Doug's Dingers

The Cardinals had no difficulty with Doug Fister last night. Imagine my surprise when Doug himself stopped by to share some exciting news with us, news that partially explains last night's game.

"Hi, Nats fans. This is Doug Fister from your Washington Nationals. I've always thought it was important to give back to the community and to give back to the game. That's why I've started Doug's Dingers, a charity dedicated to providing home runs to the tragically underdingered.

It's easy to forget about the tiny infielders who field our ground balls and carry our luggage onto the charter, but they're just as important to baseball as anyone! Doug's Dingers is all about recognizing the little guys. It can be something as small as remembering their names or as big as grooving one for them in the first inning.

But enough from me! Let's hear from the real heroes. I call them Doug's Dudes."

"Hi everyone! This is Kolten Wong! From Hawaii! I really can't hit at all, but thanks to Doug's Dingers, I have a home run!

Hello big arbitration award and goodbye to sleeping in a drawer at Matt Holliday's house!

Thanks, Doug!"

"Ha ha! No problem, Kolten. Any time.

Kolten Wong is exactly the kind of heartbreakingly underpowered ballplayer we're trying to help here at Doug's Dingers.

Let's hear from another Doug's Dude, Matt Carpenter. How have I helped you, lil' fella?"

"What? I mean, for one thing, I'm 6'3". Plus I'm awesome at baseball. What kind of charity is this?"

"Come on, Matt! Tell the people how thanks to Doug's Dingers, you no longer have to tell groupies that you're Chris Carpenter's little brother."

"Or Bob Carpenter's."

"Gross!"

Brains

Last night (and maybe you saw this) Ian Desmond strode to the plate with the bases loaded and one out in the ninth. It was a tie game thanks to a blown save as predictable as a sunrise.

A single would win the game. So would a fly ball to the outfield, a balk, a walk, a wild pitch, a passed ball, a forfeit by the Cardinals, an error, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting.

The important thing is that Desmond needed to get the ball to the outfield. Not only did he not do it, he completely didn't do it. After he dove at that first slider like a dying eagle, everyone - from me to Ian Desmond - knew he wasn't going to make any but the gentlest contact.

He struck out, of course, but it's OK because we won, and Desmond really did play some good defense in that game, and if we have to choose between a shortstop who can hit but not carry out even the most basic of his fielding tasks or a shortstop who's the other way around, the latter option is not necessarily the worse. That was a really long sentence, but I ain't changing it.

This isn't really about Desmond; it's about my perception of Ian Desmond. Owing to some kinda combination of confirmation bias, Dunning-Kruger effect, selective memory, manifest destiny, the ablative absolute, the phantom time hypothesis, and Moore's law, I have this idea that Desmond strikes out every time he comes to the plate with men on base. "Here comes Desmond to kill another rally," I say to myself. And then he does it. Every time!

But actually no. I did some actual reporting or at least fact-checking, and my impression was pretty much the opposite of true. Desmond hits better with men on base, and his strikeout rate drops significantly (I was about to say it drops noticeably, but I certainly didn't notice it). The lesson here is don't trust your eyes. Or at least don't trust my eyes, not that there was any great danger of that.

The nifty thing about this is that when Desmond leaves at the end of the season, I won't miss him even though I should. So I'd like to thank my brain for preemptively cushioning that blow. Thanks, brain!

Sunday Starters

The Nationals are being sued by a religion.

Well, not really. What happened was some Seventh Day Adventist ushers got fired because they couldn't work Friday or Saturday games, so they filed a lawsuit.

It's a knotty problem, you know? I try to stay clear of these kinds of issues. I'm interested in pissing off only people I'm interested in pissing off, and that does not include people with strong opinions on when the Sabbath is or what you should or shouldn't do on it.

My advice in these matter is to read the Antigone and try not be like either of the main characters.

My takeaway from all this is that it's gotten a lot more difficult to complain about the Nationals. That's where the misleading first line of this very post came from. It might not have been actually "true" in the conventional sense, but I have developed certain habits following this team for ten years, and among them is the tendency to assume the worst at all times.

It used to serve me well - everything really was awful. Even when I thought something was going to be pretty good, Austin Kearns would run in out of right field and break its leg.

It got to the point that blogging was too easy, especially after I got my template going. If this lawsuit had happened in 2006, I would have just filled it in like this:

"Bodes, having already [something about Cristian Guzman or Jose Guillen] and [something about Smiley Gonzalez], has topped himself by trampling on the rights of a religious minority. Blargh I hate everything here's Professor Bacon."

In 2015, the Nats being sued for persecuting the faithful like a bunch of baseball Diocletians seems more like just something that happened rather than another example of the organization's thorough-going incompetence and malevolence.

On balance it's an improvement, but it does make the blogging more difficult.

Normal

Denard's back! That's not an ironic exclamation point. My favorite thing about last year was Span and Rendon at the top of the lineup. Back in the day, I had a weird fascination with the top of the Marlins' lineup - they had Juan Pierre and Luis Castillo, and they just made so much sense together.

One was real fast and the other was only kinda fast. One drew all the walks and the other stole all the bases. It's exactly why I always preferred take a tag team made of opposites, like the Hart Foundation, to a team of interchangeable parts, like the Rockers.

Span and Rendon were similar but better last year. Remember how they were always on base and always scoring runs and stuff? And we won so many games! According to the most advanced sabermetrics they'll sell you without a permit, that's not a coincidence.

We're halfway to recreating that magic, plus we won some games this weekend and everything's back to normal.

Meanwhile, I'm going to miss Michael A. Taylor. They're doing the right thing by sending him to AAA. I mean, Span isn't going to supply the offense that Taylor has so far, but Taylor wouldn't have either.

