Send it in Jerome

The Nats have signed two pitchers! Starters no less! Jerome Williams and Brandon Claussen! Wait! Why am I yelling!? It was Jerome Williams and Brandon Claussen.

Jerome Williams has been discussed a fair amount on the Nats blogs. A exciting prospect has become a disappointing pitcher, with everything headed in the wrong direction. Simply put, since 2003 he's become far more hittable. What happened? Undisclosed injury? Loss of concentration? Or the most likely culprit, too fat? We don't know but seeing if the Saint can straighten him out is worth a gamble.

Brandon Claussen, former Yankees phenom, was roughly on the same path as Jerome but being a bit older, he's less of a prospect. Add in a rotator cuff injury and I don't see how Brandon will be helping this team anytime soon. In the long run, I can see Randy St. Clare making more of an impact on Brandon than Jerome. Brandon's issues are all about control. Far too many walks, far too many balls left up in the zone which then end up up over the OF wall. This was exactly the issue facing "My Boy" John Patterson going into 2005. I'm not saying Brandon can have a JP2005 type of year, Patterson has better stuff. But with the same kind of improvement in his control, Brandon could easily morph into a solid #3 for this team. But will this ever come to fruition if Brandon never makes it out of AAA?

While I presonally am still waiting for a pitchers who has tossed more than 100 major league innings last year (OK O'Connor got up to 105) , Brandon and Jerome are two of the better scrap-heap type pitchers a team can pick up to see if they can LITB it.

Now, let's get one dependable mediocre arm in the rotation.

Whoops, Rubber stuff.

John Thomson: A Jay (and a LoDuca hater)

Russ Ortiz: A Giant (mistake! HAHHAHAHAHA)

Ryan Franklin: A Cardinal. (it's in there - trust me)

Mark Mulder: A Cardinal. (I got nothing to say I just didn't want to break the parenthesis pattern)

Granted the Nats never made contract offers to these guys, but it shows that pitchers out there are amenable to deals one might consider cheap (Ok not Mulder...why did I even put that guy there). Franklin getting 1 million for 1 yr, Thomson getting 500K for 1 yr and Ortiz getting 380K for one year. Pitchers will accept deals at their level. Which makes you wonder, what kind of deals did the Nats make that they could present 5 of them and end up with apparently no interest?

The offers range from Minor League contracts to $3 million.

If that's true then the Nats must not be offering anything more than 1 year contracts as 3 million is a pretty fair price in this market for a Ramon Ortiz. That's pretty much the right strategy if you are going with the down the "sign someone to take up space" road. You want these guys to spare your arms in 2007, but not any longer than that. The year after you could have young pitchers ready, you could be ready to compete with "real" pitchers, or you could have watched your scrub pitcher pitch himself out of the league. If they do well, you can always sign them again at a modest increase (just like the Nats are looking to do with Ortiz).

Of course pitchers are going to look for that multiple year security, and I guess Ramon, Tony, and Steve are expecting it, I guess. Still you have to wonder why Thomson, Ortiz the Lesser, and Franklin didn't hesitate to sign on for one year, but these 5 apparently are. Are the Nats vastly underpaying? (Say asking Ramon back for 1.5 million?) Is there something about the franchise itself that is unappealing? This is how poor play can perpetuate itself. Bad teams scare away good, and sometimes not so good, talent. Of course money is the great equalizer, so I'm not worried that the Nats can get the guys when they want to if they are willing to pay.

The question becomes, will they? We know the team isn't willing to pay in the short term to achieve minor goals. Will they pay in the future? I'm cautiously optimistic (I'd rather be just plain optimistic, but I have to work with what we know)

This is the first year of the Nats trip to respectability and despite the optimism of Kasten, it could be a long one. The farm system is barren like the Great Plains in winter. As we drive through this stretch to get to sunny green pastures, the team isn't paying for the gameboy to keep us entertained in the meantime, and they aren't deviating from the drive plan, even though some of us swear that we could detour at a site or two and not lose any time. I guess we'll spend the meantime playing the equivalent of the license plate game, seeing if the Nats can get to 70 wins.



Frank is gone. And it seems likely that he was led on a little bit as the team decided the most graceful way to let him go. It's a shame and not the way you'd like to handle a legend. At the same time if he really didn't have a place with the team, it's better that he's not there. It's bad news, but not a bad move. In the end, winning will do the most to interest the city in the Nats, and if they couldn't find a way to make Frank a part of that so be it. Anthony below has a little more to say about this.


Maybe I just didn't notice before but I found this Nats baseball park gallery link intersting. (about half-way down on the page -square in the middle) I'm a big fan of those cherry trees in the bleacher sections.

PART 1: SEATTLE

SEATTLE

Here's what the main entrance would look like, if you happen to enter that way

Most toursits will walk in from downtown. You'll hit the historic Pioneer Square first. That's ok, but then you'll walk through several blocks of nothing. Kind of like this. (That's QWEST FIELD taking up space) To be fair there is Pyramid Brewery right across the street from Safeco but that's pretty much it.

And here's the entrance you'd most likely see

Inside the stadium is nice, but notice - no view of anything. Not the nearby skyline, not Mt. Rainier, nothing

You can get a nice view of the city walking around the upper deck. You can even get behind the main sign. It's a nice, but not the same as a view from your seats.


The best part - lots of stuff to do, lots of stuff to eat. For example. GameCube games (will they have the Wii next year?)

And the famous Sushi rolls. They probably have the best food selection of any park I've been to.


All in all a nice experience but not mind-blowing.

Where am I going? Where have I been?

