I Hate you Now Leave me Alone September 10, 2010

My mind races. I can feel the fear rising up in me as he nervously inches towards me. This short slightly overweight goofy looking guy in glasses is making a beeline right for me. This isn’t right. If I was standing in front of an elevator or a staircase I might understand, but I’m not. I am standing next to the exit to the bathroom at PNC Park and this dorky looking Pirates fan is heading straight for me. Maybe he wants to tell me to go fuck myself because the Nationals just finished taking their first road series since May by outscoring the Pirates 17 to 3 in the last two games, but that isn’t it. When he gets to me he asks me where I am from. I want to tell him I am from where he thinks I am from. How many fucking Nats fans aren’t from the DC area? I really just want to tell him to fuck off, but I answer his question honestly but tersely.

Obviously he doesn’t get the message as he has  follow up questions. He asks if I am in town for the whole weekend. The fact that it is Sunday afternoon should give that one away, and I don’t know how to answer this retard. I simply tell him no I am leaving when my friend gets through desecrating a stall at PNC Park. I actually leave that last part off and just tell him no. He of course has more questions and comments. I really want this to end. I have no idea why this guy is talking to me. Do I look interesting or interested? He keeps going though. He tells me that Zimmerman made a good play at third. My response is, “I know.” Zimmerman does do it all the time after all. He is the best defensive third baseman in baseball.  Lucky for me I see my friend exit the bathroom and with no further words I am gone. I look back briefly and sad lonely eyes are following me. I feel no remorse I fucking hate strangers and I hate it more when they talk to me.

This instance of a stranger talking to me is nothing new. It has happened in nearly every city I have travelled to this year to watch baseball. From a Nats fan in Ohio telling me his life story and why he is a Nats fan to a guy in Philly wanting to stop me so he could chat about Strasburg’s injury and Jim Riggleman’s handling of pitchers. It happened a few other times in Pittsburgh as well. Mostly the topic of conversation is Strasburg and if I think he will come back. Well I know he will come back. The problem is he might break down again or not be the same pitcher, but he will return to the mound and statistics show that he most likely will be the same pitcher.

The topic of conversation here isn’t Strasburg. It is strangers trying to have conversations with me. I don’t know why it happens. Maybe because I am a Nats fan on the road they assume I know something about the Nationals. I do probably know more than most non-diehard Nationals fans, but I don’t think I know that much more than any other Nationals fan. I simply like to travel and like to watch baseball when I travel. It is funny because no stranger tried to talk to me in Chicago or Milwaukee, but that time I was with my Asian friend and maybe they think I am his translator or something and don’t want to start an uncomfortable conversation. Well I got news for you strangers out there; every conversation you start with a stranger is fucking uncomfortable. It is weird to think that at some point in time all my friends and I were strangers, but I met most of them in some form of schooling, and if you think about it your classmates aren’t really strangers.

 It is for that reason that I think I would be open to a fellow Nats fan talking to me, but some beady eyed chubby Pirates fan is a no go. Although I have to say when a random pizza delivery guy in Cleveland decided to talk to me it was kind of cool, but he was there and I was there. We were both in the places we were supposed to be going about our daily business and he decided to talk to me. After a minute or two I did want to get away, but it wasn’t the same kind of confusion mixed with fear that I suffered in PNC Park.

The waitress at the Original Oyster Bar kidding us about the Nationals is one thing as is the guy sitting next to us at a bar, but it is an entirely different thing to approach a stranger out of nowhere and start jibber jabbering and trying to make conversation. It isn’t nice or fun to feel trapped. I had to wait for my friend to get out of the bathroom. Looking back right now I just realized I could have just run off to the team store and sent a text message, but I am a much faster thinker in hindsight. At that moment I was trapped in a little corner of PNC Park. A corner where no human being not exiting the bathroom would have a reason to be. Why this little turd felt the need to walk up to and then start talking to me is beyond me. Of course now I also feel bad about calling him a turd. He is probably just some socially awkward guy that feels any fellow baseball fan is a possible friend.

I just dislike people. I dislike crowds. The worst place in the universe to me is the grocery story. I stopped eating cereal because the isle is always too crowded. My wife now does all of the grocery shopping and I can’t be happier. When I do have to go to the store it is always a scary time. People are rushing around me and darting in front of me. One woman was tailgating me the other day with her cart. I stopped to pick up some beer and she almost ran into me. Listen sweetheart it is a grocery store people buy things. They ain’t there to take a stroll through the fucking cheese isle. Also walk how you fucking drive people. Walk to the goddamned right.

I guess the point is it doesn’t really matter where I am in the world I dislike strangers, and I dislike it even more when they approach me for no good reason to have a conversation I am not interested in. I can sit and watch a ballgame in complete silence, lost in deep thoughts and meditation, transfixed by the beauty of the game on the field. The last thing I want is my fortress of solitude to be broken into and have to listen to some guy asking my opinion about many various things. Maybe I should just have a business card made up with various web addresses on it of where my opinions can be read. Of course there is a reason I don’t have many friends and never seem to have fun at social functions, but hey if I cared I wouldn’t be me.