And sure, we all fell in love with his unexpected power and his little tiny babyhead, but he definitely has some stuff to work on. Like how he kept not catching fly balls. Or how sometimes on his way to a fly ball, he'd take a route so circuitous that it spelled out "imnotreadyforthisplssendmetosyracusegodblessmichael" in the outfield grass.

This Is Rickey Calling on Behalf of Giant Foam Rickey

Instead of presidents or pierogis or whatever, the A's have racing A's.

Left to right: Who Cares, Who Cares, RICKEY!

That's all well and good, but one of them is Rickey Henderson. How in the hell is Rickey ever going to lose a footrace to Dennis Eckersley? I guess I can suspend my disbelief to the point that it's plausible for William Howard Taft to beat Abe Lincoln, but let's be real here: This shouldn't be a contest. Ever.

Giant foam Rickey beats giant foam Eckersley every time. Real Rickey beats real Eckersley every time. Giant foam Rickey beats real Eckersley every time. The only way Rickey loses that race is if they pay him like Mike Gallego, in which case he'll run like Gallego. Pay Rickey!

I Wake Up Every Morning and I Craig Craig Craig

It looks my Nats comeback fever dream is going to need a new grizzled veteran, since Craig Stammen is on the disabled list with "forearm tightness."

"Forearm tightness" is the baseball equivalent of Clemenza telling you, "Oh, Paulie . . . won't see him no more." It's bad. Like, leave the ligament take the cannoli bad.

This might be my last chance for this to make any kind of sense, so I'm going to share the song that goes through my head every single time I hear "Craig Stammen." It's hell being me.

Craig can give you stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina stamina

This is a bad development, obviously, even though the work that would have been done by Stammen(a) has been handed over to a Heart-Warming Story. I've been a big fan of Stammen ever since 2009, when while he wasn't actually very good, he was the only dude on the whole damn roster who would throw two strikes in a row. I guess that was the Daniel Cabrera year.

This situation brought up a tangential issue: Where am I supposed to get my news? The official website is 50% ads and 100% useless. Bill Ladson's blog is somehow less up do date than mine. I used to rely on the Washington Post's Nationals Journal, but all of a sudden they want me to pay actual, real life money to read their internet blog about a baseball team.

And I'm all, "Sorry, man, but I'm from the internet, and I don't pay two dollars and fifty cents (American!) for baseball news. You jockjaws still got Chico Harlan over there? Oh for real? Yeah, I'm not paying you."

For now I'm relying on Mark Zuckerman at Nats Insider combined with however much of Bob Carpenter I can stand to listen to before I hit mute.

Brightside

It's not all bad. Here's a list of all the things we can happy about. Yes, there are only four things we can be happy about.

• We have the same record as the Marlins, and according the staff of the Sun-Sentinel, the Marlins are going to be pretty good this year.
• Matt Williams shook up the lineup AND brought in Blake Treinen in the seventh inning. I mean, the Treinen thing certainly (spectacularly!) didn't work, but it proves that Williams was paying attention. I had been wondering about that.
• Denard Span is on his way back to solve a problem that we don't really have.
• It's an early game today, so we can just get it over with and then get on with our day.

Rock Bottom

This is rock bottom, right? I have to think that after a humiliating butt-whipping like that, highlighted by no one catching any baseballs, things were tense in the locker room. Maybe some personal issues that had been simmering for years boiled over, like Tyler Moore took a swing at Jose Lobaton because of the time they were at the mall together and Lobaton ran into some of his friends from Tampa and ditched Tyler.

Artist's conception of the Nationals hitting rock bottom at the hands of the Red Sox as John Farrell looks on

And then after they pull Moore off of the backup catcher, a grizzled veteran stands up. Slowly, since he's all covered in ice packs because he's so grizzled. I'm thinking Craig Stammen.

So Stammen says something about how it hasn't always been easy playing for the Nationals. He's had to deal with leather pants, fireworks going off course and exploding the fire chief, and even the FBI poking around. But none of that was as humiliating as Mookie Betts stealing second and then just helping himself to third because there wasn't anyone there. Does this team even have any coaches, Stammen wonders aloud.

But look, Stammen says, visibly restraining his emotions, this could be our last chance, and I'm not going to sit here and watch you guys blow it by being completely terrible all the time. It's time for us to band together and learn about teamwork! It doesn't matter if you're about to be a free agent and can't wait to get out of here, or if you look like a little kid, or even if you're Dan Uggla. Together, we can do this!

And then everyone says "Yeah!" and Lobaton and Moore hug and then the song kicks in and we get a montage where the Nats win twenty in a row, interspersed with hilarious lighthearted pranks and capped off by a scene where it's the World Series and we're playing Boston and we redeem ourselves by not letting Mookie Betts pants us and we win!

So that's something to look forward to, and it all starts tonight.

The Real Victim

If only these guys could hear how sad they're making F.P., I bet they'd play better. It's just heart-breaking.

The Art of Storytelling

So here's the thing when you're dealing with a screenplay. Suppose you've written one, an inspiring true story of a young man who escapes from an oppressive regime, wins the World Series, gains 200 pounds, and becomes hero to millions.

Naturally, a bidding war ensues. The winner, rather than just filming the thing and preserving your vision, sends it around to be "punched up." Like, they send it to David Mamet for more swears or whatever. It hurts, seeing your vision adulterated like that, but it's the kind of compromise you have to make if you want to get things done.

