Nationals Baseball: Oh Bryce

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Oh Bryce

You silly kid. Some guys you put at first base because they don't have the talent to play elsewhere. Other you put at first base because you don't have room for them elsewhere.  And a select few play first base because if you put them in a position where they can run into walls at full speed they'll do it. I'm not saying Bryce should play first now, but there's something to be said about keeping this kid healthy and "lucite box with holes punched in it" is still not an official position.

Otherwise good start. ZNN was fantastic again. Ok there was a lot of stranded runners again (you aren't going to scatter hits forever) but once again he had no walks and only 4 3-ball counts (Fun Fact #1 : he gave up a hit in each one saying to me - I'd rather throw a meatball than give up a walk. Not the best 3-ball approach but if it's what's keeping him not walking people in general throw them meatballs.  Fun Fact #2 : ZNN has only gone 3-0 to one five batters this season. That's a commitment to throwing strikes.  Was better when I thought it was 1 though)

The offense was more timely than impressive, taking advantage of another team's errors for once, but whatever. They win.

Tonight it's Kershaw vs Haren. Haren's pitched better lately but around that quality Atlanta game was a couple of outings that were as much luck as good pitching. Last game, to me, looked like a Tiger crushing that just never quite came together in time. So we'll see. The Dodgers aren't a particularly good offensive team but they've been hotter recently. Kershaw of course is Kershaw and we'll see if the Nats can scratch out a couple or catch him on a bad day.

20 comments:

Positively Half St. said...

A lucite helmet, maybe, like a spaceman would wear?

Positively Half St. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
cass said...

It looks like Zimmermann's gone to 3-0 five times this year, actually.

http://www.fangraphs.com/statsplits.aspx?playerid=4505&position=P&season=2013

Bryce just needs to learn to play the ball off the wall. He's a good outfielder.

Anonymous said...

Bam Bam strikes again.

Bryce seems to be on a learning curve -- a steep learning curve -- when it comes to playing the outfield. How many times will he run into the wall before he either does serious damage or learns to stop? Publicly, Davey says that he doesn't want to discourage this aggressiveness. I hope the private message is altogether different.

-Sec. 312

blovy8 said...

Actually, I agree with DJ a bit - I think the guy is going to hurt a lot of walls, more than missing time himself.

Harper said...

postively - Sorry - that's Bill Lee's thing.

cass - that makes more sense. I see how I misread the baseball-reference split

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=zimmejo02&year=2013&t=p#count

Sec321/ blovy8 - let him run into walls at age 20 and learn because at age 25+ it would end him.

blovy8 said...

Hey, if the batted balls won't avoid the pitchers' heads, I don't expect the walls to start jumping out of Harper's way either.

Kenny B. said...

The "Bryce hitting the wall" story is completely dominating the "Jordan Zimmermann" is awesome story. Poor ZNN; even when he gets run support and most wins in the NL, he's under the radar.

cass said...

Some players get more attention than others. I've always thought Clayton Kershaw doesn't get enough attention given how good he is. He's been the best pitcher in the NL for the last few years and he's incredibly young. Yet it seems Strasburg gets more attention. I love Strasburg, mind you, but these sorts of things seem to happen, even with players in big cities like L.A.

Zimmerman11 said...

At least Zimm is starting to heat up with the bat. Does anyone think he's standing off the plate so far so he doesn't get jammed/hurt his shoulder? Is there a chance he got into this habit when he was hurting and just hasn't adjusted back since? Seems like there is a huge hole low and away, where all he's gonna be able to do is foul pitches off or hit weak fly balls... then again, I'm sure he is a LOT better than I am, so maybe I should just leave it alone and let him do things his way. It is STRIKING though, how far off the plate he sets up compared to the rest of the team.

Dr Trea (formerly #werthquake) said...

Harper you should have a video Blog sometime. We all wanna know what you look and sound like!

Zimmerman11 said...

http://curlyw.blogspot.com/2006/11/5-questions-with-harper.html

Some of those "Suite Life" webisodes were pretty funny!

This Harper Gordek?

Zimmerman11 said...

The Suite Life

Froggy said...

With friends like Z11...heh, heh, heh

This sooo made my day!

Harper said...

Z11 - funny? Obviously I won't be asking you for recommendations.

I always wonder when people ask about personal information about me. As far as I know I'm the only "Harper Gordek" in the world so you can pretty easily suss out almost everything about me from a few web searches (including my "dozens of guys look like me" appearance and my middle-tone, slightly mumbly, too fast speech)

Anonymous said...

What do you know, Harper is (or was) a fed. And the first PDF google provides is a statistical analysis on a drug use/health survey.

Anonymous said...

He's run a marathon, albeit at a nice, leisurely pace. And he has some connection to Durham, NC.

Anonymous said...

You did a little better in that 4-miler. And in 2009 you were between the ages of 30 and 39.

Harper said...

not a fed, though work with various gov't agencies a fair amount.

yeah - that marathon did not go as planned. Was going for under 4 hours which I consider a moderate pace overall Hit the wall. Running tailed off the past 2 yrs with a kid. Picking back up.

Zimmerman11 said...


Harper,

I did some college tv too... the low production quality and campy acting are most of the comedy... it gets even better when you know the goofballs doing the bad acting.

We did a sweet beastie boys sabotage music video based short film, that we pull out at every get-together.