Division Rivals: Nationals in 2013

Edgy MD · January 18, 2013

Denard Span living down his temptation to join the Sandy Hook Truthers.

Edgy MD · April 1, 2013

Bryce Harper with two homers in his first two 2013 at-bats.

April 1, 2013

Nats pull Stras after 80 pitches.

Edgy MD · April 1, 2013

Washington hangs on at home to win 2-0 on seven shutout innings from Strassie and two kabooms from Harpoon. Turning point of the game:

Trailing by two runs in the seventh, Miami threatened after Stanton's double and Polanco's infield single. With runners on the corners, Rob Brantly lined out to Harper in short left.

Stanton tagged and took a few steps towards the plate before slamming on the brakes as Harper made a strong throw to the plate. Polanco, meanwhile, got caught in a rundown between first and second. Stanton raced home, but was thrown out at the plate on a 7-2-3-4-2 double play.

Ouch. No triple happ.

Frayed Knot · April 24, 2013

Say hello to your now sub-.500 (10-11) Nats.
StL just completed the sweep and that's now 4 losses in a row and 9 of their last 12
Scored just 2 runs today and, during these 12 games, they've scored two or fewer eight times.

I still think this team is going to be more than OK, but what looked to be a team without a weakness is starting to show some cracks:
- 3 1st inning runs vs Strasburg today and, while he hasn't pitched as bad as his record says, 1-4 can't be described as good
- 5th starter (although 1st in salary) Dan Haren has been either mediocre or just plain lousy in his outings
- and Gio Gonzalez is looking a bit more like the guy with occasional control/pitch-count problems that he was in Oakland (and last October) than the near-CY hurler he was for almost all of 2012
- bullpen's been shaky other than Soriano
- defense, particularly SS & 3B, isn't what they hoped
- LaRoche isn't hitting and was sat today after K-ing four times last night and leaving a small army of runners stranded
- half their catching tandem (Ramos) is hurt again

April 24, 2013

LaRoche isn't hitting

Mets not included.

Frayed Knot · April 24, 2013

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote:

LaRoche isn't hitting

Mets not included.

Eh, he was 2-fer-9 in that series.
Unfortunate for us that one of those two was a 3R HR (one of only 4 XBHs for him this season)

Nats not getting a rest anytime in the near future as they have back-to-back four-game series vs Reds (home) then at Braves

Edgy MD · May 15, 2013

Bryce Harper runs like a maniac into the Dodger stadium wall. Comes away bleeding and disoriented.

Nats sit him --- attributing his absence to nausea --- but all involved insist he's got no concussion. Expected to sit today also.

Frayed Knot · May 15, 2013

That whole thing was weird.
Harper had already given up on actually catching the ball but kept running as if the idea that a wall was near never occurred to him.
That nausea is often one of the side effects of a concussion, this insistence that he doesn't have one seems premature at best.

Edgy MD · May 15, 2013

I wouldn't even call it a side effect, but an effect. Another effect (symptom) is disorientation.

Frayed Knot · May 15, 2013

How would one even know if a 20 year old millionaire ballplayer became disoriented?
Other than the possible concussion and the 11 stitches needed to close the wound on his chin, I think the worst injury Harper sustained on that play was that he sprained his haircut.

May 15, 2013

Have you seen the video? It's a pretty nasty hit for an extraneous one.

Edgy MD · May 15, 2013

Yeah, he seemed to have little idea where either the ball or the wall was. He was trying to recover from his bad break and bam, there it was.

Frayed Knot · May 15, 2013

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote:
Have you seen the video? It's a pretty nasty hit for an extraneous one.

Oh it was nasty all right. But it was just kind of weird in that he had ceased going for the ball by that point and somehow didn't see THE GIANT WALL COMPLETELY COVERED WITH NEON LIGHTS THAT WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM.
Appears not to know much about the purpose of that whole warning track thingie either.

Edgy MD · May 15, 2013

I think he was looking over his left shoulder, when he realized the break of the ball had taken it over his right. He tried to recover by turning around and BAM, turned out the wall was right in front of him at that moment.

Frayed Knot · May 16, 2013

Washington Post columnist Tom Boswell talks about Harper today and his penchant for running into walls and brings up Pete Reiser.