The Nationals are currently relying on the following script:
Act 1: A National hits a solo home run
Act 2: The Nats white knuckle it until the ninth and hope the other team doesn't manage to score, like, two runs
Act 3: The other team scores, like, two runs
~Fin~

I don't like it, and I bet you don't either. Clearly it's time for Jayson Werth to take on the David Mamet role and punch up this script with some swears, by which I mean dingers. Or least hits. Something, for God's sake.

The Nats get their chance to punch up the script this afternoon against Red Sox starter Rick Porcello. The important thing here - and I don't think I can overemphasize this - that Rick Porcello's name is Italian for Rick Piglet. Rick Piglet!

Further Voting

I did the Mets too.

And here are the Marlins.

Up next: Diamondbacks, Greatest Living Players, Rockies, MLB Pioneers.

Write In ¡Livan!

It's time to vote for the Franchise Four, the fun, official activity that reminds us that this franchise doesn't have any history to speak of! Each team has eight candidates, and you get to choose four.

Except for Nats fans, who get to pick Ryan Zimmerman and three Expos.

At least it's an opportunity for education. I didn't even know who Steve Rogers was until yesterday, even though he might be the most 80s-looking ballplayer in major league history.

So I give credit to MLB for raising awareness of dudes who played in Canada 30 years ago and for having the intellectual discipline to go with the actual best players in franchise history rather than trying to appeal to their current paying customers.

I will point out, however, that the candidates list has a glaring, gelatinous omission. There's a pear-shaped hole in the ballot, but together we can fill it. #WriteIn¡Livan!

Click to enlarge the official Distinguished Senators ballot

Delay

The game was delayed, so I resorted to watching Austin Powers for a little bit. Remember the part where Powers and Elizabeth Hurley are talking about all the stuff he missed while he was frozen? One of the things she mentions is "the first female British prime minister."

(This isn't my main point, but this is a British person talking to an ostensibly British person, so saying "British prime minister" is kind of clunky. Who's your favorite American president?)

Later, when Powers is being tempted by the fembots and trying not to let his spyboner distract him from his mission, there's a "think about baseball" gag - Austin shouts "Maggie Thatcher naked on a cold day!" twice.

But he had never even heard of Margaret Thatcher until half an hour before that happened. I suppose it's possible that Elizabeth Hurley showed him a picture, and he found her so revolting that she instantly became his go-to debonerfication aid, but I don't find that convincing.

So then I did watch the game and holy crap did you see Ryan Zimmerman catch that bunt? That was awesome! He dove for that thing like a Secret Service agent leaping in front of a bullet.

Like the first game, it went according to plan. The pitching was good, the real players were good, and the ragtag bunch of misfits standing in for the other real players didn't do a whole lot. And we won! Not only did we win, in fact, but we beat a pitcher who looks like the next Tim Lincecum.

By which I mean that he literally looks like Tim Lincecum.

Correction

Reader(s),

It has come to our attention that yesterday's post ("Tonight's the night" 4/6/15) was not up to our journalistic or at least fact-checking standards. A list of the two worst infractions follows.

1. The event referred to did not take place at "night," at least not in any time zone that matters. A better title would have been "Toafternoon's the afternoon."
2. "The night" carries with it a connotation of excitement, fun, and good results. Given the events of yesterday afternoon, a different term should have been used.

In conclusion, yesterday's post should have been titled "Toafternoon's some garbage featuring Dan Uggla." We regret the error, and we will leave the post with its original, incorrect title as a reminder of our failures.

Yours,

Distinguished Senators

Tonight's the night

Nah. They Just Got Confused About Which Team He Was On

The Philly fans just cheered the hell out of Jayson Werth. I don't think it was just because he's totally dreamy.

Could it be that the conventional wisdom of the sports section is wrong?

Hygiene

I don't have anything to say about baseball, but I always have an opinion about watching baseball.

The highlight of the weekend's action was watching the crack MASN camera team bring the catcher narrative to life for us. On Sunday, Ivan Rodriguez picked up one of his late, agonizing hits on the way to 3,000, and the announcers took the opportunity to talk about how maybe Pudge is being pushed to greater heights by competition from Wilson Ramos.

The view on my television immediately shifted to Mr. Ramos himself, enjoying the game while hanging over the Mo Vaughn barrier in front of the dugout. What follows is a list of Ramos' actions while the camera was on him:

1. Pick left ear with left pinkie.
2. Examine left pinkie.
3. Pick right ear with right pinkie.
4. Examine right pinkie.
5. Make a face.
6. Brush off right pinkie on Nationals sweatshirt.

I don't know a whole lot about television production; certainly not as much as the guys who told Jim Riggleman to make really awkward hand gestures while he previews bad managerial decisions in front of a green screen. But I probably would have said something like "CLOSEUP ON JAYSON WERTH! NOW!" right after #1 in that list.

I also noticed that Bob Carpenter is still doing that thing he does. You know, the thing where the Nats screw up really bad, prompting Carpenter to mention the screwup as briefly as possible and then obsessively mention a much less damaging gaffe the opponent committed.

The first time I recall this happening was back in 2009. Elijah Dukes had evaded a flyball like it was a DUI checkpoint - this was back when the Nats couldn't catch anything - and Sunny Bob steadfastly maintained that David Wright was the bad guy.

It happened again on Saturday. Jonathan Sanchez walked approximately everyone, and the Nats responded by scoring only one damn run. I wasn't paying real close attention, so my only info was coming from Carpenter. Listening to him talk, you'd think Sanchez had walked in about fourteen runs. I was honestly shocked when I looked up to see a 1 on the scoreboard.

At least Dibble would have called him on it. I think Santangelo just mumbled something about "country hardball" as we went to break and winced through that Riggleman commercial again.

