Nationals Arm Race

Screwing around at cnnsi.com while eating, here’s their list of top 10 most unbreakable baseball records:

1. Cy Young’s 511 career victories
2. Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak
3. Ty Cobb’s career .366 batting average
4. Rickey Henderson’s season SB record of 130
5. Babe Ruth’s career .690 slugging pct
6. Barry Bonds’ season record for walks: 232.
7. Nolan Ryan’s career Ks of 5,714.
8. Jack Chesbro’s season record for complete games: 48.
9. Ted William’s lifetime OBP of .482
10. Hank Aaron’s 25 career all-star games (somewhat aided by multiple games for several years, but he still played in an all star game in 21 of his 23 seasons).

Most of these I tend to agree with … but there are certainly other records out there that are in a similar vein to Cy Young’s career victory record.  Single season wins, single
season innings pitched, starts, complete games, etc all are basically obsolete benchmarks.  Hell, I’d be willing to wager against someone ever winning 30 games in a season ever again.

Not sure i’d say that a 56-game hitting streak is unassailable.  Yes it’s been a while since it happened, but it routinely gets approached.  You see 30, 35, 40 game streaks
with some frequency.
Plus, i think the stolen base is coming back into vogue.  Maybe not close to 118 or 130 in a season, but i think its just a matter of time before we start seeing higher totals.
There seems to be a dearth of quality defensive catchers these days.
anyway, random thoughts.

Welcome to nationalsarmrace.com!

Not that the moribund Washington Nationals necessarily needed another blog, but I couldn’t resist.

Ever since the Nats rolled into town in 2005, I’ve developed an unhealthy obsession with the team, and more interestingly its rotation, bullpen, farm system and player development.  Over the past couple of years specifically, I’ve begun to track the pitchers (mostly the rotations) of our various farm systems and take interest in the development of pitching talent as it rises through the ranks.  Hence the name of the blog “Nationals Arms Race.”  I do periodically write for Brian Oliver and his standard-bearing natsfarm.com blog and do not wish to replicate what he does in the least.  But periodically i do like to talk about the major league rotation instead of the prospects and never felt comfortable with those topics on a prospect-centric blog.

I hope to have a pitching-focused blog that talks about the current Nats MLB rotation, the 40-man spotholders, prospects and who may be coming up next month or next year.  I’ll talk about pitching in general, some observations and some advanced stats.  I will post random musings about the Nationals in general and hope that my close friends with whom I regularly converse about baseball will chime in and offer their 2 cents about their own favorite teams (generally, the Phillies, Yankees and Dodgers).  I’ll talk about pitchers around the majors and baseball in general here and there.

I hope you find my writing interesting and topical.  You can always unsubscribe I suppose 🙂

Thanks, todd