinnati twice, the Braves twice and a 3-game set vs St. Louis.  That’s a lot of games against very good teams.  It’s no wonder we’re exactly a .500 team right now.

But then look at June and July; just four total games against 2012 playoff teams (two against Atlanta a the beginning of June and then two in Detroit at the end of July).  The Nats are going to have nearly 8 straight weeks of games in the middle of the season against teams that not only missed the playoffs last year, but in many cases were downright awful and are on pace to be just as awful this year. Teams like Minnesota, Colorado, San Diego, Miami, and Pittsburgh.  Plus a bunch of games against teams from our own division that we know are going to be struggling to be .500 clubs all year (namely, New York and Philadelphia).  They also will go an entire month (from August 19th to September 16th) without playing a 2012 playoff team.

Now, the above table analysis doesn’t take into account that there are still dangerous teams out there on the schedule.  Kansas City is improved for 2013.  The Phillies are not going to be an easy out.  We’ve got an extra game thrown in against Milwaukee (a team with a winning record last year).  Los Angeles and Arizona aren’t going to be easy teams to beat either.   But we shouldn’t forget that this Washington team won 98 games themselves last year and should be the bully on the playground this year.

In a previous post I showed a scenario where the Nats can break-even on season series against the “good” teams in the league but be dominant against the lesser teams in the league and end up with a significant amount of victories (north of 100 wins) on the season.  Now, so far we’re not exactly breaking even against Atlanta, St. Louis or Cincinnati, but we have been somewhat holding serve against lesser teams like Miami and the White Sox.  We just need to get through this early stretch.

I’m not saying, by the way, that this team doesn’t have concerns.  The team isn’t hitting well, especially our #4 and #5 hitters (only the most important ones).  Dan Haren has been absolutely awful as compared to expectations so far.  Strasburg has looked hittable.  Gonzalez has been pitching scared.  The bullpen has been erratic.  The defense has been ghastly (they lead the league in Errors right now).  And I havn’t exactly been the biggest fan of Davey Johnson‘s managing thus far.   But right now these are small sample sized concerns that can (and should) iron themselves out.

The message is this, all is not lost.  Its early.  The Nats are going to struggle for the next week to keep up with Cincinnati and especially in Atlanta.  We will likely have a losing record on May 1st (I personally see us splitting the home Cincy series and losing 2 of 3 in Atlanta).  But we need to be patient and wait to see how this team performs as it enters its “easy stretch” in a couple months.  A win in June is just the same as a win in April, and a .500 month can be easily offset by a .700 month or two later in the year.

(posting this after updating for 2013’s home opener)

Here’s some fun trivia that I’ve collected over the years related to the Nats home opener Attendance and attendance records at the stadium in general.

Nats Trivia: capacity of Nats park?
– 41,888 at opening
– 41,546 in 2010
– 41,506 in 2011
– 41,487 in 2012
– 41,418 in 2013

(RFK capacity: 45,596 per wikipedia/ballparks.com)

Nats All-time Record attendance?

45,966 10/12/12 game 5 2012 nlds

Other/Previous Attendance Records
– 45,274 Opening Day 2013 (new Regular Season record for Nats park)
– 45,017 10/10/12 first home playoff game
– 44,685 8/20/11 vs Phillies (longer standing Nats park record)
– 41,985 6/24/09 vs Boston. (Nats reg-season record standard bearer for a while)
– 45,157 Fathers day 2006 vs Yankees (long standing Regular season Record)
– 45,596 RFK franchise opener (long standing franchise attendance record)

Opening Day Attendances through the years
2013: 45,274 (1:05 monday game, 60 and beautiful)
2012: 40,907 (1:05 thursday game 56, partly cloudy)
2011: 39,055 (1:05 thursday game, 41 degrees and overcast)
2010: 41,290 (1pm game monday, beautiful weather 80s and sunny): phillies invasion
2009: 40,386 (3pm game on a monday, chilly 53degr and overcast).
2008: 39,389 (season and stadium opener), 8pm sunday night, Braves, nat’l tv but cold.
2007: 40,389 (in rfk, 1pm game vs Florida, 72degrees
2006: 40,516 (in rfk, tuesday day game vs Mets, 72degr and sunny)
2005: 45,596 (in rfk, debut of entire franchise, 62degr and clear, evening game).