Happy Birthday Rome

Rick Ankiel continues to impress. Not as a ballplayer, because he's been awful, but as a story. Not only is he in many important ways just like a dinosaur, he appears to be just a heck of a nice guy.

During his first trip back to St. Louis as an opposing player, Ankiel thanked Cardinals fans with an advertisement in the city’s main newspaper.

“Many Thanks to Cardinals’ fans and the City of St. Louis for your support and cheers over the years,” the ad read, with a picture of Ankiel smiling. “It was a privilege and an honor.”

So that's nice, and he even played pretty OK during that series, so we shouldn't mistake his kindness for weakness.

Did you notice how all during the Brewers series Santangelo was whining about all the shifts? The complaints just kind of zipped into one side of my head only to escape from the other side without sticking to anything, but they did increase awareness of all those shifts. Turns out the Brewers are trying something pretty interesting.

The Brewers use spray charts to set their defense, and in many cases, that means defensive shifts that put infielders in odd places. It's common for most teams to position three infielders on the right side to play defense against power-hitting lefties such as David Ortiz, Adam Dunn or Jim Thome.
But thanks to information in spray charts that indicate where a batter is likely to hit a ground ball, the Brewers are taking infield shifts to a different level, sometimes to the extreme. For example, the Brewers' infield shifted against the Nationals' right-handed batters Jayson Werth, Michael Morse, rookie catcher Wilson Ramos and Rick Ankiel, a lefty.

I'll be interested to see if this winds up helping. As the data available to teams become more detailed, we could see some seriously crazy stuff. Only two of the dudes out there are restricted in where they have to be on defense. A maniacally charismatic manager could maybe find seven strong men without well-developed regards for their own safety and have them stand right in front of the plate. I'd think about that for the major league minimum.

Important news in the field of blogging equipment: Costco is apparently selling giant jugs of good-quality bourbon for basically nothing. Now, I live in a police state (as far as liquor blogging paraphernalia goes) bordering another police state. BUT! Say I put up an add on this thing and clicked on it from as many computers as I could get to. Could I write off gas for a road trip to Delaware on my taxes? Something to think about.

Lunch

You hear about this Rob Dibble controversy? It's about the silliest thing ever, but it gives me an opportunity to take a snarling walk down memory lane.

Rob Dibble was fired from his analyst job after Stephen Strasburg's season-ending injury prompted him to make some of those feral "walk it off, rookie!" noises that you may remember from when Ryan Church ran into a wall.

He recently claimed that Strasburg's dad was so incensed that he emailed the Nats, and that's what prompted the pink slip. Stan Kasten, formerly the guy in charge of apologizing for Jim Bowden, disputes that and hopes Dibble "gets whatever help he needs."

This argument is so trivial that it doesn't matter who's actually correct. Therefore, I'm siding with Dibble.

I know the guy's easy to hate; I've certainly taken shots at him. But Dibble's done some good. He provided a necessary counterweight to Bob Carpenter's cult recruiter cheerfulness. Remember the time he went all Dada and told you to bring a lunch? He wasn't here long, but he left memories that will endure forever. Some of them are even good.

Stan Kasten, on the hand, never did a thing for us. This is a guy who couldn't get rid of Jim Bowden without the help of the FBI. And when the Smiley Gonzalez scandal finally did break, Kasten bravely stood up and blamed everyone in the world but himself.

For all the talk about Kasten bringing the lessons of the Braves dynasty to Washington, the best thing about the Kasten Era was that we lost 100 games only twice.

Beat the Mets

I got to say - I don't expect much from this team, but I do expect a certain level of competence against the Mets. So good work and keep it up.

PS. Ok, I'm annoyed, and MASN has a damn problem.

I was watching MASN and wondering when the O's game was going to come on. That's when I heard the Manny Ramirez news, from Johnny Holliday and Ray Knight. They said: "Manny Ramirez is retiring." I thought to myself, "Huh, ain't that a thing?" and took another pull from my Jim Beam rye on the rocks.

An hour later, I get on my trusty personal computer and find out that Manny Ramirez is retiring . . . because he's facing a 100 damn game suspension for drugs.

I got no inkling of this from MASN. Knight said something about how Manny was maybe too involved in the steroids controversy, so they didn't completely avoid that aspect, but they certainly avoided the substantive part of it.

This is a dereliction of duty as far as I'm concerned. For once in my life, I relied on MASN to keep me hipped to the baseball news. They failed totally. "Manny Ramirez retires" is at best half the news.

Reversal

I guess it wasn't about getting Desmond out of the leadoff spot after all.

Ian Desmond will return to the leadoff spot tonight rather than swapping places with Danny Espinosa as Manager Jim Riggleman had originally planned. Espinosa will play tonight against the Marlins, but Riggleman simply changed his mind after saying yesterday he planned to hit Desmond, who began the season 0 for 13, seventh in the lineup and move Espinosa to leadoff.

It's been a bad day and a half for the two levels of management just above the players. Let's review!

• Jim Riggleman reverses his own inexplicable mistake and moves Desmond down in the order.
• Riggleman makes me watch a couple old men in the middle infield instead of playing the starters.
• Third base coach Bo Porter kinda loses the game by faking out Jerry Hairston with all the ankle-breaking elan of a prime Allen Iverson.
• Riggleman, concluding after less than one try that his new lineup wasn't optimal, moves Desmond back to leadoff.

So yeah, that's a pretty sour mixture of indecisiveness and incompetence, like a cocktail made of Coors Light and dishwater. Jayson Werth kinda lost the game too, but at least he hits doubles.

