The Nats dumped the bloated corpse of Eddie Guardado today, shoving him off Cocoa Beach before a marine mammal emergency could be declared. Fair enough. Teams dive in the dumpster, and sometimes they come up with a mouth foll of bananas with greasy, black peels. Minor league deals = no harm. Might as well see what the dude's got. But this one struck me as kinda funny. For one, when the team

I was trying to get this to post as a comment to the last post, but it's not working, so it goes here. With respect to yesterday's post and the comment there... i didn't say he was going to be a bum, or that control was going to be a problem. i even said that he has quite good control. i just was pointing out that while everyone's buzzing about the quality of his stuff, you need to look at

Whatever the hell his name was. Now that we're a day or three removed from it, what'd you think? Stuff's there. Nobody's going to question that. But what about his command? Seemed like he was hitting his spots with the breaking ball, when he threw it. But the fastball? Didn't it seem like he was missing the glove? Now you can afford to do that when you're throwing a billion miles per hour;

Remember when I said Spring Training sucks? Well, tomorrow's not one of those days, at least for the first 45 minutes of the game or so. STRASBURG!!!!! And unlike my faux interest in Matty Chico, this one's genuine. There'll probably be more people watching tomorrow's Nats spring training game than watch a typical late-August Nats game. STRASBURG!!!! I've only see The Burg pitch once,

The greatest left-hander in franchise history made his spring debut today, and all I can say is "WuhuhuhuhuhOW!" He's back, baby! Chico, who hasn't pitched in the majors since forever ago told reporters/bloggers/blogging-reporters that he was nervous. He pitched two scoreless innings today, which is about 14 more scoreless innings than every other Nats pitcher combined. The dude's a stud, and

... I'm a jerk. And as a jerk, I do jerky things. You know what's one of the jerkiest things I do? I kinda sorta root for Drew Storen to fail. No, I don't want the kid to die, have his arm fall off, or to never make the majors. I just don't want him to blossom into an elite reliever. Were I truly vindictive, I'd be hoping for the Ryan Wagner career path, but I'd be ok with, say, Steve

Would a good franchise make a roster decision primarily based upon the fact that one of the players, whose contract is about to expire, is making a bazillion dollars?

Keep in mind that they have about as much pertinence and importance as any random game from July does. (Hey, that Bacsik guys looks like a stud! That SS hit a homer too!) Looking for some more projections? Looking for more analysis (with an emphasis on 'anal') from me? Then go here and purchase this fine product and/or service. I've also written a few other things, which you won't have to

I suppose I’m coming around to Chris’s way of thinking, because I’m done with spring training before it’s really even started. Maybe it’s the team, maybe it’s the coverage, or maybe it’s an overriding desire to see some baseball that actually matters – I don’t know. I do know that it doesn’t much interest me which two out of four scrubs were able to muster dribblers against Sir Strasburg during

Nothing new yet... but interesting comments in last night's thread. I haven't gone through the whole thread here, but this comment struck me as being on the money. Though it's in reference to Twitter, I think it applies to all forms of coverage, in line with what I was hinting at yesterday: I'm pretty sure this guy has a point. Twitter feeds are the journalistic equivalent to statstitical

I've had a few thoughts about the coverage of the Nats, but haven't really been able to rattle 'em around in my head long enough to hammer 'em into something coherent. Here's my basic question though: is there too much coverage of the team. On one level, the answer's obviously not. But on the other hand... if you're tracking what's going on via twitter and the reporters' blogs, you're seeing

Have no fear, lady and gentlemen: even with this blog's extended hiatus, the StanSpeak Translator was well taken care of. We didn't leave that bad boy out in the yard to rust, have dogs pee on it, or to be buried under 14 feet of snow. Nosiree. It's as good as ever. (Note: that does not mean it's actually good). As always, when he speaks, we stand ready to translate. So with his latest

God bless the Nats PR staff, but not only have they polished that turd, they're putting it on a nice roll, served with a delicious side of peppers and onions. Maybe, just maybe John Lannan is the best pitcher nobody has heard of... just look at the numbers against a pitcher everybody has heard of. ALCS MVP CC Sabathia vs. John Lannan Number of games started allowing three runs or less:Sabathia:

EDIT: Huh. For some reason, I read "Brown" as "Bowden." Um .... disregard?Chico Harlan kicked off Sayonara Week with a splendid piece on John Lannan's rather idiosyncratic path to big league success. And yes, I realize that Harlan's story was published on Friday, which is roughly equivalent to the Precambrian Era in blog terms, seeing as it's now Monday night. However, it still beats the

U-S-A!  U-S-A!  U-S-A!

In case you missed it, check out Fra Paolo's look at Wang and the guys he's trying to replace.  Though he doesn't update too often (more than me, though!), this is probably the best stats-focused Nats blog out there.  He understands the material and figures out questions and the occasional answer.  It's not just a regurgitation of Fangraphs or whatever David Cameron has left under his fingernails

Via Nats Journal: Rizzo, on the importance of signing Adam Dunn to a long-term deal: "It's important for me because he's one of my favorite players on the team. I love the guy. There aren't many 40-home run, 100-RBI guys running around out there. He fits in with this club. He's a very unique leader, I call him. He leads in kind of a quirky way, but leads nonetheless. He's always open to helping

In a blog -- which is a term short for web log --  post entitled "Washington Nationals: Brian Bruney Talks Arbitration On Sirius/XM," on the website entitled "Federal Baseball" which is part of the SB Nation network of team-specific blogs, but the one that focuses on the Washington Nationals baseball club, which is a member of the National League, and is owned by Theodore Lerner, an old man who

In order: minors, duh; who cares cause we've got pudge; nope; nope; who cares?; who cares?; worse; perhaps; as he was last year; boringly. See.  Spring Training sucks.

I just gotta link to this.  I assume it's parody. Yes, Wily Taveras is most certainly a useful player, and is no way the kind of player that that bum Jim Bowden would've signed.