Opening Day Box Scores

2013:
http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2013_04_01_miamlb_wasmlb_1&mode=recap&c_id=was#gid=2013_04_01_miamlb_wasmlb_1&mode=box
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/WAS/WAS201304010.shtml

2012: http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2012_04_12_cinmlb_wasmlb_1&mode=wrap&c_id=mlb#gid=2012_04_12_cinmlb_wasmlb_1&mode=box

2011: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/WAS/WAS201103310.shtml

2010: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2010_04_05_phimlb_wasmlb_1&mode=wrap

2009: http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/news/wrap.jsp?ymd=20090413&content_id=4251894&vkey=wrapup2005&fext=.jsp&team=home&c_id=was

2008: http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/news/wrap.jsp?ymd=20080330&content_id=2467836&vkey=wrapup2005&fext=.jsp&team=home&c_id=was

2007: http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/news/wrap.jsp?ymd=20070402&content_id=1874785&vkey=wrapup2005&fext=.jsp&team=home&c_id=was

2006: http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/news/wrap.jsp?ymd=20060411&content_id=1394878&vkey=wrapup2005&fext=.jsp&team=home&c_id=was

2005: http://nationals.mlb.com/news/wrap.jsp?ymd=20050414&content_id=1015977&vkey=wrapup2004&fext=.jsp&c_id=was

Its a long season.  The Nats swept the Braves in Atlanta last year in May and the Brave still won 94 games.  This isn’t the end of the world.

However.

Each of the 3 losses this weekend exposed some very specific issues with the team and its manager that aren’t necessarily new, but which are coming to the foreground.  In order:

Friday’s Loss: Over-managing the Pitching Staff:  Once again Davey Johnson pulled a highly effective starter on a miniscule pitch count only to watch his bullpen blow up.  Worse, this is the second straight time its happened to Ross Detwiler, who now has given up exactly one earned run in 13 innings (on a solo homer) and has two No Decisions for his efforts.  No wonder he was visibly frustrated when told he wasn’t going back out.  I defended the decision to pull Strasburg after 80 pitches on opening day in various forums, but I cannot defend the decisions now, knowing that our bullpen was DEAD LAST in the majors in ERA heading into the weekend (I believe they’ve “improved” to 29th by the time of this posting).

I think Johnson has to start relying on his starters to go deeper into games until the bullpen sorts itself out.  Or, to put it differently, I don’t want to see a starter yanked unless he’s sitting on 115 pitches or the lineup is getting ready to turn over a 4th time.   It just does not make sense to pull an effective starter after 90 pitches right now.

Saturday’s Loss: Zimmerman’s Worsening Throwing Arm.  We’re 12 games into the 2013 season and Ryan Zimmerman already has 3 throwing errors.   His throwing error on Friday contributed to the collapse but his air-mailing the throw saturday on a simple, routine play directly led to two unearned runs and a deflating feeling for the Nats.   Opposing scouts are starting to openly question why the Nats are keeping Zimmerman at the position, after watching his throws.  I don’t know if he’s still hurt, if he’s got a Chuck Knoblock mental thing going on, or if he’s just spent far too much time trying to mechanically fix the issue instead of just being a natural athlete, but it isn’t working.  Strasburg‘s line on Saturday: 6IP, 5 hits, 7 Ks, 0 earned runs … and a Loss.  I know this game isn’t entirely on Zimmerman; you have to score to win, but giving a bulldog veteran like Tim Hudson (and his amazing career record when given a lead) 2 free runs is never a good idea.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing the team can really do about this.  You can’t sit your #4 hitter (despite how crummy he’s hitting; see the next point).  There’s no place to stick him now or in the immediate future thanks to the Adam LaRoche re-signing blocking 1B for the next two years.  And he’s a $100M player who clearly isn’t playing like one.

Sunday’s Loss: Where’s the offense?  I know the team generally is doing pretty well; we’re middle of the league right now in terms of Homers, BA, and OPS.  But most of that is thanks to Bryce Harper‘s fast start.  We have two key middle-of-the-order guys who are just not getting it done.  Specifically, LaRoche and Zimmerman.  You just cannot win consistently with your middle of the order guys hitting .147 and .220 respectively.   To make matters worse, there seems to be no hope in sight for Danny Espinosa, and with a MLB-ready guy who had a great spring and is lighting up AA in Anthony Rendon seemingly an able replacement, you have to wonder how long the team is going to let their #7 hitter continue to hit .175 with a known tear in his shoulder.  Paul Maholm is a decent pitcher … but he’s not Cy Young.  He went 7+ and gave up just four measly hits on the afternoon in a game where the Nats looked like they gave up frankly.  One more throwing error tossed in by Zimmerman for good measure.

We didn’t really even talk about how the Nats had the distinct Starting Pitching matchup advantage in all three games but lost them all.  Sometimes your aces just get whacked (Strasburg in Cincinnati, Gonzalez on Sunday); you have to roll with it and try to outscore your opponent in those games.

Nor have we talked about concerns with the bullpen; what is going on with Clippard and Storen?  But the Bullpen is one of those areas that can look really bad with a couple of small sample sized bad outings, so we won’t over-react too much.

