Jusssst a bit outside: the Washington Nationals preview

Duty calls to preview the MLB season, 30 things somewhat about each of the 30 teams, even the sucky ones. At bat: the Washington Nationals.

1. How soon can he get here? Pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg is starting the season in Double-A ball, but everyone realizes it's to forestall his arbitration clock. The Nationals fanbase (it exists in theory) is basically ignoring the games to wait for updates on his minor-league starts.
   
   
2. The same goes for ... Perhaps slugging prospect Bryce Harper's draft stock will fall just before the June first-year player draft. Since with Washington is drafting No. 1 overall after posting a 59-103 record, it's already easy enough to picture Harper crushing home runs in the U.S. capital.
   
   
3. Over/under on wins: 70.5.
   
   
4. Gut feeling says? Over.
   
   
5. Zim City: Third baseman extraordinaire Ryan Zimmerman (.292-.364-.525 last season, 110 runs scored, won a Gold Glove) is among the best players most people have never heard of.
   
   
6. Useless prediction: Chien-Ming Wang wins NL Comeback Player of the Year in 2011. He was credited with 19 wins one season with the Yankees, people! Ignore that his mechanics are not what they were and the infield defence behind him is sketchy.
   
   
7. Are they really ever going to be profitable? Starting with its first season after relocation, the franchise has been eighth, 11th, 14th, 13th and 13th in attendance in a 16-team league.
   
   
8. Five years is enough: There should be no more rage over what happened to the Montreal Expos. C'est la vie! Enjoy the Capitals losing in the second round, Washington.
   
   
9. Young arms! More than half the Nats' innings (727 1/3 of 1,424 1/3) last season were hurled by pitchers age 25 or younger, including the de facto No. 1 starter, left-hander John Lannan, righty Jordan Zimmerman (who's returning from Tommy John surgery) and left-hander Ross Detwiler (who is supposed to be good).
   
   The infamously awful 2003 Detroit Tigers also had young pitchers throw more than half their innings, and made the World Series three years later. It is surely a coincidence.
   
   
10. Movin' up in the world: They jumped two spots to 28th in FanGraphs' organizational rankings. Remember, there are only 30 teams.
    
    
11. They're not completely useless: Major League Soccer bloggers use the Nats as their bad example.
    
    
12. Their park plays neutral, but you would never know: Their 5.00 staff ERA was dead last in the league in 2009.
    
    
13. Having his bat also means having his glove: The Nats were second in the NL in bases on balls, which seems odd for a 103-loss team. Then you recall it's the National League and Adam Dunn has to play a defensive position.
    
    
14. Randomness in relief: After burning through 22 relief pitchers last season and having a 5-plus bullpen ERA, they're bound to be better in that area, almost by accident.
    
    
15. Just dumb: Letting outfielder Elijah Dukes go for nothing was like "firing the dishwasher (before) the end of his shift," according to Capitol Punishment. Perhaps Dukes had to go, but there's no one to play right field, which is kind of a key offensive position.
    
    
16. Only awkward if we let it be awkward: It's kind of fitting Pudge Rodriguez is continuing his career in Washington, since his growing obsolescence rivals the republic itself for which he squats (not stands; he's a catcher).
    
    Rodriguez, 38, might play long enough to collect the 289 hits he needs to become the first catcher in the 3,000-hit club (it might take him 3-4 teams). When/if it happens, do not dwell on how everyone expected his name to be in the Mitchell Report and then it wasn't, and how he just happened to play for a team run by the then-U.S. President.
    
    
17. Future Hall of Very Gooder: It's way early in the game to predict this, but Zimmerman has comparables such as Ken Keltner, Harlond Clift, Ron Santo and Gary Sheffield, all awesome players who will probably never get in the Hall of Fame. A trade to a big-market team can't come soon enough, Zimm.
    
    
18. Just saying: Nats320 notes 20 years before Strasburg, another D.C.-area team took a can't-miss right-hander No. 1 overall. He would be Ben McDonald, who was out of baseball by age 30, having posted an average 3.91 ERA with just 78 wins.
    
    Kidding aside, Strasburg will be the real deal.
    