Clinical Obsession July 12, 2010

This past Saturday I took my mother to watch the Nationals lose to the San Francisco Giants 10-5. On the way home she asked me a question I could not answer, a question that I simply found puzzling. She, like I guess all mothers do, asked this question in the form of a statement. She said, “I hope you haven’t become obsessed?” The motherly concern is slightly touching, but I think my confusion comes from the very nature of the sport of baseball. I am die-hard baseball fan. I don’t think a day passes that I don’t read an article on fangraphs or look up a players stats on baseball-reference.com, and no night passes that I don’t watch a baseball game in some form or another. I am even going to drink a beer and watch the homerun derby tonight. I will get annoyed at Chris Berman, but it is the only baseball I will get tonight, and when winter rolls around I will watch the Caribbean Series when it is on MLB network. Simply said being a baseball fan is being obsessed.

Even if you aren’t a slightly insane person like myself, but still watch baseball then in a way you are obsessed. Baseball is on during the perfect time of year to lead to obsession. Unless a person is really interested in summer shows like “Rookie Blue” or reruns of “Glee” then baseball is the only thing to watch.  

The lowest common denominator of sports information is sports radio, and this is the time of year they hate the most. Baseball is hard to talk about. It is a sport that has to be understood in order for intelligent discourse to take place. The caller can complain about a guy not hitting enough homers or having enough RBI, but if the radio host adds no insight then they have failed. So, in order to not fail they mostly ignore its existence and complain about the lack of football. Football is a completely different sport. Someone can watch every football game and understand more about it than other people, but the only time they lose is a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon. Baseball takes away three hours every night.

Most people simply don’t have the time to invest in really following a team. It is even more of an investment to get down to all the smaller parts of what makes up a team. Knowing the minor leaguers and the prospects is an investment of time. Keeping up and understanding the latest stats and trends in the game is another investment of time. Trying to argue your views vs. another fans view on a message board is yet another investment of time. And between all this life has to be lived. Money needs earning, wives and girlfriends need attention, family needs visiting, and god forbid someone die or get married.

(Once a college friend of mine got married during baseball season and I lied and said I had prior commitments so I could go and watch a meaningless game between the Nationals and Cubs. My favorite Uncle also happened to die during baseball season and my father and myself rushed home from the funeral Sunday morning to watch the Nationals take on the Marlins. When planning a family the birth month of my child will revolve around the baseball season so as not to disturb anything. And I myself had a January wedding just so it would avoid any aspects of baseball.) 

The nature of baseball is obsession. Even if someone wanted to it would be very hard to follow any other sport as closely as all of us die-hard baseball fans follow baseball. All the information we need to know nearly everything there is to know about baseball is right there at our finger tips. The internet has made being a baseball fan even more time consuming and wonderful. If I wanted to know what Adam Dunn is hitting on Tuesdays after an off-day in which it rained I am sure the information is out there. Baseball lends itself to so many things. People could spend hours arguing the strategy of bunting or discussing the joys of watching Pujols bat.

This season alone I am on a record pace of attending sixty games. I have been to 33 games so far this season. All but three of them have been Nationals games. Two of them were Orioles games when the Nationals were out of town, and one was a Harrisburg Senators game when Strasburg was pitching. Baseball has become a part of my being. I can’t say the moment this happened or why it happened. It is just something that does happen. I don’t know if I would call it an obsession though. Obsession implies danger. It implies that I would stalk Strasburg just for a chance to steal his dirty underwear and sell it on e-bay.

When I was in Cleveland a random Nationals fan ran up to me and he seemed very excited about something. He seemed to really have something important to tell me and was bouncing like a six year old that needs to pee. Without me even opening my mouth he proceeded to tell me how the Cleveland police told him that the Nationals were staying at the Ritz or Hyatt or some other fancy hotel. I really didn’t care. I don’t really want to meet the Nationals players away from the field. My pleasure comes from watching them play the game of baseball. There is a poetry and beauty in watching people that are this good do what they are great at. Seeing them in street clothes drinking beer in a hotel bar is not really the way I want to see my ball players. I don’t want to know what they do when they aren’t playing baseball. That is their free time when they are human and I want my ball players to be mythic beings, and they are only that when they are playing baseball.

After the crazy stalker told me this news of where the Nationals were staying he ran off in the opposite direction I presume to tell more people that he was insane and going to stalk the Nationals. That might be obsession. I am not there. I do spend countless hours reading about baseball in books and on the internet, and I spend even more countless hours watching the game of baseball. I plan my travels and vacations around baseball (next weekend I am heading up to Chicago for Cubs vs. Cardinals, Brewers vs. Nationals, and White Sox vs. Mariners).  Whenever someone asks if I have plans I always check the baseball schedule before I can answer. Baseball may consume large quantities of my time, but I am no more obsessed than other normal baseball fans.

I don’t care what hotel the players stay at. I don’t wait by the player parking lot for the chance to see them drive away. I simply watch and enjoy the game of baseball. For me it is a passion not on obsession.

Strasburg and Strikes June 24, 2010

The big Strasburg debate of the day is if a pitcher can throw too many strikes. I remember reading one time that Bob Gibson did not like the philosophy of the waist pitch. He felt that if you had a hitter in the hole you attacked. I am also not sure that a ball off the plate has to be a waist pitch. Strasburg has such an amazing curve ball and change-up that if he threw them in the dirt that a lot of batters would swing. He can also throw his fastball high in the zone to get swings and misses. I also don’t know if a set-up pitch would count as a waist pitch. A 99 MPH fastball inside right under a batter’s hands would certainly back him off the plate and set him up for a curve or change-up on or slightly off the outside corner. This of course is all part of pitching.

