Baseball Historians

As part of their ongoing series, Kevin Czerwinski at Minor League Baseball recently took a look at the Nationals Minor League system.  The preseason predictions of minor league players of the year (Kory Casto and Collin Balester) both had tough seasons and Justin Maxwell and John Lannen rose above the fold to eventually claim the [...]

Well, 2007 is almost in the books and while I didn’t quite get the hang of this blogging thing, I’ll just say, like Nationals fans that have some hope, wait until next year.  This was  team that many thought would give the 2003 Tigers a run for their money but at the end of the [...]

Yes folks, the Nationals started the second half of the season with a series loss to the Marlins.  No major surprise except for maybe how the one win went.  The Marlins had their sort of ace Dontrelle Willis on the mound and the Nationals ended up with 14 runs by games end.  Then of course [...]

Even after losing three straight to the Tigers (in a bad way), the Nationals sit just nine games back of the first place Mets.  Are the Nationals all of a sudden contendors?  It’s hard to tell because the top teams in the NL East are playing so bad, it’s hard to say how long it’s [...]

My apologies for the lack of writing.  Although it’s not that I didn’t want to, we were just having some network problems.  Anyway, things are fixed and it’s just in time because the Nationals had a number of firsts in their series against the Marlins this weekend.  It was their first series win, their first [...]

You have to love baseball.  A few more hits and this very could have been a Nationals sweep.  Instead, it’s a series loss and it it weren’t for a three run homer in the first inning of Friday’s game by Austin Kearns, this could have definitely been three straight losses.
Matt Chico had a very nice start [...]

I guess we should get used to this when your team is the worst in baseball.  For the fifth time this season, the Nationals have lost a series.  They’ve split some, but they have yet to win one.  And this week was no exception with a series loss to the all of a sudden hot [...]

Well, we knew the pitching wasn’t going to be good and so far it hasn’t.  This weekend, the Nationals needed six runs and fourteen inning just to take one game in their series against the Marlins.  The other two games were downright ugly and the end result is a major league tying worst six wins.
Friday’s [...]

It was the battle for last place and the Nationals won one and lost one against the surprisingly bad Phillies.  I mean, I know the Nationals were supposed to be bad but the Phillies just haven’t gotten it done much this year.
In the game yesterday, the Nationals blew a three run lead only to win [...]

It didn’t take the Nationals very long, but they lost their tenth game last night.  Jerome Williams was hit hard and he dropped to 0-3 on the season.  He gave up four runs on seven hits and two walks with four strikeouts in five innings of work.  Felipe Lopez had two hits and an RBI [...]

The Mets rolled through everyone last year, at least in the regular season, so to take a game against them with such a bad team is a minor accomplishment.  And misery loves company as the Royals now sit with the Nationals with a MLB worst 3-9 record.  Yeah, I’m a half glass full kind of [...]

It’s getting ugly early for Nationals fans and once again the team lost another series, this time at the hands of the Braves.  Things kicked off on Tuesday when the Nationals lost their fifth straight game in an 8-0 shutout.  Matt Chico had a rough start and Ray King was hit for four runs in [...]

Six runs in four games isn’t going to cut it, and that’s all that the Nationals got in their four game series this weekend.  It’s almost not worth running down each of the four games because from the Nationals’ perspective, nothing happened.  The closest they came to winning was on Thursday when they actually scored three [...]

This was a pretty gutsy game by the Nationals.  They were down 5-0 and then 6-1 and the clawed back into it. With Jorge Julio on the mound, the Nationals then scored three runs to win their first game of the season.  Dmitri Young had the game winner and Kory Castro tied the game up.  [...]

If you’re not sure who those five guys are that make up the Nationals rotation, Jeff Sackman breaks them down for us over at the Hardball Times.

Since I’m a glass half full kind of guy, I looked at the box score and saw the Nationals drew six walks.  That’s some nice patience at the plate, huh.  It even meant they scored one more run then they did yesterday.
Okay, I’m done.  Three runs on five hits isn’t going to cut it and [...]