But, I think there’s some concerns here that are a bit above those of the “well its just mid April” variety.

So, I know “small sample sizes” and all that, but he’re something I found interesting upon watching the Nats finish their second sweep of the series against the White Sox.

Last year early on, the Nats had a bad tendency to drop the final game of series that they were on the verge of sweeping.  Check out the 2012 Nats game-by-game results: time and time again they won the first two (or three) games in a series then dropped the finale.  In April and May of 2012 this happened against the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati, Houston, San Diego, Philadelphia, Cincinnati again, and then Philadelphia again.  That was 7 straight attempts at sweeping a series where they dropped the 3rd game (I’m not counting the 2-game mini series sweeps they had along the way).  They also threw in a couple other series where they won 2 of 3 but lost the first game instead of the last.  Finally on May 25-27th they finished off a series sweep in Atlanta (and then promptly got swept in Miami the next series).

So far in 2013, they have had two inferior opponents (Miami and the White Sox) on the ropes and then promptly  swept them.  No let down in the final game; they powered through and got the 3rd win in the series.

Why is this important?  Because these extra wins against these crummy teams will make a difference down the road.   If you sweep every sub .500 team (or come close to it) and then break even against your playoff contenders, you’re a 110 win team.   Check out this possible result-grid for the Nats 2013 season (put in with approximate records with the team splitting with any playoff calibre team and then dominating or sweeping the lesser clubs):

Looks pretty good doesn’t it?  And this assumes we break even with Philadelphia … who I think is really weakened this year and could be fodder for the Nats once the games come around.  Can this team take 15 of 19 games against Miami and the Mets?   Well, they beat the Mets 14-4 last year and they’re about the same team, and Miami is (of course) significantly weaker than the team that had a season split with the Nats last year.  So yeah I think those are decent predictions.

I also feel these 3rd game of 3 wins are important because perhaps last year they were, for lack of a better term, “embarassed” to be suddenly in the dominant position as a team, and I think mentally this prevented them from really putting their foot on the throat of an opponent and finishing them off.  Perhaps they were of the mind-set going into a 3-game series of thinking, “wow it’d be great if we won 2 of 3 here” and then they mentally let up in the finales after winning the first two games.

Now, the Nats are serious.  And they’re getting wins where they should be getting wins.  I can’t wait for this weekend’s series against what is looking like the 2nd best team in baseball (behind us of course 🙂 ).

Is Desmond really a 9-figure contract waiting to happen?? Photo Drew Kinback/Natsnq.com

A few days ago Elvis Andrus signed an 8yr/$120M contract with Texas that had some heads shaking in the industry.   Here locally, the immediate focus was on our own pre-free agency shortstop Ian Desmond and what his future FA value may be in light of this monster deal.

Sidenote: I just don’t get the Andrus contract.  You mean to tell me you can’t find another shortstop in the minors who can field nearly as well as Andrus and hit 15% below MLB replacement level (his career OPS+ is 84)?  Or at least find one who you can get away with paying just a couple million dollars a year at best.   What am I missing in Andrus that makes him worth this kind of money?  Is it all about his defense?  Meanwhile Texas has one of the best prospects in all of baseball (Jurickson Profar) in the minors featuring as a middle-infielder who could have naturally replaced Andrus at short … instead they’ll waste his talents at 2nd base and likely move Ian Kinsler to the outfield at some point in the future.  Dumb.

Does the Andrus contract really affect Desmond’s value?  So it may, according to The Washington Times‘ Amanda Comak.  MLBtraderumors weighed in on the topic as well, claiming that Andrus “may not have as much pop” as Desmond but is clearly better defensively, and has been consistently “good” for four years.

Is that all really true?  Is Andrus really that much better of a player than Desmond?  Lets take a quick peek at some value, hitting and defensive stats for both players.  I’m using 2009-12 for Andrus (all full seasons) and just 2010-12 for Desmond (again, just using full seasons for comparison purposes):

Using just the full seasons, we can see that Andrus has always been a weak hitter; even when Nats fans were burning Desmond in effigy for being such a bad hitter in 2011, he was still for the most part as good as Andrus ever was.  And that was before 2012 when Desmond broke out and hit like a middle-of-the-order guy.

How about Defensively?  Andrus’ career numbers at short show a very good defender while Desmond shows a defender on the improvement, nearly matching Andrus’ UZR/150 rating in 2012.  Is Desmond THAT much behind Andrus defensively at this point?

How about Value?  Note i’ve put in both WAR figures because this is one of those examples where I cannot defend baseball-reference’s war calculations; how does Andrus have a BETTER 2012 WAR than Desmond given that they’re nearly identical in defensive metrics but Desmond vastly outhit Andrus?  Fangraph’s war does show this accurately, putting Desmond’s war at 5.0 to Andrus’ 3.9.