People say that Strasburg and all young pitchers come up to the Major Leagues and are still learning how to pitch. I sometimes wonder why. If I know this stuff I am certain pitching coaches and managers know it. Do they just not tell the pitcher, or is it more a matter of learning how to do it. The only thing a good pitcher should really be learning is the individual hitters. If a pitcher doesn’t know that he needs to change speeds and move the ball around the zone and sometimes expand the zone then they might never learn it. These are just concepts that make up pitching. Some guys just don’t have the talent to hit the spots needed to be a pitcher. It isn’t like they aren’t trying or just don’t know. It is simply that guys like Tony Armas Jr. and Daniel Cabrera can’t.

The real thing that should be taken out of this start by Strasburg wasn’t whether or not he threw too many strikes, but that he didn’t have his best stuff. His fastball velocity was down, he wasn’t locating it like he can, and it happened to be humid and in the high 90’s. The Royals batting order are slap hitters that are just looking to put the ball in play. Mitch Williams on MLB Network said he felt Strasburg would do better against teams with more power hitters, because he is likely to get more swings and misses. The way Strasburg had to battle the heat, not having his best stuff, and the slap hitting Royals all over the bases this might have been his best start, or at least the one where we learned the most about him.

I was at a game one time where Cole Hamels couldn’t through his fastball for strikes and his change-up was being hit. He didn’t give up. He didn’t let the hitters beat him. Instead he stopped throwing those two pitches early in the count. He got ahead with his curveball and then would either throw the change-up in the dirt or his fastball up. He ended up lasting six innings and only giving up a couple runs. It was really a great pitching performance. In baseball more is always learned about a player when he fails.

It was interesting to see how Strasburg handled not having his best fastball, but it was still a 97 MPH fastball that he could locate. It will be interesting to see what happens when he goes out there and has nothing, to see if he can make the adjustments and survive, or if he gets knocked around what happens in his next outing.  I am also very interested to see what happens when Strasburg has everything working. Strasburg is going to be a very fun pitcher to watch.   

I do not think yesterday was an issue of Strasburg throwing too many strikes. I think it was more an issue of battling not having his best fastball, and the heat. He even admitted after the game that the 0-2 pitch he threw to Jose Guillen wasn’t in the location that he wanted. He wanted to go up and out of the zone, but the pitch ended up right down the middle and Guillen just blooped it over the infield. The Royals were just looking to put the ball in play, and they did it enough to win, as the Nationals failed to score any runs. The line-up will come around at some point. Zimmerman, Dunn, Willingham are one of the better middle of the orders in baseball.

Mussina, Schilling, Martinez and the Hall June 22, 2010

I guess since I had a record high in readers yesterday including the guy whose article I didn’t agree with I should write something today. Strike when the iron is hot right? I don’t really have much to say about the Nationals right now as last night was a fun and stressful game. I said to my wife at one point during the game that I wouldn’t have any skin on my fingers if the Nationals ever made the playoffs as I was chewing on them while watching Matt Capps pull his best Chad Cordero impression. It also wasn’t fun getting home last night as some genius decided that two lanes should be closed on 95. It took me an hour and a half to go a mile.

All this talk about Strasburg and which pitcher he reminds people of got me thinking about a trio of starting pitchers that pitched in just about the same period of time. All three are borderline hall of famers, and none of them have 300 wins. The closest of them is now sitting thirty games from 300 wins but would rather have retired than to hang on and possibly embarrass himself just to get to a magic number. Should the number of wins really matter all that much when it comes to the Hall of Fame?

Wins are kind of an outdated stat as pitchers don’t go deep into games anymore and the offense and bullpen have as much of an impact on a pitcher getting a win as the pitcher himself. Of course if a guy has a lot of wins in a season it means he must have been doing something right. It still means something, but its importance has been diminished as the importance of the bullpen has increased. Instead the rate stats should probably be given more weight as pitchers are being judge for the Hall, and these three pitchers are some of the best rate pitchers out there.

Those pitchers names are Mike Mussina, Pedro Martinez, and Curt Schilling. At first I thought I would say Mussina and Pedro yes and Schilling no, but then I saw Schilling’s K/BB rate of 4.3826 which is second best all time behind Tommy Bond who last pitched in 1884. The next guy on the list is Pedro Martinez who might have been even higher if he had retired when he should have. Martinez’s was the best pitcher in the game from 1997-2003 and that stretch might have been one of the greatest of all time for a pitcher. Mussina is 13^th on the list with a K/BB of 3.5834. All three off these pitchers had amazing control and got strikeouts. Should they be punished for the era they pitched in? Longevity is important, but is it that much more important than being great?

It isn’t like Mussina, Schilling, and Martinez are exactly lacking in longevity. Mussina, who leads the three in wins, pitched from 1991 to 2008. Over that time he made 536 starts. For an example Sandy Koufax made 314 starts and Jim Palmer started 521 games. Neither of those guys have 300 wins so there is precedent for pitchers that don’t have the magic win total to go into the Hall. Curt Schilling has 436 starts from 1988 to 2007 and Pedro Martinez has 409 starts from 1992 to 2009 and will probably return at some point this season.

