Petco Park...

Where offense goes to die. I won't blame the offensive swoon entirely on the Padres home tomb, but as a pull-hitting fly-ball team, the Nationals are likely to struggle here. The Cardinals pitching staff is nothing to sneeze at either.

Pitching, of course, has been terrific during the losing streak. I think that is what bugs me most about the Nationals. Other than sucking, they have really lacked an identity. They do not suck consistently either. Some weeks, they knock the cover off the ball and pound opponents into scoring 8 runs to win. Other weeks, the offense hibernates while guys like Martin, Mock, and Livan Hernandez pitch like All-Stars.

Clearly, the Nyjer Morgan injury is killing the offense, where leadoff hitters are posting a .105/.227/.227 over the last five games. Willie Harris is out of sync, and Justin Maxwell should be hitting 9th, not 1st.

And for the record, Elijah Dukes stolen base success is currently at 16%. Next worst in baseball, minimum 10 attempts, is KC's David DeJesus at 36%. There is a reason these teams are vying for the #1 pick again: inability to recognize shortcomings. Seriously, stop giving Dukes the green light. He is terrible at stealing bases. For comparison, he has been caught as many times as Michael Bourn... only Bourn has stolen 47 more bases!

But hey, at least the Nats snapped that skid for 1-game losing streaks in Chicago.

Oops

Which of these three pitches did Albert Pujols hit halfway to Illinois?

I don't mind that Bergmann went after Pujols... the Dodgers tried to pitch around him last week, and that resulted in a stolen base, advancing to 3rd on an errant throw, and then scoring on a sac fly to end the game. Bergmann tried to beat Pujols with his best pitch, and he knows that ball has to be located a foot in ANY other direction. Good decision, terrible execution.

One could argue that Bergmann, a fly ball pitcher, was a bad decision against Pujols, Holliday, and Ludwick. That is where the discussion of this game should end.

Nyjer Down

It is very difficult to quantify how Nyjer Morgan changed the Washington Nationals this season. OBP and UZR only prove that he has been better than the guys butchering those jobs before. His hustle and leadership has helped the younger guys, as well as taking the burden off Zimmerman and Dunn, who are not as vocal. Pitchers slept better each night, as rocket shots to the gap disappeared into his glove. While Albert Pujols may roll to the MVP, Nyjer Morgan is proof that it take 25 players to win.

Let's hope he heals in time for hockey season.

Ron Villone, Lefty Specialist?

Nats fans were treated to an extra special bullpen implosion last night, featuring a cameo from Nati-pos legend Livan Hernandez. Personally, I like the move for the remainder of the season. Livan is clearly a hittable, AAAA caliber pitcher at this point of his career, but he has destroyed the Nats this season. He has the unique ability to weather a shelling when his pitches aren't doing what they are supposed to and stay in a game 6+ innings. This move should save the kids' (Lannan, Stammen, Balester, Mock, and Martin) down the stretch. Plus, I have so many good fat jokes that have gone waste without Dmitri Young to kick around... Ronnie Belly-ard should not have to feel the wrath every day.

The bullpen, on the other hand... yikes. OK, they were not spotted a lead. Jay Bergmann came in and did his job, allowing 2 H, 1 R, against the Cubs top of the order. Though had he not put Koyie Hill on base, he may have been able to avoid the 3-4 guys.

To start the the next inning, Riggleman made the classic mistake of "playing to their weakness" instead of "playing to his strength." Fukudome does not hit lefty pitching AT ALL. Villone, however, cannot retire lefty hitting AT ALL. Riggleman chose his weakness and was granted with a rally starting single.

There is no use piling on Jorge Sosa. This is the type of pitcher he is, a tweener who never developed the repertoire to become a starter, but lacks the consistency to be trusted in relief. And honestly, he has been fine when entrusted with a lead, but he has really struggled in non-save/hold situations. It is little early to kick him to the curb; he is 100x better than Logan Kensing. Get him a lead and see if he gets his head in the game.