    
19. Cool century-old comparisons! Allen Abel pointed out that when the "great Walter Johnson was 21 years old" (same as Strasburg) "back in 1909, he won 13 games and lost 25 for a Washington team that lost 110."
    
    Our seamheadedness will not allow us to let Abel get away without pointing out the Big Train, 25 losses and all, actually had an above league-average ERA in aught-nine.
    
    Also, contrary to Abel's contention Washington "hasn't hosted a World Series -- it hasn't even come close -- since 1933," the 1945 Senators finished 1½ games behind the pennant-winning Tigers, which is pretty close to hosting a World Series.
    
    Granted, citing such evidence shows Gen Xers and millenials know nothing about history as it's selectively recalled by the entrenched older generation.
    
    
20. Since Willie Harris is on Washington, it's a good time to ask: Is it acceptable to say "super-ute" as a short form of "super utility player?"
    
    
21. Fun bet: Will Dunn outhomer the entire Nationals starting outfield, which might include Nyjer Morgan (.388 slugging last season) and Willie Harris (.393)?
    
    
22. Question: What is the #BidenThroughoutHistory version of "they f---in' suck?" In that case, do you take the F-word out?
    
    
23. Two words why Harper won't catch in the majors (if he signs with Washington): Derek Norris. He's a 21-year-old catching prospect who can hit.
    
    
24. Is not fair: Leftfielder Josh Willingham will potentially reach free agency just when the market really bottoms out in two years -- also right before the players' and owners' collective agreement expires.
    
    
25. Prospect porn: Closer Drew Storen and shortstop Danny Espinosa. Get to know these names.
    
    
26. Hate by association: It's hard to like second baseman Adam Kennedy since he's automatically associated with his former double-play partner, David Eckstein, who was plenty easy to resent even before he cost the Jays' Aaron Hill his 2008 season.
    
    
27. One of those tricks of memory: Right-hander Livan Hernandez, who eats innings and no longer looks like he'll eat about anything else after taking up racquetball, is only 35 years old. It feels like he should be at least 40. He earned a ring with the 1997 Marlins, who had a who's-who of early '90s household names such as Darren Daulton, Devon White, Bobby Bonilla and Jim Eisenreich.
    
    
28. Radio daze: The Nats' top farm club, the Syracuse Chiefs has its games broadcast on SportsRadio 620, the very same station that Bath, Ontario's own Tyler King made his AHL play-by-play debut on two months ago.
    
    If they're smart down there, Tyler will get to make his professional baseball broadcasting there this summer ... and we'll ignore the irony of a Canadian working for the Chiefs, who used to be affiliated with one Canadian MLB team and are now paired with the Nationals, who used to be a Canadian MLB team.
    
    
29. PECOTA says: 74-88, fifth NL East, 680 runs scored, 752 runs allowed.
    
    
30. In English, please: Not as bad as they used to be.
    

(All over-unders on wins from 5Dimes.)

Zen Dayley: Jeffrey Loria's favourite film of 2008? Slumdog Millionaire, just for the title

A few people have succeeded where others -- guilty as charged! -- failed when it comes to separating the emotional from the rational with the Yankees' holiday spending spree.

A gut feeling after the Mark Teixeira signing last week was the Yankees are not the problem in baseball. They're not even a problem. The simplest explanation is usually the best. One franchise just spent $423.5 million on contracts for a left-handed pitcher with a weight problem, an oft-injured right-handed starter and a first baseman whose stats makes seamheads salivate but doesn't have great name recognition. You try passing up the chance to do a big Bollywood dance number across Hank Steinbrenner's face. His team has the four highest-paid players in the sport's history, at least until the Dodgers get around to signing Manny Ramirez.

Fortunately, others are made of stronger stuff. Dan Szymborski wrote a provocative piece on the day of at Baseball Think Factory saying what the Yankees are doing is good for baseball. His point, along with that of a chap named Eno Sarris, is that what's far worse for baseball are the owners who take their revenue-sharing money and don't spend it on developing players or signing them. This includes owners such as Kevin McClatchy with the pointless Pittsburgh Pirates and, guess who, Jeffrey Loria with the Florida Marlins.