I think we should get used to this and John Patterson is considered out ace.  Anyway, the Marlins lit him up for six runs in less then four innings as he was chased out of the game.  The pen didn’t fare much better and the end result was a 9-2 loss.
On offense, Ryan Zimmerman and [...]

Baseball Prospectus profiled Austin Kearns today.  Man, this guy has a pedigree.  Seventh overall pick and a top prospect for the Reds in the early part of the decade, Kearns then caught the injury bug and never got back on track.  He’d show flashes like he did in the first half of last year but [...]

Not a lot of people are expecting much out of the Nationals this year, but what about their minor league system?  Stan Kasten has been preaching about a bottom-up approach but what’s the state of the minor league system right now?  These questions are answered in the MiLB.com Nationals minor league preview.  You get a [...]

Richard Barbieri at the Hardball Times previewed the Nationals today.  In a format where five questions are asked, the author has some fun with the column and has it as if he interviewed the McLaughlin Group.  Good stuff and he touches on the Nationals lineup to which pitchers might find RFK to their liking.  He [...]

Nationals Rule Five pickup, Lavale Speigner, was profiled earlier this week at Beyond the Boxscore.  You get a look at his full minor league career as well as some analysis.  Because of his solid spring, he should make the team and with the Nationals being the odds on favorite for a last place finish, this [...]

This is slanted more towards the minor league players in camp, but MiLB.com reviewed what’s been going on this spring in the Nationals camp.  Their “burning question” is what player development guru Mike Rizzo will bring to the Nationals and there’s also a Q&A with Kory Casto.  It’s a solid read if you’re into the [...]

We all knew the Nationals rotation was pretty wide open but even with a little more then a week left in the spring, the Nationals rotation isn’t set. In an interesting column at Baseball America, Todd Jacobson evaluates all of the players in the mix for starting jobs.  There’s even some good stuff on John [...]

Matt Chico had another nice outing today, throwing four shutout innings.  He gave up two hits, two walks and he struck out two in the win.  Saul Rivera threw two shutout innings while Chad Cordero got into trouble in the eighth but pitched out of it.
There were no real hitting stars in the game.  Robert [...]

Yeah, it was a split squad game but the Nationals had a lot of the regulars going against the Tigers yesterday.  Austin Kearns had the lone hit in the 2-0 loss in what was a pretty pathetic offensive display.  The pitchers did a bit better though.  Matt Chico threw four shutout frames and while Tim [...]

The Nationals continued their unimpressive spring campaign with a ten inning win over the Mets.  The win puts them at 3-7 on the year.  Not that great, but these early games don’t mean squat so as long as the new managers are getting what they want out of it, it’s all good.
The Nationals were down [...]

The Nationals were recently previewed over at Baseball Prospectus.  It touches on the Nick Johnson injury, the patchwork starting rotation, the bullpen and more.  Of course the premise of the previews at BP are how the team can win the world series and the article concludes with some, well, unrealistic ways that can happen for [...]

The good news is, the Nationals scored seven runs.  The bad news is, they gave up thirteen in their spring opener today.  Ryan Zimmerman led the way with the bat.  He went two for three with a homerun, three RBIs and two runs.  D’Angelo Jimenez also had a nice game with two hits and two runs.
The [...]

Chad Cordero prevailed in his arbitration case with the Washington Nationals.  He make $4.15 million versus the $3.65 million that the Nationals were offering up.  That works out to be about a three and a half million dollar raise for Cordero.  Not too shabby.
Of course Cordero was off a bit in 2006 at least compared [...]

The Nationals added a bit more veteran insurance when they signed second baseman Ronnie Belliard to a minor league deal.  Out of all of the minor league deals the Nationals have done recently (Tony Batista and Dmitri Young), this one is probably the best.  For some reason, Belliard is out of favor despite starting for [...]