The longevity doesn’t seem to be a problem for these pitchers as they aren’t just guys like Mark Fidrych and Vida Blue that game up and were hot and then either burnt out or faded away. All three of Mussina, Schilling, and Martinez were great for an extended period of time. They have that part down, and we just can’t tell what type of weight the BBWAA will give to wins in the coming years as the number of 300 game winners is very likely to drop even more with guys pitching in a five man rotation their entire careers and the increasing importance of closers and set-up men.

Another stat that is just amazing for these guys and is a product of their control is WHIP or walks and hits per innings pitched. Basically the number of base runners allowed on average during an inning. All three of them rank in the top 125 of all time with Pedro leading the way at 5^th with a WHIP of 1.0544. Mussina brings up the rear ranked at 118 with a WHIP of 1.1915. All three of them sit about Hall of Famer Warren Spahn who is regarded as one of the greatest pitchers of all time. Tom Glavine is sure fire a Hall of Famer as there is and his WHIP doesn’t even rank him in the top 500 of all time at 1.3137. Glavine is going to the Hall and all three of the pitchers I named pitched in the same time period and bettered him in some stats. Should Glavine’s 300 wins really mean he gets in and others don’t?

Guys like Glavine, Maddux, and Johnson clearly belong in the Hall of Fame, but so do guys like Mussina, Schilling, and Martinez. Is it right to give it to the first three simply because of win totals. The last three guys were just as dominate in the same era and deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. Not only does my intuition tell me this, but so do the numbers.

Strasburg Hype Brings out the Morons June 21, 2010

I used to enjoy reading blogs post when they would read something so unquestionable dumb and then tear the article to pieces. Last week si.com decided to post a Thomas Boswell opinion piece as fact. Boswell said it would be better for Strasburg if he could get more ground ball outs than strikeouts thus going deeper into the game and preserving his arm. None of this is false. Bob Gibson was one of the hardest pitchers to face and he was also one of the most efficient. He often complained about the entire idea of a waste pitch when he got a guy 0-2. He felt batters were expecting the pitcher to throw one out of the zone so therefore that is when you attack. He was a very smart pitcher as well as an extremely talented one.

The reaction from the comments section was of course horrified dismay. Remember SI was passing this off as something the Nationals said. They were trying to make it seem like the Nationals felt that they needed to mess with Stephen Strasburg. Then today I go to si.com and low and behold there is an article about how the Nationals need to learn from history and not mess with Strasburg. Of course it is idiotic.

Now the article starts off extremely weird. Jeff Pearlman seems to believe Thomas Boswell is the GM of the Washington Nationals. He makes no mention of this, but Boswell is the only person that has said anything about Strasburg needing to pitch more to contact. Of course Boswell also had a Strasburg quote where he said, “Strikeouts are accidental.” Strasburg isn’t trying to strike guys out. He just does because they can’t hit his stuff. Even in getting ten strikeouts against the White Sox on Friday Strasburg only needed 85 pitches to get through seven innings. He is also efficient with his strikeouts. A lot of them come on four or even three pitches. He has excellent control and attacks batters.  

The main problem is Jeff Pearlman doesn’t know anything. He decides that after assuming that Thomas Boswell is somehow connected to the brains of the Nationals that the best person’s opinion to ask is a fifty year old catcher that played a total of 62 games in the majors and make Wil Neives look like an all-star.  Here is some of this wise catcher’s opinion;

“Oh, crap,” says Ed Hearn.

The words come automatically. The dismay is legitimate. I have just informed the long-retired major league catcher that the Washington Nationals seem to think Stephen Strasburg, as perfect a pitching prospect as the game has seen in some time, isn’t quite perfect enough. “They want to make him more efficient,” I tell Hearn, a man I’ve known for years. “So he doesn’t waste pitches.”

Let us examine this more closely. Ed Hearn learns about this desire of the Nationals to change Strasburg from Jeff Pearlman. Well he is a man so arrogant to call his weekly column “Pearls of Wisdom.” He should be calling it “Anal Pearls of Stupidity.” He is literally just pulling this out of his ass. There have been no quotes from the Nationals that they are displeased with Strasburg and that they want him to strike out less guys. Again the only person that said it is Thomas Boswell who works for the Washington Post and not the Nationals. The next paragraph explains where Pearlman got this idea and makes him look like a real genius.

That sentiment was expressed by Washington manager Jim Riggelman a few days ago. “Don’t expect to see double-digit strikeouts too often,” he told the Washington Post. “He’s going to be more of a ground ball pitcher, like Ubaldo Jimenez, than a strikeout pitcher like Roger Clemens or Kerry Wood. It’s better to get three outs on 12 pitches than three strikeouts on 18.”