Yes I get that Andrus has now performed ably for 4 straight seasons while Desmond has been exceptional for only one.  Is that a $100 million dollar difference?   But ask yourself this question; if Desmond hits at a 110-120 OPS+ clip for the next two years AND continues to be a positive UZR/150 defender … is he a 9-figure player?  I guess so in today’s market.

Strasburg gets the Nats off to a quick victory. Photo via centerfieldgate.com

A great opening to the Nats 2013 campaign.  A beautiful day at the park to sneak away for a 1pm game time (not that I got to; meetings, meetings).

Stephen Strasburg looked completely dominant, retiring 19 overmatched Marlins in a row after a game-opening single and departing after 7 complete innings on just 80 pitches.  He relied on location as opposed to power on the day, recording just three strikeouts but getting a ton of weak grounders for outs.  If this had been September in the midst of a playoff push he’d likely have thrown the complete game (or at least one more inning considering that the other two hits he gave up were to the middle of Miami’s order in the 7th; he was set to face 6-7-8 in the 8th for “easier” outs).  But its April; no need to burn pitches/IP now when we’ll need them later.

Tyler Clippard comes in, shaky at the start but gets the outs he needed for the hold.  And we get our first look at new closer Rafael Soriano in an ideal situation for a closer; 2 run lead, leading off the 9th inning.  He didn’t disappoint, punching out two to get the save.

On the offensive side, Bryce Harper continues right where he left off with his torrid Grapefruit league campaign by clubbing homers in his first two at-bats.  Wow; that’s a way to start your season.  Who says that Spring Training stats are meaningless?  🙂

Nothing more today.  A good first day of the season.

ps: 500th post!  I had to post something fun for the record books.

As we get started for a new season of Nats baseball, one with incredible promise and high expectations, I thought I’d put out a fun post for retrospection for all us Nats fans.  What are some of the best Nats games you’ve seen in person?  This post is inspired by a post from William World News, he himself inspired by another post (so this is transitive blog post inspiration here).

Here’s my Best 5 Nats games seen in person, in no particular order:

1. Nats Park Opener 2008: I caught a 4am flight from a Vegas bachelor party to make it.   We had nosebleeds up in the left field bleachers but Dad and I stayed for the whole game.  Jon Rauch blew the save and gave up the lead in the top of the 9th and we all groaned; it was late on a Sunday night and very cold.  Dad and I had metro’d down and started making our way back to the train, thinking that with the cold there may be a long set of extra innings when suddenly Ryan Zimmerman blasted a walk-off homer to win the game.  Very special game.

2. Ramon Ortiz taking a no-hitter into the 9th on September 4th, 2006 at RFK.  We basically saw the greatest game of Ortiz’s career as he shutdown the powerful St. Louis Cardinals on zero hits through eight.  Ortiz also managed to hit the SOLE home run of his career that night.  In the top of the 9th he gave up a hit … and then promptly served up one of the longest home runs I’d ever seen to Albert Pujols, who blasted a ball to dead-center field at RFK that landed in the upper bleachers.  Before Pujols had rounded first base Frank Robinson was out of the dugout to pull Ortiz and let Chad Cordero get the save.  Looking at the box score it was an awfully fast hook; there were 2 outs in the 9th, the Nats were ahead 4-1 and Ortiz was only on 95 pitches.  Why not let him get the CG?  Still a special game.

3. Fathers Day versus the Yankees 2006: Zimmerman walk off again for come-from behind victory, closest RFK ever came to being full outside of the 2005 opener.  The stadium was absolutely buzzing that day and I was dutifully in tow with my own father (along with good friend Pat Boyd and his dad, a diehard yankee fan).  The same group was also at the 2012 Nats-Yankees series, and we saw the game where Bryce Harper struck out 5 times.

4. NL East clincher Oct 1st, 2012; entire crowd singing “Take On Me” when Michael Morse came to the plate, and then despite being behind in the 9th the Nats clinched the division when the Braves lost, which was announced in the middle of the 9th inning as the mobile-phone enabled crowd started cheering and the announcers were forced to post it on the scoreboard.  The Nats were listless that game, getting just 4 hits off of Kyle Kendrick in 7 innings and seemed distracted.  But it was all worthwhile for the champagne celebration afterwards.

5. First home game as a franchise: April 14 2005.  The new Washington franchise played its first 9 games on the road, ostensibly to give the Nats their own stage for their first home opener.  Thanks to George W. Bush‘s attendance, the line to get into the stadium was an hour long and we missed the first inning entirely.   But we got in, the team won behind 8 strong innings from Livan Hernandez and a tradition was started.