But none of that matters, because ¡LIVAN!'s pitching tonight. There should be a name for beautiful days like today. I mean, we had Strasmas last year, but ¡LIVAN!'s been bringing us joy since day one. Livanoween? La Fiesta de Santo Gordo? National 82 MPH Fastball Awareness Day?

A Post

They've rolled out the B-team four games into the season. Santangelo likes it, but I kinda want my money back. I wasn't prepared for a Cora - any Cora! - in the starting lineup just yet.

Other than my disgruntledness, the big effect here is to hide for a day the drastic reshuffling of the lineup. Ian Desmond, who's looked as bad as anyone can over three games, is no longer leading off; Danny Espinosa is.

Bob Carpenter was quick to point out that "This isn't about getting Desmond out of the leadoff spot." He didn't explain what other objective aside from getting Desmond out of the leadoff spot was to be achieved by getting Desmond out of the leadoff spot, so I'm going to go forward with the assumption that this was primarily about getting Desmond out of the leadoff spot.

Why was he ever there? I realize that this roster doesn't give you a lot of good options there, but Desmond doesn't get on base. It's just not part of his skill set. Other than just picking the up the middle guy with the most seniority, I can't figure out the thought process that wound up with him batting first anyway.

Greek for "Ankiel-Lizard"

Ankylosaurus was an herbivorous dinosaur that wielded a club made out of a bunch crap that congealed at the end of its tail. The typical Ankylosaurus found its target only occasionally, but it did enough damage on those occasions to make its Cretaceous contemporaries think twice about messing with it.

Rick Ankiel is an omnivorous outfielder that wields a club made out of wood, which he swings with the wild desperation of an also-ran dinosaur being eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex. Like his namesake, he seldom finds his target, but he makes sure it hurts when he does.

Rick Ankiel is the Than lan moc cau of baseball. And in my book, that's worth 1000 đồng.

Unlike the Ankylosaurus, which didn't exactly stand out among the really impressive animal life of 100 million years ago, Rick Ankiel has had one of the most compelling stories in baseball.

Ankiel came up with the Cardinals as a pitcher sometime during the pre-Nats dark ages. He boasted one of those preposterous curveballs that in other contexts would cause one to criticize a video game for being unrealistic. Unfortunately, his other go-to pitch was a fastball to the backstop, which he debuted and used perhaps excessively during the 2000 playoffs. It was an awful sight, and Ankiel was sent to the minors to work on some of those things that a pitching coach really can't help you with.

That should have been the last we ever heard of him. He pitched all over the Cards minor league system, threw some of those Desmond-style random target fastballs, and had some injuries. News filtered up through whatever it is that protects the casual baseball fan from every dispatch from Knoxville that he was going to try baseballing from the other side, as an outfielder.

The crazy thing was: it worked. He displayed both the power and whiffiness of an Ankylosaurus' tail, along with the ability to handle the outfield and gun down anyone who remembered his pitching career and figured it was safe to run on him. He hit a three-run home run in his first game back in the majors since his playoff humiliation and went on to have a couple quite decent seasons as a major league outfielder.

Isn't that nuts? I mean, that never happens. One of the things that happens when you watch baseball for a while and take the long view is you see the same stuff happen over and over. Great players get old, bounce around, and retire. Pitchers blow out their arms, try to come back, and retire. GMs rob Dominican teenagers, get investigated by the FBI, and get fired. Ankiel's career path is, if not unique, enough to set him apart from all the other soul patched hopefuls that march over the green fields of baseball every year.

And now he's here, bringing with him his rich backstory and his distinctive, dinosaur-with-a-bone-club-on-its-tail skillset, and I'm all for it. I'd rather watch an interesting player than a good one, and Ankiel's about the most interesting non-Cuban ballplayer out there.

Phew!

I don't know about you, but I need a breather after all that excitement. Good thing we get the night off, so that we can follow up an afternoon of of ¡LIVAN!'s gelatinous majesty with an evening with a band called Livan in Falls Church. 8 pm at the State Theater. Get your tickets here.

So let's see here:

• ¡LIVAN! rules
• Offense sucks
• Bullpen rules

The last time all those things happened at once, we finished at .500.

Tonight's the night

In preparation for today, I finally washed my Nats cap. The thing was a disaster, encrusted literally with the detritus of countless lawn-mowings and figuratively with the detritus of years of Nationals fandom.

This, I thought, was a new beginning. I would wash away all the sweat and little bits of grass that somehow wound up on my head and awful Boswell columns and Nook Logan at-bats, and together my hat, my team, and I would walk into a glorious future, cleansed of the filth of the past.

Almost nothing came off. It's ground in there too deeply.

And then I put my hat in the dryer and it shrank.

An Original Observation

This is AWESOME.

Omen Update: I got a hit today from Strasbourg, France.  DUDE!  Say hi to the geese for me, mysterious accidental French reader.

Still, I'd Rather Hear Buck Martinez

So I splurged for Extra Innings this year (love it!).  I just turned on the Rays/Jays game, and there's Kevin Kennedy's giant Easter Island head in the booth talking about . . . wait, what?!

Former Major League Baseball manager Kevin Kennedy was among eight individuals that subdued a man threatening to blow up a Delta flight from Los Angeles to Tampa, Fla., early Friday morning.

"He said, 'I'm gonna blow the plane up and take all you to hell with me,'" Kennedy told FanHouse.

At that point, Kennedy, along with seven other passengers, charged Stanley Dwayne Sheffield and eventually subdued him, Kennedy said.

So that was kind of a jolt. Almost sobered me up.