First off that quote is what Riggleman said before Strasburg’s first career start. The hype was so huge and so immense people with the Nationals were trying to say anything to limit it. Riggleman was mainly talking about Strasburg’s 2-seam fastball that he throws around 97 and was getting a lot of groundball outs in the minor leagues. The expectations were that major league hitters would be able to make more contact than minor league hitters and therefore more groundball outs than strikeouts. It hasn’t happened that way. Strasburg’s stuff is just too good. But besides the problem of when the quote was said and when Pearlman heard it and wants to say it was said, is the sentiment. Pearlman believes this quote is saying Strasburg needs to change. I don’t see that in this quote. I of course know when the quote was said unlike Pearlman. Riggleman first is saying not to expect to see double digit stikeouts too often. I don’t even need to look this one up. I would bet there aren’t many pitchers with a K/9 of 10. Ok I looked up the yearly leaders. The last three years it has been Lincecum with a K/9 of over 10. The league leaders in most years are slightly over are right below 10.

What this says to me is that most pitchers are under 10 and even a K/9 of ten doesn’t mean a lot of double digit strikeouts since most pitchers don’t pitch a complete game every time out. In fact last year Lincecum had eight double digit strikeout games out of 32 starts. Eight out of 32 isn’t a lot, but Lincecum lead the league in K/9. He was the best strikeout pitcher in the league and only had eight double digit strikeout games. On average a pitcher will have to strikeout around half the batters he faces to produce double digit strikeouts. I have spent so much time on this point of the quote I have ignored the obvious.

Nowhere in this quote does Riggleman say anything needs to change. He is just saying it is better to less pitches in an inning and saying what people should expect. As the league adjust they should be able to make contact with Strasburg more often, but with his stuff it won’t be good contact. Therefore more balls in play, but less strikeouts. Of course Strasburg will be like Lincecum and probably float right around double digits for strikeouts every game. Right now Strasburg is sitting at around 14.9 K/9. This would be an all time record. It simply won’t continue. Nothing Riggleman says is that the Nationals are going to do anything to change this. Just that simple logic dictates it must change. If Strasburg does have double digit strikeouts in 2/3 of his starts he will be the greatest pitcher to ever live.

The reason Ed Hearn is an expert on this is that he caught Dwight Gooden in the minors. Let’s not forget the fact that cocaine ended Gooden’s career, not the Mets trying to teach him a 2-seamer. Also ignored in the rest of the comparison to Gooden is that Strasburg already through four pitches and one of them is a 2-seamer. The latest pitch Strasburg learned is a change-up and he added it on his own and some people already believe it might be his best pitch. Just ask the White Sox that waived at it quite a few time. Anyway here is some more goodies for Anal Pearls;

Before Gooden could take the next step toward legend, however, the Mets committed an unforgivable faux pas: They tinkered. GM Frank Cashen, one of the era’s best evaluators of talent, worried about Gooden destroying his power arm, a la Mark Prior two decades later. Mel Stottlemyre, the generally savvy pitching coach, thought Gooden could be even better with a second fastball — a two-seamer to dip down and result in more groundouts.

Hence, during spring training before the Mets’ world-championship 1986 season, Stottlemyre spent hours upon hours tutoring Gooden on the intricacies of the two-seam grip. “I always thought they should have left Doc alone,” Gary Carter, the Mets star catcher, once told me. “Mel thought teaching him a third pitch would be to his advantage, but he didn’t need it. He needed someone to say, ‘Hey, you’ve been successful. Just keep going at it.’ But they didn’t.”

The results speak for themselves. In 1985, Gooden was the elite arm in all of baseball. In 1986, he was merely good — a 17-6 pitcher whose ERA rose by more than a run per game and whose strikeouts dropped precipitously. “Looking back, you never knew with Dwight whether some of that was related to his [well-documented] substance abuse issues,” says Hearn. “But I caught Doc, and I can tell you he wasn’t the same after being forced to throw a pitch he was never comfortable with.

“I don’t know this Strasburg kid, and all I’ve watched were the highlights on TV. But if I’m Washington, I leave him alone and let his talent shine. Because I’ve seen what can happen when you mess with a great thing.

“It’s not pretty.”

I know it is pretty much the rest of the article, but it is so full of stupid I just don’t know where to begin. How about that the expert that Pearlman is asking admits to “Not knowing this Strasburg kid.” Good job. If he did know him he would realize that Pearlman was asking leading questions to try and write an article to counter the hype and be the negative voice in the room. Too bad he had to basically make everything he said up. Bad sports journalism should not be tolerated, and sports journalist shouldn’t just be allowed to make stuff up. They also shouldn’t be allowed to interview ex-major leaguers and ask them leading questions to make it look like someone in the game agrees with them. I am just doing my part in the world to point out that this article and its writer are both retarded.

Read it for yourself here: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/jeff_pearlman/06/18/strasburg/index.html

The Eye of the Storm June 16, 2010

This past weekend I journeyed up to Cleveland, Ohio to watch the Nationals take on the Cleveland Indians. The best pitching performance of the weekend wasn’t talked about, and very few people showed up to watch Fuasto Carmona give up one run on three hits and face only twenty-eight batters. It was quite an impressive thing to see. I am disappointed that the Nationals weren’t able to win both games I went to, but it was very interesting to see how Strasburg was treated on the road.

I have been to road Nationals games in Baltimore, Atlanta, San Diego, and Pittsburgh, and nowhere have a seen anywhere near the number of Nationals fans I saw this past weekend. I wore my Ian Desmond jersey shirt on Saturday and while visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a number of people came up to me to talk about the Nationals and more specifically Stephen Strasburg. I have to say since returning to this area I haven’t been asked once about the Nationals or Strasburg, but up there I was asked by nearly every person I passed. It was pretty much pure insanity.