In 1941, Reiser hit 70 XBHs, led the league in runs scored, doubles, triples, BA, SLG, OPS, OPS+, TB, and just for good measure, HBP while finishing 2nd in MVP (to teammate Dolph Camilli).
He was 22 years old.

Then came the injuries, many of them as a result of running into walls. Now you could also write off the fact that he never nearly matched that '41 season or again led the league in anything (except for SB twice including one season where he sole home seven times) on later losing three seasons to WWII or on that one season being a fluke. But there was also the problem where--between minor league ball, army ball, and major league ball--he was carried off the field 11 times, nine of them not regaining consciousness until he was in the clubhouse or a hospital.

He had just four full seasons in the majors, his last one at age 28. He was finished even as a part-timer by 33 and was dead by age 62.

Edgy MD · May 16, 2013

And the wallz wasn't spongey back then.

I've certain been thinking about Reiser the last few days. I've become convinced that he was an all-time great --- and the Dodgers take maybe a notch or two from the Yankee belt --- if he could've stopped with the suicide missions. No way to avoid running into World War II, of course, but he injured himself playing Army ball too. (I imagine he was part of the reason Ted Williams was so miserly about playing service ball.)

Edgy MD · May 31, 2013

Strasberg pulled after two innings tonight with an undisclosed injury.

July 22, 2013

Hitting coach Rick Eckstein whacked; Rick Schu promoted from minors to take his place. IIRC, Schu was the guy who followed Schmidt as the Phillies next 3Bman.

G-Fafif · July 22, 2013

From the Post down there:

Manager Davey Johnson had been a staunch supporter of Eckstein, who had been the Nationals coach since 2009. �If you want to fire the hitting coach, you might as well fire me right with him,� Johnson said in mind-June. Even Saturday night, Johnson called Eckstein �the best hitting instructor� he had ever worked with.

Davey still there? And what was wrong with Bill Robinson?

July 22, 2013

Hitting coach Rick Eckstein whacked; Rick Schu promoted from minors to take his place. IIRC, Schu was the guy who followed Schmidt as the Phillies next 3Bman.

From the Post down there:

Manager Davey Johnson had been a staunch supporter of Eckstein, who had been the Nationals coach since 2009. �If you want to fire the hitting coach, you might as well fire me right with him,� Johnson said in mind-June. Even Saturday night, Johnson called Eckstein �the best hitting instructor� he had ever worked with.

Davey still there? And what was wrong with Bill Robinson?

Now Davey is waiting for the other Schu to drop.

Frayed Knot · July 24, 2013

Nats get held to 2 runs or fewer for the 9th time in the last 13 games

This one was especially tough as Strasburg allowed only a lead-off 2nd inning HR to Pedro Alvarez; in all he went 8 innings on only 2 hits.
The Pirates then tacked on 3 in the top of the 9th for a four-run lead and then the Nats got their only two runs on a Jayson Werth HR (Werth HRs seem to account for half their runs lately) but the bad relief pitching in the top half made that too little/too late.
That the game ended on a bad call (phantom tag) GiDP was just icing on the cake.

Frayed Knot · July 25, 2013

The Nats finally figured out how to score this afternoon ... have the opposing pitcher (AJ Burnett) hit the first batter of the game and then have the Pittsburgh defense make THREE 1st inning errors.
4-1 Nats, top of the fifth

Frayed Knot · July 25, 2013

Wow! I stopped paying attention to the Nats game when they built a 7-3 lead and took that into the 9th.
But then closer Soriano and relief help after him blew the entire lead meaning that you can add shaky bullpen to the increasingly large list of problems they've been having.
Harper then won the game with a 2R walk-off HR in the bottom of the inning. It was his first HR in like three weeks and seemingly the Nationals first win in almost as long, but, streak breaker or not, this still couldn't have been a comforting afternoon for them.

Frayed Knot · August 17, 2013

You could smell this one coming, especially seeing as how Harper was hit twice the other day and that the Nats have lost like a thousand in a row to the Braves ... Strasburg threw twice at Andrelton Simmons in the 2nd inning of tonight's game and was promptly ejected. Then Davey was ejected.

Must have taken a while to sort it all out because they're two hours in and still only in the 4th inning. 4-2 Nats at the moment.