Stamp of Approval

Look, I'm not going to pretend I spent a huge amount of time thinking about the Washington Post beat writer situation after Barry Svrluga left.  When that fancy lad "Chico" Harlan made an ass of himself, I pointed at him and said "hey, look."  That's about it.  Now we have this Adam Kilgore guy, and I totally didn't notice.  Until now.

Sorry for today's absence of game updates. For some reason, my laptop and the wireless in the press box in Port St. Lucie did not get along today. Frank Robinson and Tomo Ohka had a better working relationship.

Holy crap, dude!  That is a serious, old school Nats reference.  And it happens to be right in my wheelhouse.  I loved Tomo Ohka and I hated Frank Robinson.  I spilled so many words on that stuff that I recently received an award for being the one person in the whole world, excepting those actually named Ohka, who cares the most about Tomokazu "The Landlord" Ohka.

You think Harlan bothered to educate himself about this formerly hot button issue?  I bet not.  Not with his busy schedule of bitching about his job and daydreaming about All the President's Men.

So, in conclusion, Adam Kilgore rules.

P.S. I'm still doing this.  I totally went in hella hard on this dude yesterday.

Finally!

I mean, they pretty much made it all up - didn't even interview me - but at least they spelled my name right.

It's That Time

So this year instead of writing buttery paeans to ¡Livan! or yelling at Chico Harlan or whatever, I'm trying this out.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Is It Just Me, Or Did It Get A Little Less Fat In Here?

Yeah, a little. On balance, we're still fatter than we were two weeks ago.

Is It Just Me, Or Did It Get Fatter In Here?

It ain't just me!

SAM Missile

I still haven't magically developed the coding ability to put that damn poem in a format that doesn't take up the entirety of the front page and the July archive, so hold on. But I totally looked at a Nats-related thing today (lay off, man. I just picked up Wii Sports Resort), and here's what I found.

That sequence of uncommon efficiency pointed to a broader, sustained truth about Lannan's pitching approach. Since June, judged either by stats or results, Lannan has become a different pitcher. He's also become one of the most unique in baseball, striking out almost nobody, pitching more innings than almost anybody.

Just . . . dude, I know you hate your job, but don't say "most unique." Just don't, man. Don't. I shouldn't have to tell you this, Chico. "I overexaggerated the amount of cash money in the ATM machine, as I found out when I entered you're PIN number too the machine." I shouldn't have to tell you these things. Damn.

Y is for Youth

Y is for Youth, that’s the Plan that we follow
Though the record we have makes it tougher to swallow
We’re better than last year, if I may be so bold
We still lose all the time, but at least we’re not old

Z is for Z-Men(n) – we’ve two of them now
R. at the corner, J. on the mound
By the time that we’re good – and this is a surety
Both Z’s will be collecting Social Security

Thanks to FromOldBooks for the letters, and extra special thanks to Erato, muse of lyric poetry, for flitting about my head intermittently over the last month. Special whatever the opposite of thanks is to the Red Sox, for acquiring a LaRoche and robbing my N stanza of the timelessness to which great poetry aspires. Anyway, I'll put the whole thing up in one post tomorrow. UPDATE: And by "tomorrow," I mean "next week." Who knew it was so damn complicated to do a "Click to read more" on a post?

Postponed for the Start of the Riggleman Era

I'm going to finish this thing next week. I just realized that I have to go to an actual Nats game tomorrow, and preparing for that's interfering with my usual poetical routine of absinthe, opium, and RhymeZone.com, the rhyming dictionary. So stay tuned, and does anyone have a rhyme for "1962 Mets"?

W's for W

W’s for W, red, white, and curly
(My cap is a pink one – don’t say it’s girly)
We should be careful – it might mean tall green
If the lawyers decide we stole it from Walgreens


X is for Treasure, cause X marks the spot
Bad teams get good draft picks and good teams do not
Our death grip on last place ensures there’s no danger
That we won’t get first dibs on that catching teenager

Thanks to FromOldBooks for the letters. Hey, today's Bastille Day! Man, fuck Bastille Day. Seriously, look up Louis XVII on Wikipedia. We might as well celebrate Pol Pot's birthday.

U is for Unicorn

U is for Unicorn, rarest of creatures
A horn and not existing are its greatest features
The odds of you finding one out in the woods
Are the same as the Nats being any damn good


V is for Victory, that slippery dame
She doesn’t come ‘round much at Nationals games
Just when you think that she’s coming our way
In comes the bullpen to scare her away

Thanks to FromOldBooks for the letters, thanks to the Nats for including me in on that letter and making me feel so much better about everything. "We hope to sign our 2009 draft choices by the August deadline" - feel the confidence!

S is for Strasburg

S is for Strasburg, whose bonus will floor us
That's what you get when you roll with Scott Boras
I can't say I care - he's not after my money
But you can see how the Lerners don't think it's funny


T is for Trees, our fine cherry blossoms
The first week of the season, they look pretty awesome
But when May rolls around, the view’s gone to potty
The trees are all bare, and they look like dead bodies

Thanks to FromOldBooks for the letters, thanks to the Nats for manning up and drafting Strasburg, and also thanks to the Nats for not boring us all with a lot tedious negotiations. Have they even called him yet?

Q is for Quaff

Q is for Quaff (that's a dork word for "drink")
The Nats are more fun when you’re too drunk to think
Another Q word, one that here fits right in:
The Quinine in tonic, which goes with your gin


R is for Reds, where our players come from
Pena and Kearns, also Lopez and Dunn
We didn't do well, but the Reds are quite testy
Since Bodes set them up with a broken Majewski


Thanks to FromOldBooks for the letters, thanks to the Rockies for giving me an excuse to drink, and thanks to those pith helmet-wearing limeys for coming with a drink to express how much they dislike humidity.