Coincidentally, Zimmerman now has 8 career walk-off home runs, a distinct penchant for the dramatic.  Which is a ton considering that the career record is 13, belonging to Jim Thome.  Can Zimmerman keep getting these marquee home runs and put his name on this list?   He seems to have a long career ahead of him and plenty of time to hit a handful more walk-offs (myworldofbaseball has a nice description of each of Zimmerman’s 8 walkoffs).

Games I wish I had been to:

– Strasburg‘s debut: June 8, 2010; my family was in South Africa for the World Cup 2010 so we missed it.  However, I remember my dad distinctly telling me Strasburg’s line on the day.  7ip, 14Ks, 0bbs.  And I thought he was kidding.

– Teddy Wins!  After years of losing, many people had given up hope that Teddy would ever win.  I thought personally his best shot was his Bobblehead day, when “secret service” members guarded him as he tried to finally cross the finish line first.  But it was not to be and I thought perhaps he’d never win.  As it turned out, the prerequisite to Teddy winning was the Nats themselves winning a title, a fitting end to his losing streak.

– Any of the 2012 playoffs, but especially NLDS Game 4 walk-off.  Probably the most special moment in the Nats short history.  I did not “win” any playoff tickets out of my season ticket groups and watched the game from home, on tape delay.  Amazing finish.  I have a photo of Jayson Werth stomping on home plate framed in my son’s room now; ironically its the same photo that now adorns the side of Nats Stadium.

– Final game at RFK: I may have been there frankly.  That was a long time and a lot of losses ago.  If I was there, It didn’t turn out to be nearly as special as it could have been.

What are your best Nats game memories?

I read all my sports news via RSS Feeds, which I’ve read into Google Reader for years.  If you’re like me, you were probably highly irritated when finding out that Google is summarily ending the Reader service.   I’ve done a bit of research on where to transfer my RSS feeds and “Feedly” seems to be the way to go.  (Tangent: if you’re a big RSS reader, where are you moving your RSS feeds to, or what do you use as an alternative to Google Reader?  I’m leading towards Feedly)

Anyway, while thinking about my Google RSS feed future, I happened to take a look at the two categories of Nationals RSS feeds that I have listed and was astonished to see the number of Nationals links I now have.  I count at least Eighty (80) Nationals related blogs and another Thirty (30) Nationals “Official” feed links (official meaning Team sites, beat reporters, or Masn feeds).

Can you believe there are (or were) eighty blogs out there about the Washington Nationals??  And in reality that number may be a bit low, because I’m always finding out about new Nationals blogs that pop up.  A great number of these blogs are now dormant (read onwards), but there’s still quite a few near daily blogs pumping out nearly as much content as the paid Beat Reporters.

Anyway; I thought it would be of great service to list all these various Blog links for the general Nats readership.  And of course if you see a blog out there that I don’t have, I’d love to grab it.  I also took this opportunity to clean up my own links section along the right-hand side to prune away obsoleted blogs and add in the currently active blogs.   Lastly: if your site doesn’t have an Nats-specific RSS feed, then I don’t have it here.

I’ll divide these blogs into various categories.  The links for each Blog are the RSS feeds, not the actual blog site.  But if you want to go to the blog site it is usually straight forward enough to figure out from the URL or from a bit of google work.

Highly Active Nats Blogs (Daily posts or close)

• D.C. Baseball History: Daily “This Day in…” Washington Baseball history posts from Art Audley, Mark Hornbaker, and Marty Niland along with other content by a host of writers.
• DCNatitude: author Adam Bitely has this newer blog (well, newer to me; just found it while doing this post).
• District on Deck; primary authors Flax, Book and Somers are now part of Si.com’s Fansided Network.
• Federal Baseball; primary author Patrick Reddington and others are now part of SBNation
• Lady and the Nats: by anonymous author “NatsLady.”
• Let Teddy Win! Washington Nationals Presidents Race: “Presidents Race Fan” Scott Abelman keeps everyone up-to-date on the Racing Presidents.
• mlb trade rumors – Washington Nationals Feed: MLB Rumors – MLBTradeRumors.com: not officially a “Nats Blog” but this well-known baseball blog has a Washington-only feed of rumors and stories that serves as a great way to keep on top of Nats dealings.
• Nationals 101: Frank & Susan Lattuca also host a podcast.
• Nationals Arm Race: what you’re reading now 🙂
• Nationals Baseball: author Harper Gordek posts interesting opinion pieces and gets good discussions.
• Nationals Home Plate: newer blog that I just found doing this post.
• Nationals Inquisition: author Drew Kinback posts photo-heavy pieces with a good humor slant.
• NationalsProspects.com: author Luke Erickson took over for Brian Oliver‘s old NatsFarmAuthority and keeps the flag flying for Nats Prospects and Farm System updates.
• Nats Enquirer author “CK” is now part of the YardBarker network.
• Nats Nation (as viewed from Section 138 and beyond). Lots of fun with screen grabs, photoshop and embedded video links.  Oh and his leading picture is of Luis Ayala.
• NatsGM; author Ryan Sullivan posts good opinion pieces and makes for good reading and discussion.
• Red Porch Report: Nationals Podcast and Blog which is part of the Ball Hogs Radio Network.   Kevin Eaton and Ryan Sullivan.
• Sharkadina: Roger Bernadina‘s #1 fan Terry Gangelosi and friends.
• The Nationals Review by author Charlie Fliegel, who also hosts a Podcast periodically.
• The Nats Blog, by multiple authors (Joe Drugan, Wil Yoder, Ted Youngling, et al).  Now part of the Bloguin Network.
• The Zimmerman(n) Telegram: multiple authors led by Ben Devin with great reporting on the WBC over the past month.
• Nationals Locker: author Joe Lapinski‘s blog is part of the BlogLockers.com blog network.
• Washington NationLOLs; great fun with images and photoshop’d captions.
• http://www.CitizensofNatstown.com: a new project with some of the familiar names in the Nats blogosphere (Sean Hogan, Dave Huzzard, and others).  No RSS feed?
• http://www.NationalsObsession.com (launches on Opening Day)
• http://thenationalsarchive.com; brand new Mar 2013 (no RSS?)

