There's not much to talk about in Spring even though we REALLY want to talk about baseball things. Maybe this year it's more of a just really not REALLY but still we have baseball on the brain. So how about some Spring Training Nats memories to bide the time
2005 : Happy Boz. What I remember about the first Spring Training is the Nats for some reason deciding Endy Chavez, and no one else, had to work on his patience. Now it was true Endy didn't walk but that wasn't his game. He was a defense first guy who hoped to slap .290 to make it worthwhile playing him. This plan worked - but also broke him. He walked but didn't hit and they ended up dealing him and he hung around for much longer than anyone could have imagined in that 4th OF role.
I bring this up because any time I get a chance to link to the greatest (ultimately meaningless) playoff catch of all time, I do it.
2006 : Battle of the Wills. Soriano comes in and refuses to play OF. The Nats demand he moves to the OF because he stinks at 2B. He blinks first. He plays OF the rest of the year. There was kind of a residual excitement to the incredibly weird 2005 season* for what would be the last time in a few years
2007 : Quantity over Quality. The Nats invited 36 pictures to Spring Training and not one of the starters had been healthy and on a major league roster the previous year. It got the Nats the 13th best SP group in the NL but hey in 2006 they were 15th and 2008 14th so success!
2008 : Bowden rides the Segway
2009 : Bowden rides the rail out of town as he and Jose Rijo do some shady things in latin america. At this point the team feels like a crazy embarrasment - because they were!
2010 : The Nats fans raise 10K to send Mark Zuckerman to go to Spring Training. That still amazes me. However I did get this blog post title from it : Zuckerman's Famous Gig, so it's all worth it. This was also Stras' first Spring and you know, hope again.
2011 : Bryce's Spring. Nothing much happened but Boz might have been peak Boz in a rhapsodic waxing on a Spring Training "brawl"
2012 : The Nats head into their... forever season not knowing who the CF would be and if Bryce might be it. Some people worried about Davey being too old. First time ever fans came into a spring thinking maybe there would be a playoff challenge at the end of it
2013 : World Series or Bust, can only lead in two directions. The young and talented Nats who surprised everyone in 2012 were favorites to win it all and there was a ton of excitement around the team. Full seasons of Stras and Bryce? Rendon coming? What gullible dopes we were. The minor news was Soriano being brought in kicking Storen down to set-up even though he really didn't screw up. Luckily he'd handle it like a pro.
2014 : Matty Williams' first year as the Nats jettison Davey because... well because they always planned to. Yeah not a great plan it turns out.
2015 : Scherzer is brought in and Bryce asks where's his ring. Still looking for it.
2016 : Dusty is brought in to fix the Matt Williams debacle while the Nats deal with the fact they forced themselves into a "Papelbon or Storen" corner. They'd choose Pap. He'd stink too. It was the first season without some major players as ZNN and Desmond both were gone.
2017 : I got nothing. At this point the Nats felt in a cycle of be great and blow it and be good but not good enough to make playoffs. Spring was about getting to the season so we could find out which one it was.
2018 : Davey gets hired and brings a camel into Spring Training to get over the hump. A nation groans. Meanwhile Janes yells at fans because we don't buy that Zimm is really healthy but just likes to practice unseen on backfields this one year. Here's Calcaterra buying into it a month in. Fool! They'd admit a year later he was hurt and we were right and they were wrong. WE ARE ALWAYS RIGHT.
2019 : All about Bryce for the last time as Bryce eventually signs with Phillies. Once Smitten, Bryce Bye? THAT'S GOLD Jerry. Davey smashes cabbages not past his dumb college orientation bonding ideas. (luckily he'll wise up and stop that and let the clubhouse form it's own bond)
*For those too young to remember - Hey there might be a 15 year old reading this! - Nats should be awful, lead the NL East by like 5 games on July 4th weekend. But they collapsed and were 5 games out a month later. They remained in the playoff hunt until Mid September and finished a very surprising .500
7 comments:
@harper
I dunno....work in healthcare....so I REALLY want to talk about ANYTHING NOT related to COVID-19. So I am as excited as can be for spring training. Happy to see the blog and baseball picking back up. Really happy for the escape it provides.
Speaking of Zuck, he's reporting that Kieboom got LASIK...hopefully that brings some hard contact with it. If he doesn't break out at least moderately, it's going to be a rough offense to watch
Yeah last year it was too easy to slip out of it because - well there was no baseball for a good long while and when it did come back the Nats were one of the worst teams (only PIT and BOS were worse 37 games into the shortened season). It should be mostly normal this year. Feb and March have been - like 3 posts a week-ish. then like 4 a week regular season. Even if it's minor stuff.
CP _ We all have visions of Guzman in our head but I wonder what the overall stats are in baseball about LASIK and improvement. Surely there must be dozens if not hundreds of examples by now.
Only one I remember off the top of my head is Ramos, and it did WONDERS for him. But I gotta think in general it's a marginal improvement.
Kieboom has already exceeded last year's total for extra base hits.
I'm a believer!!
Hah! That was fun Harper- great memories! Thank you!
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