O's for the O's

O's for the O's, our orange friends up the road
Whose owner, it happens, is a godawful toad
We've got little to boast when it’s time to get hatin'
But as bad as things are, our owner's not Satan


P is for Presidents running around
They get your hopes up, but then Teddy falls down
It’s a good thing they’re there and a good thing they run
It’s the only time Nats fans see something that’s fun


Thanks to FromOldBooks for the letters, thanks to George Washington for being the first president and having the dignity not to reenact sausage races, and special thanks to North Carolina for coming up with the idea of putting vinegar on pork shoulders.

M is for Milledge

M is for Milledge, aspiring rapper
Whose baseball career has gone down the crapper
It was bad before, now it’s worse by a bit
We sent him to Pittsburgh for a guy who can’t hit


N is for Nick, with his nifty moustaches
The baseballs he fields, the baseballs he bashes!
Enjoy while you can all his walks and base knocks
Since soon he’ll be working for the Boston Red Sox


Thanks to FromOldBooks for the letters, and big ups to me for rewriting the Milledge one on the fly.

M is for . . . Let Me Get Back To You On That

I'm going on vacation, so you'll have to wait a week for the resumption of the triumphant Nationals alphabet. I apologize for any weeping and depression that may ensue, but it's not like I can throw off my gauntlets in the middle of a LARP and drop internet rhymes on everyone.

K is for Kontrived

K is for striKeout, which means it’s for Dunn
Strike three sailing by him – that’s not very fun
As bad as that is, it’s nothing at all
To Dunn in the outfield, dropping the ball

L is for Lannan, our top lefty hurler
With eyebrows so long he could use a hair curler
Batters may be distracted - they must be surprised
When they see the sasquatches over his eyes


Thanks to FromOldBooks for the letters and apologies to John Lannan. I just couldn't think of anything for the Lerners. By the way, if I ran a newspaper this would be my Michael Jackson headline: "It Was Thursday - What a Black Day." "Smooth Criminal" is my favorite Michael Jackson song, which I'm gradually realizing is unusual.

I is for Interim

I is for Interim, like our GM
Will Mike Rizzo stay on the job in the end?
I can think of one good reason he'll get the spot:
Just not being Jim Bowden counts for a lot

J’s for the Journalists who cover our team
The fans thirst for content, and they produce reams
The season is long, and it must be a slog
It only gets worse: now they have to write blogs

Thanks to FromOldBooks for I, and thanks to Chico Harlan for letting me photograph his iced-out J chain.

G is for Guillen

G is for Guillen, from back in the day
A hot-headed fellow indeed was Jose
Bodes brought him in – I don’t think he was kidding –
Based on his skillfulness at babysitting


H is Hernandez, my main man Livan
Who’s been growing sideways since he has been gone
He’s not very good – take a look at his stats
But he turns into Maddux when facing the Nats

And here's a special bonus stanza for Nate:

G's for GUZMANIA!, a grievous affliction
(What else to call a fat shortstop addiction?)
The fandom's so giddy at Nats Triple Play
That a guy's got to wonder if they've seen Cristian play

Thanks to FromOldBooks for the letters, the Latin -ictio third declension feminine ending for making the Guzmania part so easy to rhyme, and extra special thanks to puppies for being so cute.

E is for Expos

E is for Expos, our Frenchy forebearers
Who decamped to the south for a ballpark much fairer
Since then they’ve performed with a maladroit touch
Je regrette, Montréal, but you ain’t missing much
F is for Flores, poached from the Mets
Which adds to the long list of that team’s regrets
We’ve been waiting around for Jesús to save us
But he keeps getting hurt, so we’re stuck with Nieves

Thanks to FromOldBooks for the letters, thanks to me for the dope rhymes, and thanks to the Mets for Jesús Flores.

C is for Cristian

C is for Cristian (no H in his name)
We used to be better when he came up lame
He’s now got new eyeballs, new shoulder, new spleen
He’s a whole new ballplayer – is he man or machine?

D is for Dibble, with his World Series Ring
He played the game; that’s why he’s got the bling
If ever you question his statements or hunches
It’s cool that you do, but bring own lunches

Thanks again to FromOldBooks for the letters.

A is for Acta

I think it's time for a little culture around here. Let's begin!

A is for Acta, our soon former boss
Every win to his credit, to his debit each loss
Add these things up and it’s quite plain to see
That he won’t be around by the time we hit Z

B is for Bowden, or Bodes to his pals
Dudes love the Segway, leather pants thrill the gals
If you ever meet him, he’s surely not bland
But check for your watch after shaking his hand





C and D on Monday. Thanks to Liam at FromOldBooks for the letters.

Tank!

Manny Acta's still the manager, and I think I've figured out why. Obviously, management doesn't think he contributes to winning games. Why else would they let it be known, in their typically loathsome, passive-aggressive manner, that they're going to fire him?

But now losing doesn't look so bad. 16-year-old catcher Bryce Harper, subject of a self-parodically overblown Sports Illustrated cover story, is well on his way to figuring out how to get himself into next year's draft.

Harper, the Las Vegas high school catcher who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, will forgo his final two years of high school, get his GED and play community college baseball next year at the College of Southern Nevada. His father, Ron, made the announcement Saturday at a tournament in Oklahoma City...

Harper will turn 17 on Oct. 16, and by finishing high school he will be eligible for the 2010 draft, where he is expected to be the No. 1 pick and command a multimillion-dollar signing bonus.

We've already seen the rewards a team reaps for tanking it for a year. Tank for two years, it turns out, and it just gets better. We can't let Jim Riggleman get in the way of this kind of haul.