Less Active but not Dormant Nats Blogs (sporadic posts)

• 2011 Nationals Draft Info: Sean Hogan‘s 2011 Draft blog; listed here since its part of a series (see next).
• 2012 Nationals Draft Info: Sean Hogan’s 2012 Draft blog
• Bang! Zoom!: last post 2/11/2013. before that Nov 2012.  Not sure what’s happened to Kirk Raymond but I hope he returns.
• Center Field Gate: last post 1/20/13: was highly active in-season so we’ll hope for a return.
• DC is for Baseball: last post 1/31/13: Sean Hogan‘s main site; his interest lays more in prospects and the draft, so he gets busier around the Rule 4 draft and has the per-year detailed Draft blogs (see below).
• First Ladies of Baseball: last post Oct 11, 2012, may not actually be dormant; we’ll see if the authors Ashley Warlick and Maggie Keller pop back up when the 2013 starts.
• For Love of the Nationals: Last post Jan 2013: despite posting recently, Dave Lint only has posted a handful of times in the last 3 years, so we’re calling this site dormant for now.
• Internet Baseball Writers Association: Washington, D.C. Chapter;  home site for Dave Nichols-led DC-IBWA where Nats bloggers emulate the BBWAA and vote on things.  Coincidentally the membership rolls of DC-IBWA mirror this blog posting in terms of listing Nats bloggers.
• Nats Noodles; last post 1/15/13: author “Nat Anacostia” has been sporadic this off-season.
• Nats Triple Play: last post 1/29/13: only a handful of posts in the last year; may be dormant.
• Natsfangirl; last post 10/4/12: author Jenn Jenson posts beautiful photography on this blog, which seems to have taken the off-season off.  I hope she’s back for opening day 2013.
• Natstradamus last post 3/7/13: periodic intelligent pieces with heavy Sabre-lants from author Luigi De Guzman (aka “Ouij”).
• Dick Heller: last post 2/21/13 by namesake author Dick Heller.
• Win for Teddy: last post Sept 2012: very active last season, hope to see them come back.