Sunday, when Strasburg pitched was even more insane. The Indians drew their second highest crowd of the season, and this is a team that gets to play the Yankees and Red Sox at home. The Indians team store was selling Strasburg jerseys and shirts and other items of memorabilia. The number of people I saw walking around in Indian hats and Strasburg shirts wasn’t normal. In just two starts Strasburg has captured the attention of the nation and with just a little bit of success he could be a household name.

This hype is like nothing I can remember, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try. I remember when Iron Mike Tyson was at the top of the world and was knocking everyone out in the first round. Everyone wanted to see him fight. Everyone was a fan of the big uppercut and his short quick strikes. He was like nothing anyone had ever seen before. He was a short compact wrecking ball of bone and muscle. He tore through opponents like they were cheap toilet paper, and the only person that every beat Mike Tyson was Mike Tyson.

Some of the people that Strasburg gets compared to are guys that beat themselves. Doc Gooden and Vida Blue are the first two that come to mind. The pressure of greatness got to them and they both succumbed to drugs. Others like Kerry Wood and Mark Prior shined for awhile and burned out quickly. Many people point to them and say that we know more now and that shouldn’t happen. Just because it shouldn’t doesn’t mean it won’t. I don’t think Strasburg has a destructive personality and both Tony Gwynn and Scott Boras know how to handle fame. Whenever I hear the humble nature of Strasburg in an interview I don’t know if it is Gwynn’s influence, the Scott Boras script, or if it is the real Strasburg. It is just hard to tell.

The hype will only keep growing as long as Strasburg keeps delivering. On Sunday he battled bad mound conditions and control issues, but still struck out eight and only gave up one earned run. The focus of course is on the eight strikeouts. There is going to be a day soon where everything is in Strasburg’s favor.  The umpire will have a favorable strike zone, he will have his best stuff, and the defense will be solid behind him. It will be a wonderful thing to witness.

Right now Strasburg has a lot of hype because he is new and shiny and he is bringing money and fans to the Washington Nationals, but they can’t waste this. They can’t fail to build around him like the White Sox did with Frank Thomas or the Orioles did with Cal Ripken Jr. If the Strasburg hype is going to continue to grow and he is to become a superstar like Sidney Crosby, Lebron James, or Tom Brady then he has to win, and in order for him to win the team has to win. Hopefully this Strasburg money can go towards and Jason Werth or a Cliff Lee, or maybe even both, because if people show up to see Strasburg pitch they will show up even more to watch an entire team win.

Feeling Sorry for the Pirates June 1, 2010

From the Natinals incident to back to back 100 loss seasons it hasn’t been a fun time to be a Nationals fan. Even so I can’t imagine the feeling of being a Pirates fan right now. They are expected right now to play the role of the Washington Generals or Val Venis. They are expected to roll over and die an let Stephen Strasburg have a great debut. I bet this burns the players up. I bet they are going to feed on this and make Strasburg pitch his best to beat them. That is if they even care they will.

It could be that the Pirates clubhouse is a darkly lit din of sadness. Last chance players like Lastings Milledge and Ryan Church trying to prove their value so they stick in the major leagues. Guys like Ryan Doumit, Garrett Jones, and Andrew McCutchen counting down the days until they are traded to a contender and the Pirates “rebuilding” starts all over again. The Pirates haven’t won since Sid Bream rounded third and crushed the hopes and dreams of an entire city.

Have the Pirates really fallen this far? Has the team of Roberto Clemente and Honus Wagner become so much of a joke that they are being used to transition a potential star from AAA to the Majors? Are the Pirates the baseball equivalent of a fat Tony Atlas wrestling in a High School gym in some backwater New Jersey town? I don’t want to say I feel bad for the Pirates, but I do.

No major league team deserves the disrespect with which the media is going to treat the Pirates. Make no mistake about it Tuesday June, 8 is the Stephen Strasburg show and the Pirates are going to be expected to be a good little baseball team and do their part. Originally Strasburg was going to make his debut against the Reds, but then Pudge Rodriguez found himself on the DL and the Nationals didn’t want Strasburg to make his debut throwing to Wil Neives. So, it was pushed back, and it happens to fall on a day they are playing the Pirates.

Of course the talking heads believe this is so Strasburg can get a win in his debut. Of course in baseball everyone is dangerous, and every team is trying to win. I do not think the Pirates view themselves as the farm team for MLB, nor do I think the players view themselves as the unlucky fellow that has Lebron James’ nuts in his face on a little boy’s bedroom wall. I bet every Pirates position player is salivating at the idea of knocking one out of the park and ruining the Strasburg show. I also bet that whoever the pitcher is that day is just waiting to be that much better.

The question that remains is can they? If the Pirates play their best and try their hardest can they beat the Nationals. Sure they can, but can they if the Nationals also play their best and try their hardest? Probably not.  This game is going to end up being just like any other game played between the Pirates and Nationals just because both teams have something to play for. The crowd will be electric and the pirates will be out there to ruin the show and the Nationals will be out there to make sure it goes as planned.