Last week, I made fun of Dave Sheinin for defending the Nationals against the charge that they drafted cheap. I don't know if this is an actual controversy - is anyone who doesn't work for the Nats or isn't Dave Sheinin disinclined to believe this? Well, just in case, here's my point made for me:

On Tuesday, the Nationals used their third-round pick -- No. 81 overall -- in the amateur draft to select Trevor Holder, a University of Georgia senior who had a 7-5 record and a 4.48 ERA this year. Holder hadn't been ranked by Baseball America among the top 200 prospects, and even Holder himself didn't think he'd be drafted so high.

Well the Nats must know something everyone else doesn't, right?

But the Nationals, who'd tracked Holder since high school, had five years of information on him and liked what they saw.

Yeah, that's some Scouting! We're getting a leg up on everyone with only the sharpness of our eyes!

The team also liked the idea of signing Holder quickly, and at a discount rate. On Friday, just before moving out of his apartment in Athens, Ga., Holder agreed to his first professional contract, which included a $200,000 bonus; the previous year, pick Nos. 80-82 all signed for between $490,000 and $525,000.

Oh. Never mind.

It's A Hollow Snarl

Hey Dibble, what happened to edgy?

Remember that laughable slapfight the Robs Dibble and Neyer got into earlier this week? R-Dibbs seems to have scrubbed it from his Twitter. It happened June 7, but check it now. On the 6th we get a telegram dispatch from the last good Nats game:

John Lannan CGVs The Mets 21 1st pitch strikes, 1st CG in The Show. Nice job

Then on the 8th we're treated to a stream of random capitalizations.

talking to Andy Larouche of the Pitrates about The Nate McClouth Trade, At 5 o'clock we will have David Price on to talk about the Draft

Where's the beef, Dibble? I mean, if you're going to post for photos like this...

...you can't then turn around and unilaterally squash the beef with a pencil-necked, never-played-the-game former roofer like Rob Neyer.

I'm honestly disappointed.

By the way, if you were going to start a mock Dibble Twitter thingy, could you do any better than this?

Got some cool new shades for the game tomorrow

That's an actual entry. He wrote that himself. What can you say? Dude's unmockable.

Signability!

Look, I don't know nothing about no draft. I'm just as elated about the start of the Drew Storen Era as the rest of you, but I'm pretty clueless beyond that. That's what this guy does, and let's all be glad he's there.

The story that seems to be coming out of this, though, is that after taking Stephen Strasburg, the Nats went all Chris Rock at the rib place on us.

Above: Chris Rock as Mike Rizzo, weighing his options

Apparently the Nats had promised that they weren't going to be cheap this year. They'd take the best available player. While their actual strategy may well be defensible, that's clearly not what they did. Dave Sheinin over on the Post site tries to make the case for the defense. And fails.

Finally, a word about the Nationals' picks at Nos. 10, 50 and 81 overall: There was a lot of dissatisfaction expressed among commenters on this blog, and elsewhere, about the quality of those picks. Many accused the Nationals of outright lies when they said they took the best players available with those picks.

Well yeah. They didn't take the best players, and they said they would. That's lying, right?

But my view is, when you're facing something as monumental and complex as the Strasburg negotiations, the last thing you need is a bunch of difficult negotiations among your other picks. If the Nationals constructed their draft board out of players they felt would be relatively easy signs, then made their picks based on the best player available on their board, I don't have a problem with that.

Man, what kind of evasive Obi-Wan Kenobi bullshit is this? "You see, when they said 'best players,' they meant 'best players that wouldn't cost any money.' Because of the italics, you see."

What the hell, Dave? You don't work for the Lerners, and that's the only legitimate excuse for this kind of nonsense I can think of.

Beef: It's What's For Lunch

So many stupid things happen to the Nats that I forget probably half of them. Here's another one to throw on the pile.

D.C. Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin yesterday ordered that all fireworks displays at Washington Nationals games be suspended until a safety review can be conducted, after fireworks debris landed on him as he watched a game, a department spokesman said today.

I don't know about you, but I'm picturing a guy who looks like William Howard Taft in an old-timey fireman hat with his moustache singedand his face strategically charred like he'd been smoking a loaded cigar.

This is not the first assault on our favorite team's right to explode things whenever they want. Back before they'd even played a gam, some pinko "neighborhood commissioner" and another crybaby halfwit who pretended to be scared of Grateful Dead fans tried to stop it. But it didn't work, because this is America, dammit! And America it remains.

The fireworks are coming back for the Washington Nationals, days after debris from some pyrotechnics fell on the local fire chief as he watched a game.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

So, the draft is tomorrow. Probably you knew this. Here's my prediction: with the #1 pick, the Nats will take Stephen Strasburg. With the #10 pick, they'll take somebody I ain't never heard of. So that's why I'm not all that excited about the draft itself, and that's why I won't be attending the Official Draft Party (It's Cool! Bring a Lunch!). The real excitement comes afterward, and it's not the good kind. I've been trying not to think too much about it, frankly, because a Nats-type screwup this time won't be funny, like typos on jerseys or setting fire marshals on fire.

Speaking of lunches and the necessity of bringing them, Federal Baseball brings further proof of my theory that Rob Dibble prepares himself to commit self-expression on the internet by getting drunk and listening to rap. Following the example of Jay-Z vs. Nas, Game vs. 50 Cent, and N.W.H. vs. the Jam Boys, he's now beefing with ESPN columnist Rob Neyer. Neyer calls Dibble a dumbass, Dibble calls Neyer a roofer - please, guys, squash this beef before someone gets shot! Or before I have to read any more of your weak-ass insults!