Dormant, Obsolete or Abandoned Nats Blogs

• Ball-Wonk: last post Dec 2010
• Capitol Baseball: last post July 2012: not sure what happened here; the author was posting nearly daily in-season 2012.
• Capitol Punishment: Last post Sept 2012.  Chris Needham‘s infamous Nats blog, one of the first and one of the most vociferious about the state of the early Nats, which he “quit” a couple years ago but to which he continues to post sporadically.
• DC Double Play: last post Jan 2012.
• DC Sports Plus: last post Nov 2012.  Sean Hogan’s previous blog, essentially ended May 2011.
• De civitate sabermetricarum: last post 5/29/12: was doing near daily posts and then suddenly stopped.
• Distinguished Senators: Last post May 2011.
• FJB: last post Apr 2012: like Needham, Steven Biel sometimes pops back up on this blog and posts about the team, despite the title of the blog (Fire Jim Bowden) long since being obsoleted.
• F*ck Yeah Stephen Strasburg: last post Jan 2012: yes indeed there’s a site with this title.
• Half Street Blues; last post May 2010
• I Miss RFK; last post July 2009.
• Just A Nats Fan; last post July 2011.
• Life is Better With Baseball; signed off Aug 2011.
• National Record; last post Feb 2012.
• Nationals 360: last real post Jan 2011, now taken over by an Electronic Cigarette company?
• Nationals Daily News: last post Dec 2011, this was Mark Hornbaker’s former site before starting the DC Baseball History site above.
• Nationals Fangirls moved to just Nationals FanGirl (singular), but www.nationalsfangirl.com currently says that its “Account is Suspended.”  Oh well.
• Nationals Farm Authority: Brian Oliver‘s fantastic farm system tracking site, who signed off Sept 1 2010 to start a new career.  NationalsProspects.com has picked up where Oliver left off.
• NATIONALS NEWS NETWORK: Dave Nichols closed this to join it with the larger District Sports Page, which reports on all Washington Sports in one location.  Unfortunately he has no Nats-specific RSS feed, so I don’t regular read the site (I don’t really care about random Redskins, Wizards or Capitals stories).
• NATIONALS NEWS NETWORK: Off The Field; last post Sept 2011.  Cheryl Nichols also moved to the District Sports page.
• Nationals Review; last post May 2012.
• NationalsDailyNews.com Teamwire: last post July 2010
• NationalsFanboyLooser: last post June 2011.  Former blog by Mike Harris, who then took over as Sports Editor of The Washington Times after they re-introduced Sports to the paper after a 2 year hiatus.
• NationalsPride.com: last post: April 2010.  Authors Bergin and Henderson suddenly stopped writing.
• Nats Doggerel last post Mar 2010: short lived blog that posted quick poems about the Nats.  I’m not kidding.
• Nats320 — A Washington Nationals Blog: Jeff Saffelle‘s photography-heavy blog which suddenly went off the air in July 2011.  There’s a story there but last time I saw Jeff we didn’t get into it.  I think the loss of this blog, one of the absolute first Nats blogs, is a real shame.  Jeff took a lot of heat on the blogosphere/twitter for being “too friendly” to the Nats cause; to that I say “this is a free country; you’re free not to read what you don’t like.”  Too many haters in this world.
• NatsStats: last post Aug 2010.
• Nats of the Round Table: last post Oct 2008, may have morphed into Nationals Baseball above.
• NBTN: last post July 2009, now the page renders in Japanese.  Weird.
• Passing Time Between Wil Nieves’ Bombs… last post March 2012.
• Past a Diving Vidro: last post May 2011.
• Planetary Nats Blog: last post Dec 2010
• Pulp Nationals: last post Mar 2010.
• Senators Fans Unite: Will Bentzel signed off Jan 1 2010.
• StephenJWalker.com: last post Oct 2011.
• Swatting Nats; last post Oct 2010.
• The Half Street Highrise: last post Apr 2010, author Banneker moved to The Nats Blog.
• The Nats Report: last post Nov 2010.
• Washington Nationals; last post Nov 2010, domain now gone.
• We’ve Got Heart; last post Apr 2010.
• YOU DEAD DAWG: last post Nov 2011.

Not entirely about the Nats but of Interest to Nats Fans

• Are the Hagerstown Suns relocating to Winchester?: Collection of news articles about the seemingly dead possibility of the Suns moving to Winchester, VA.
• Search Results – AuburnPub.com: Auburn DoubleDays link with some Nats-relevant content.
• (Am I missing RSS feeds about the rest of our farm system?  I used to have a Potomac Nationals feed but it seems broken).

Nats Beat Reporters

• All Nats All the Time: official blog feed of MLB.com Nats beat reporter Bill Ladson.
• Byron Kerr: MASN Nats beat reporter Byron Kerr‘s official blog feed.
• Latest entries for Nationals Watch: from Washington Times beat reporter Amanda Comak.
• MASNsports.com‘s Nats Beat Reporter Pete Kerzel‘s blog feed.
• Nationals Journal; Washington Post Nats Beat reporters Adam Kilgore and James Wagner‘s official blog.  The NatsJournal is one of the longest running blogs out there and is very widely read.
• NATS INSIDER; Comcast Sports Net’s Mark Zuckerman‘s blog, probably which has the widest readership of any link on this page.

Other links for Members of the Press

• Bob Carpenter: MASN TV broadcaster Bob Carpenter‘s official blog feed.
• Examiner Beanballs RSS: Washington Examiner Beanballs feed, Nats specific but very sporadic.
• Examiner MLB RSS: Washington Examiner MLB feed, but seems Nats specific.  Sometimes picks up Tom Loverro‘s stuff.
• Washington Nationals News: official MLB feed for the team, mostly written by Ladson as well.
• Thomas Boswell (washingtonpost.com): Washington Post National writer Tom Boswell‘s rss feed.  He doesn’t write exclusively on the Nats, but there’s plenty of baseball content.

Nats “Official” Blogs; these are from the team, from players, etc.