In the end it doesn’t matter if a player like Kobe Bryant or Alex Ovechkin wants to put you on the wrong side of a highlight. By sheer force of will they get what they want. If Strasburg is as much of a star as people think he is, then by determination alone he will turn in the highlights and the Pirates will find themselves on the wrong end of the highlight reels. They can get as mad as they want, and feel as slighted as they want, but in the end they might have to hope to hold the game close and ruin Strasburg’s evening by beating Sean Burnett.

The Other Shoe May 4, 2010

Here it comes. It is coming down hard to crush our tiny little Nats fan heads. It is the proverbial other shoe, and it is dropping. After a three game winning streak against the Cubs and Marlins the Nationals have now lost two in a row and are entering a tough series against a suddenly hot Braves team. The Braves have found their offensive rhythm at the same time that the Nationals have lost their pitching rhythm. This isn’t a good mix and it isn’t a good match-up at this time; especially with those pesky Marlins coming into town at the end of the week. This could be the first prolonged losing streak the Nationals will endure.

The story of the Atlanta Braves this season has been a lack of hitting and a depth of pitching, but their offense has gotten hot. Troy Glaus has started to hit on all cylinders and Jason Heyward has continued to prove why he should be the unquestioned ROY. This could be the start to an ugly week for the Nationals.

The Nationals have continued to show a different attitude so far this season with players talking about how angry they are after loses and how it eats at their insides. They can’t wait to get back on the field so they can win again. This will be a tough week and could easily test that fighting spirit. How much can they take? If they get swept out of Nationals Park by the Braves and Marlins can they muster the courage to win a couple on the road and fight back to .500 or do they roll over and die like last Year’s Nats?

These questions will be answered during the season, but I have a feeling that this short but enjoyable ride is over. The fun has ended for the Nationals fan. At least the fun didn’t end the first week of April. Last season the Nationals started off with a seven game losing streak and then in the middle of the month the evil Marlins came to town and won three games in a row in the 9^th inning. That was the first time a team had blown three saves in a row in the 9^th inning. It was ugly and it was unforgivable. The back of the Washington Nationals was broken.

Could this be the week that the back is broken this season? Do the Nationals look at the schedule and fear Tommy Hanson and Time Hudson and see that the Marlins are coming next? The pitching on the Nationals is faltering. John Lannan can’t locate his secondary pitches. Scott Olsen has a nice little scoreless streak going but has allowed too many base runners and can’t put hitters away when he is ahead in the count. Craig Stammen has had his difficulties when unable to locate and for tensing up against better hitters. Livan Hernandez is due to plummet back to earth and revert to his career 5.something ERA. Luis Atilano we know nothing about, but every rookie has a bad game.

These guys are just place holders people will say. Strasburg, Detwiler, Zimmermann, and Wang are coming. Don’t forget Marquis was hurt and maybe just maybe that wasn’t really him not getting an out. Even if all these pitchers do come in and do what is expected will the team still be fighting, or will their spirit have been broken. What will this team have to fight for after getting swept by the Braves and Marlins and enduring at least an eight game losing streak. Who knows? But we might be close to finding out just how much fight this team has in them.

The State of the Washington Nationals April 8, 2010

If I wasn’t a Nationals fan I would be afraid of the Phillies. What I mean is if I were a Cardinals, Dodgers, or Rockies fan watching the Phillies systematic and calculated dissecting of the Washington Nationals I would be worried. Those three teams are the most likely to reach the playoffs, and that might be as far as they get.

If you are a baseball fan and you don’t believe the Nationals are improved over last season then you simply haven’t been paying attention. The Phillies line-up is deadly. Carlos Ruiz is the only weak link and he hasn’t exactly looked like it in the first two games against the Nationals. Yes the Nationals pitching is nothing special, but it is better than last season. The only thing I can see stopping the Phillies is an implosion by Halladay and a short series against the Cardinals facing Wainwright and Carpenter.

The prospect of facing the Phillies sixteen more times this season isn’t pretty. It isn’t something I imagine as fun. But the Nationals did score three runs off Hamels and they got a good amount of hits off of Halladay. It isn’t much, but it is hope.

Now on to the main event of what I want to talk about; The State of the Washington Nationals. I am going to break this down in the most organized way my stream of conscience blog writing mind can handle and talk about the major league team, the farm system, and the front office.

The major league team is improved from last season although it might not look like it now. Jim Riggleman isn’t Manny Acta and that is improvement in and of itself, but not only is he not just Manny Acta he actually does the things he says he is going to do like working on defense and fundamentals. Kennedy is a huge upgrade over Anderson Hernandez and Alberto Gonzalez, and Ian Desmond is better offensively the Guzman and could end up being better defensively as well. Zimmerman and Dunn are givens to be strong and Dunn is improving daily at first base. Willingham is Willingham and there is little to worry about him. He is a typical NL left fielder. The two weakest areas for the Nationals are right field and the bench. Right field is a dead zone around baseball. Jason Heyward has only played two games and might be in the top three in the NL with Brad Hawpe and Jason Werth. The other weak area is the bench, and man is that weak. Willie Harris, Alberto Gonzalez, and Willy Taveras are all automatic outs, and there is no power threat coming off the bench. It is enough to make me miss Dmitri Young.