You could call those owners slumdog millionaires. It's really a more apt analogy for the Tampa Bay Rays -- like the main character in the movie of the same name, no one can believe a team just up from the gutter could have the answers to so many questions (but they do; Jonah Keri, in fact, is writing a book about the Rays, and let's just say as an Expos fan, he's uniquely deserving).

One truth that has been driven home is how people seem blind to the fact baseball is flush financially. It was a $1-billion industry in 1993 when the Blue Jays were baseball royalty. It is north of $6 billion now, although you won't see that truth reflected in a column originating out of the centre of universe any time soon. The lone Canadian team has not tapped that root (and when we getting the MLB Network in Canada, by the way?).

Baseball has its McMansion teams, who would rather have the big shiny things than worry about the greater good. The perception that the deck is stacked in this sport is furthered when you have teams that, God bless them, just don't feel like using their cut of revenue sharing to sign high-dollar talent. As Szymborski put it:

"Yes, the Yankees got a huge, undeserved payday from the locals for their stadium, like most teams in baseball did, but it's a mitigating factor that they're actually plowing those funds back into the on-field product. And the team never threatened to not compete until they got their sweet check. Perhaps a small difference, but I see it as a good bit more ethical than Kevin McClatchy demanding taxpayer moneys to help the Pirates compete and then turn around and use all the money to fund his failing media empire."

Sarris spells out in the case of the man who drove the final nails into the Expos' coffin:

"Jeffery Loria bought the Marlins for $143 million after selling the Expos to (MLB) for $120 million. After receiving between $20 and $30 million a year in revenue sharing and having the lowest payroll in baseball, the Marlins are now valued at $244 million. That’s a tidy profit for a man that is claiming that he can’t make money in South Florida without a new stadium. In fact, those revenue-sharing amounts were often larger than the Marlins’ payrolls.

"... the Marlins use a pump-and-dump system to give youngsters playing time, pump up their value, and trade them away for more youngsters in the hope that at some point all their cheap youngsters peak together and win them another championship. While this has worked for the Marlins, the fact that they are hoarding their revenue-sharing money, costs veteran players real money, narrows the field for prospective free agents, and adds to the perception of baseball as being a league of haves and have-nots. No, it’s not the Yankees hurting baseball, it’s the Marlins and Jeffrey Loria."

Fair enough. Saying fair enough, but trying following a team such as the Jays who are in a division with the Yankees, not the New York Mets, the Diet Coke of evil empires, is only the emotion talking. Having the promise of 162 games from spread out from spring until fall, well, can be thin cruel by times. One wonders how well baseball is off in the long run if you have core fans who, like myself, have severed any connection between their rooting interest and the post-season. Since baseball is a sport that's more for hardcores than for casual fans (they have the NFL) and the regular season is the big moneymaker, it will probably be fine. So it goes.

This that and the other

• Taken together, it's too funny that the Jays picked up catcher Michael Barrett (an OK acquisition), who was a backup in San Diego for the past season and a half at the same time the Red Sox were honing on the Padres' former starting catcher, Paul Bard. Bard's a good catcher, he
  
  One would hope that if the Red Sox jettison Jason Varitek, it leads to Canadian George Kottaras.becoming their backup catcher. Someone The Red Sox need someone to catch the bad man with the knuckleball, Tim Wakefield. Kottaras caught Charlie Zink's knucklers in Pawtucket all last season.
• Mike Maroth is a ho-hum signing. A left-hander with a high home run rate and a low strikeout rate. His biggest comparable is Mark Hendrickson. Remember him?
  
• Erik Bedard might be ready for the start of the season.
  
• Signing Derek Lowe would make the Mets the team to beat in the NL East.
• The Orioles really -- really? -- are interested in righty-swinging (not righty-hitting) Richie Sexson, last seen putting up a .221/.321/.382 batting line for two teams last season.
• Once upon a time, the Jays had their Drive of '85. The National League West next season will have the Drive For 85, since that's probably how many wins it will take to finish first. Jeepers.
  

Related:
The Marlins, not the Yankees, are killing baseball (Eno Sarris, At The Dish; via ShysterBall)