Anybody catch that was a reworking of the "Bo Revere" lyrics from the subliminal advertising episode of Saved By The Bell? (SBTB to the true Bell Fans, or should I say Bell Nation? That's one good thing about the Nats, saying "Nationals Nation" sounds stupid enough that people won't pick it up. Of course they'll rework it into Nationals Country or The Nationals-Hungary Empire, but they won't be ____ Nation, by god. )

Anyway the point of this post is to inform my numerous (re: 4) readers where I've been for the past month. Well I've moved on up to a deluxe website in the sky. Weezy and I are now located at the Most Valuable Network. Good site, good writers. You should check me out on my self-imposed schedule of every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And of course read the Nationals version of George Will (but I doubt as sexy as old George. Rowr!) Jean-Pierre Allard.

I didn't mention this earlier because I was waiting to make sure it would stick. It did. I was also hoping to have come up with something to do with this website, because I think it looks pretty slick. I've got baseballs for each of my post titles! How is anything cooler than that? Anyway I haven't come up with anything. Something but I'm not sure what. I'll keep the Expos website going with the infrequent Expos/Montreal specific posts. I feel mentioning that stuff in a Nats blog is kind of petty.

I was reminded to make this post when reading Nationals Pastime and finding out he was moving on up to. Woo hoo! Big American Party! And I agree with him totally, none of us are a Ball Wonk.

So that's it - update your links, teach the children, scare the old people, whatever.

This is the story of Dr. Jeckyll Patterson and Mr. Hyde Patterson

MLB recently had an article on "my boy" John Patterson. Seems they believe, as was noted by a big orange fellow previously, that he has two sides. However, they kind of gloss over the real reason, implying that the injury effected his stamina in some way. The pitch counts don't seem to reflect that. He was roughly pulled at the same time frame before or after the injury, maybe even left in longer after.

The real reasons for his dual nature are the simplest of pitching problems. Too many walks, too many HRs. So why do I like Patterson so much, if he keeps giving out free passes and dingers? I has to do with pitching philosophy.

Walks are like dust in the wind, Soh-Crates. If you have good stuff, they kind of blow away at the end of each frustrated at bat. They will limit your effectiveness to go deep into the game for sure, but these grains of sand don't matter if they don't cross the plate. You keep the ball out of play, the chances of them reaching the plate are limited. Many a power pitcher has been high up in the league in walks and continued to be very effective. I don't like walks, but for a strikeout pitcher, I can accept them.

Home runs are much more of a problem. If you are leaving men on base giving up more than the occasional dinger will kill you. For example, if you look at Randy Johnson's worst two years, 1996 and 2003, they correltate more closely with giving up more HRs than giving up more walks. (in fact 2003 set a personal best for control for the Big Unit, only to be bettered in 2004). Looking at the worst 30 HR giver-uppers, Patterson ranks 8th in the NL giving up over 1 and a half HRs a game. But this strikes me as a easier problem to correct than control. Just keep the ball down, forget about the strike zone.

I'm probably being overly optimistic here but I think if Patterson can keep the HRs down to a reasonable level, say a little more than 1 a game, that he will not only be an effective pitcher, he'll border on All-Star level. He's got stuff on par with Beckett, Clement, Wood, a notch below the elite.

If only he gets the chance to pitch...

Yawn of the Dead

Yawn: Not much Nationals news going on. MLB has it's around the horn look at the team (vastly inferior to my own) pointed at outfielders. No real surprises here, which is bad news. We got Wilkerson and Guillen starting, that's fine and dandy. Then we've got Endy in center. They freely admit that Endy needs work (which is a bad sign in itself. MLB team sites are not known to be all that critical), pointing out his .318 OBP for the expected leadoff hitter. .318 which made him 75th in the National League in OBP last year. Sledge should be playing, maybe Church. Not Endy.

Dead: Delgado signed with the Marlins. I know we're supposed to be optimistic, but it's real hard. I can't see a way out of 5th place now. Of course 4th place was always a dream.

I'm out for the weekend. Watch Bowden for me. Maybe I should leave a ticking clock and a hot water bottle for him...

Mexican Jumping (to Conclusions) Beans

Franco signed! Sanchez signed! And not with us! (Not that there was ever any interest - but you never know)

A bunch of Nats players are working out the kinks in Hispanic Winter Leagues. I'd be the first one to take a shot at Guzman for his poor play, but these stats really don't mean anything. He could be trying a new stance, working through an injury, in a slump, or yes, overmatched in the equivalent of Double A ball. I'm just happy to see our players get some more reps at bat or on the mound. I think it helps. I don't look at these stats to give us any info about how these guys will perform this season. So hit .100, hit .500, I don't care.

I will mention how it's kind of weird how the author seemed to need to justify the Guzman signing while quoting Dominican Winter Ball stats. (a little bit too for Guillen).

I also don't like that the Nats are possibly still evaluating Vargas as a possible starter. I didn't see anything last year that made me believe he'd be a competent middle reliever, let alone a starter. His control is questionable, and he gives up too many long balls. Take out his best month and you got a guy who had given up runs in 60% of his appearences as a reliver. (yes, it's not fair to take out his best month BUT I watched the month and I never felt comfortable with him. Turns out the stats bear that out. He had 26 baserunners in 17 innings and only gave up 5 runs. Taking out a disasterous outing - he still had 18 baserunners in 15.1 innings and only gave up a run. He was this close to blowing games open 3 or 4 times here. When you only appear 10 times a month...that is, how you say, not so good.)

Patterson has better stuff (if you haven't learned already - I'm a big Patterson fan), and Rauch is a better pitcher. I don't see any reason Vargas should be starting.