• The Backfield Diaries: Ryan Tatusko‘s blog, moved to http://www.ryantatusko.wordpress.com, which has a broken RSS feed.  Grr.   I cannot find a blog by any other Nats player, majors or minors.
• Mike Rizzo‘s official MASN blog.
• Notes from NatsTown: the official blog of the Team; sometimes the owners will blog here.

Obsolete “Official” Nats blogs and links

• CSN Washington: Miss Chatter: last post Jan 2011: I guess Miss Chatter stopped being chatty.
• Ben Goessling on MASNsports.com: left the beat April 2010.
• CSN Washington: Main; the CSN feed may be broken, last updated Mar 2012.
• Debbi Taylor: replaced as the Nats sideline reporter after the 2011 season.
• Jim Riggleman: last post June 2011, just before his bluff was called and he quit.
• Johnny Holliday; last post Dec 2011.
• Phil Wood on MASNsports.com; last post Apr 2010.
• Ray Knight: last post Sept 2010: I guess we don’t ask the TV guys to do much writing.
• Screech’s Blog: last post Apr 2012: the Presidents must get more press.
• The Washington Times Blogs: ‘Chatter’: the previous incarnation of the Washington Times sports nats blog, obsoleted when the paper dropped sports on 12/31/2009.  Luckily Mark Zuckerman picked up where he left off on the NatsInsider blog and by freelanching for a year or so.

Known Nats News items on the Net not listed above

• Mr Irrelevant: Jamie & Chris Mottram has a DC-sports heavy blog, but not Nats specific.
• I’m not entirely sure i’m getting all the content The Washington Examiner offers via the above links (which is a shame if true, because I like the writing of Thom Loverro)
• District Sports Page, what grew out of Nationals News Network and Dave Nichols, doesn’t have a Nats-specific feed, just an all-Washington sports feed, and (frankly) I can’t stand the overexposure the Washington Redskins get in this town.
• DC Sports Bog features the always-entertaining writing of Dan Steinberg but isn’t entirely Nats focused.
• William World News from William Yurasko is in the same boat; some Nats posts, not entirely Nats related.  Lots of DC-area items of interest though.
• We Love DC; as with others in this section, lots about DC, some about the Nats.  Editor: Tom Bridge with Nats specialist Rachel Levitin.
• DC Pro Sports Report: like with District Sports Page; all DC sports, no Nats-specific feed that I can find.  Update: Nichols provided this link: districtsportspage.com/category/nationalsmlb
• Baseball News Hound: authored by Ryan Kelley, who also contributes to Bleacher Report.  Lots of Nats stuff but not exclusively so.
• Seamheads.com: more of a generic baseball blog but does have some DC-centric guys like Ted Leavengood who guest-blogs for MASN.

If you have updates, corrections or additions to anything above, please comment and let me know.  I know I may have some of the names for these blogs wrong, or am missing major contributors to sites whose author rolls change quickly.  I apologize in advance for any errors or mistakes.

Carlos Rivero snuck through waivers and stays with the organization. Photo Brad Barr/US Presswire via bleacherreport.com

Great news 3/25/13: the Nats exposed Carlos Rivero to waivers, got no takers and he was outrighted to AAA Syracuse over the weekend.

I know he didn’t have the greatest numbers this spring (8-for-47 for a meager .170 BA), but he seems like he could be a valuable utility guy in a pinch, able to play multiple positions both in the infield and outfield.   I liked what I saw from him in limited TV time this spring.  I’m glad he made it through waivers and remains an option in our farm system for at least this year.

He also clears a spot off the 40 man, leaving us sitting at 38/40.  Plenty of room to make moves if need be.  But not a ton of manuverability; of the 38 guys remaining, you can only really make a case for Corey Brown as being relatively expendible/likely to pass through waivers.  If we get a slew of injuries like last season that cause us to do mass call-ups, we may have to heavily depend on the 60-day DL.

Meanwhile, another year of Rule-5 complaining (see here and here) has essentially proven once again to be wasted breath; both Jeff Kobernus and Danny Rosenbaum have been returned to the team.   Kobernus still seemingly sits behind Steve Lombardozzi, Anthony Rendon and Wil Rhymes on the team’s 2nd base depth chart, meaning we’d have to have a pretty bad slate of injuries for him to sniff the majors this year.  But, it is nice to have him back, considering his draft pedigree and bonus money investment.  Rosenbaum was our AA Ace last year and started out with ace-like stuff, but struggled in the 2nd half.  Given that the team suddenly has a slew of starter arms in AAA (especially if Chris Young sticks around, though he probably walks), perhaps we’ll see Rosenbaum starting in AA again.  Not likely though; would you rather challenge Rosenbaum in AAA or give another year of starts to someone like Tanner Roark at this point?