The next issue with the Nationals is pitching, especially starting pitching. Mike Rizzo made a lot of changes to the bullpen over the off-season and some of them could work out. Drew Storen will very likely be the closer by the end of the season. Matt Capps hasn’t looked good as a national thus far, but as average as the bullpen is the starting pitching is flat out awful. John Lannan is the ace of the staff. On any other team he wouldn’t be higher than a 3^rd starter and his best role is probably as a team’s 5^th starter. Jason Marquis is an innings eater. Which is a nicer way of saying he isn’t any good. The jury is still out on Craig Stammen but so far he has looked like righty Lannan. The rotation is rounded out by Garret Mock and Livan Hernandez, neither of whom should be in the majors. Of course there is hope. Olsen, Wang, and Detwiler are going to come back from injury and one of them has to work out. If there is a 33% chance that a starting pitcher can return from injury then one of them has to return to form.

The wild card in all this is Stephen Strasburg. And when it comes to the Nationals farm system he might as well be it. I can talk about how Aaron Thompson or Brad Peacock could help the rotation, but with no Strasburg it is worthless. No one talks about surrounding Scotty Pippen with talent. A rotation is built from the top. If Strasburg doesn’t work out it sets the team back another three or four seasons. True Aces do not hit the open market and if they do they go to the Yankees or the Red Sox. Bad teams sign Carlos Silva and Gil Meche and try and turn them into an ace. Good teams wait for Tommy Hanson or Tim Lincecum and then surround them with talent.

I know nothing about the hitting in the minor leagues. Ian Desmond is now in the majors. I have no idea what type of season Chad Rhinehart had last year except he moved to the outfield and Right Field might be waiting for him. I do not know if Marrero is even still part of the Nationals future or if the plan is to sign Dunn and trade him for a pitcher. All I know is if Strasburg doesn’t work out nothing else is going to matter. This division isn’t getting any weaker. Halladay is with the Phillies for three more seasons, Tommy Hanson’s career has just begun, the Marlins locked up Josh Johnson, and as bad as a path the Mets are on they still have Johan Santana. Without a true ace of their own the Nationals stand no chance. As far as I am concerned Strasburg is the farm system.

The front office is a lot better now than what it was with Jim Bowden. Mike Rizzo seems to be a competent baseball man that doesn’t ignore any aspect of the decision making process. The problem with the front office is Stan Kasten. Let’s face it he doesn’t have much to work with to begin with. When this team needed to rebuild they weren’t in the same position as say the Orioles. They didn’t have a Tejeda or a Bedard to trade for other teams top prospects. The Nationals had no former MVPs or possible Ace pitchers to trade. They were a rouge gallery of other teams misfits cast of to be contracted and Jim Bowden wasted every minute he was here collecting more castoffs and rejects. Stan Kasten has nothing to do with the product on the field. His job is to put fans in the seat, and the product certainly isn’t helpful.

He has been creative. I will give him that. He has advertised Nationals Park to be used for political and corporate fundraisers. It has worked to bring in additional revenue. Two big concerts will be at Nationals Park this year, and it was only one of two stadiums the Pope visited on his tour of the US. Despite the utter incompetence of the team he finagled his way to having Nationals Park open the 2008 season. It was an amazing night, but recently Kasten has been selling tickets to the wrong people. I wrote yesterday about the influx of Philly fans, and it probably wouldn’t have been so bad if this were Toronto or San Diego advertising to out of town fans, but this is Washington D.C..

People from out of town don’t understand. They know that this is an area of the country that a lot of people move to. The government is here and it is never going out of business. There are always jobs in this area. Times may be tough in Pittsburgh but there is work here. So people come here, and people before them came, and they cheer for their teams. When the local teams are bad and tickets are easy to come by they go to the stadium. We have enough people that live in this area that cheer for the Penguins, the Cowboys, the Cubs, the Giants, and the Phillies that we don’t need the team to sell them group tickets and bus them down.

It is a sore subject for people in this area. We love our teams, and all we hear from the media and the sports world is how D.C. isn’t a sports town. How we aren’t real fans here. We only show up for winners except the Redskins. And all of this is true. But there are those of use that are diehards for even the lowly Nationals. We live and breathe baseball. We live and die with every pitch. We watch the team blow save after save and fall asleep with despair to rise the next day with hope that we can get them that day. Stan Kasten doesn’t understand this, and if he does he doesn’t care. Our supermarkets sell Yankee ice cream and Phillies peanuts. They are the teams that are popular right now, and there are those in this area that take any lose connection they have to a winning team to cheer for them.

D.C. residents that venture out on a game day will see people at the store in the Stealers jerseys and people with a Dallas star on their back windshield. We see Virginia and Maryland license plates surrounded by Red Sox Nation or Yankees license plate holders. These little things in our daily lives remind us that we are not alone here. There is an insurgence of fans of other teams that live among us. The team president of one of our own sports teams shouldn’t remind us of this. He shouldn’t go on the radio in Philadelphia and invite their fans to our opening day. He should have restricted group sales to a certain section of the ballpark like college teams do. Nationals Park should have never been allowed to be Citizens Bank south. Maybe Phillies fans in Toronto or Milwaukee wouldn’t have been appreciated, but it wouldn’t have been a slap in the face that it is in this area.