The most frustrating part of the whole ordeal is Riggleman pulling Bergmann after he had slammed the door on Lee and Ramirez the inning before. The strength in that matchup would have been to challenge Fukudome with the better pitcher, rather than making an unnecessary personnel move to attempt to play to the opponents weakness. Instead, Villone lumbers out of the pen and six runs later the lead is insurmountable.

Villone, with his inability to get lefties out is like a man without a trade. The Nats keep setting him up for failure by sending him into get nickle-and-dimed to death. Bring him into a longer relief role, and he'll eventually get pounded by righties, too. There is no easy solution, and it isn't like he is serving up bombs. Two baserunners per inning is unacceptable at any level, and while it may not be showing up in his own stats, he is putting more pressure on the rest of the bullpen. Much like Livan Hernandez, he is probably best suited to eat low leverage innings and leave the LOOGY work to Sean Burnett.

Nationals Baseball

Please stop with the suicide part of the squeeze play and swing away.

Clarification

Jim Riggleman is not a bad person. Maybe he isn't a bad manager either. He may manage his families finances with the finesse of Ozzie Smith, but when it come to baseball, he has generally been a poor manager.

Then the last month happened. One of my biggest fears was that Acta would be fired and then the team would show enough life to get him strong consideration for the long term position.

On October 1, there will be many strong candidate who will be interested in this position, and Riggleman should not be at the front of the line, based on his previous track record as manager. Given the team recent success working in-house, he may be granted this advantage.

Honestly, he has exceeded the expectations I had for him, but the Nats had set the bar brutally low. Rizzo has made it easy for him, improving the defense and taking may of the tough pitching decisions off the table. The Nationals front office has to look long and hard and determine whether or not Jim Riggleman can really "manage" a contender.

Craig Stammen... Is He Part of the Future

Wow... took a week to get this posted. Work has been getting in the way of all this blogging and crap.

Craig Stammen finally got back on track last week against Atlanta. He only went 6 innings, but didn't get knocked around like he had in his previous starts. Some may think that he has regained the form he showed in his early July hot spell. However, start in Atlanta was marred with inconsistent location, and the Rockies game exhibited a steady decline in velocity from pitch 1 to 81. It should also be noted the consistency of the strike zone last night... in a season of lousy calls, the His last two starts, he has avoided the fly ball. Basically, Stammen doesn't have the velocity to beat anyone above the belt. However, if he continues to throw nothing but fastballs low and away, teams will adjust and hit the ball the other way. At some point, he needs that fourth pitch to keep hitters off balance the third time through the lineup.



In any event, with his innings getting up there and the bullpen relatively fresh, do not expect another performance as to what he showed in July.

His last good start in July shows the ball staying down and away with a consistent release point. In the Atlanta game, he appears to have gotten away with a few pitches up in the zone that had been spanked recently. The thing that bugged me most about Stammen's recent slump though was this:



I'm not exactly sure what shape that is, but clearly the flattening of his release point had a huge negative impact on his ability to keep the ball down in the zone. It continued from the first Milwaukee game into the Pittsburgh game... honestly, the Florida game was too short to get a good feel, but it looked like his release was significantly more erratic.



The conclusion is that Craig Stammen and Coach McCatty need to fine tune his mechanics so that he doesn't have that "inverted T" on his release chart. This reflects the fact that he locates his pitches better with a more "over the top" delivery. In the offseason, he will have a chance to polish his 2-seam fastball to make it more of a weapon driving the ball down in the zone.

Update: The second Milwaukee game yields better results with a tighter release point. Clearly the further he strays side-to-side, the more danger he finds.

Another False Lead...

Fortunately, the bullpen was not involved.

As you all have seen, Yahoo Sports ran with inside sources that the Nationals were to name Jerry Dipoto General Manager. I'm not linking the story for obvious reasons. This must be the same source that leaked the Acta story. Maybe Gordon Eads was fed the story had Strasburg not been signed and ran it anyway.

It's like Strasburg walked into the room, Jimmy Chitwood-style, and announced, "It's about time I started to play ball." Then he added, "If I play, GM stays. He goes, I go."

Rizzo Stays.

Oklahoma is OK!

You're on a long, cross-country drive with the kids. Boredom and fatigue are setting in, and the Kenny Rogers box set you purchased for the trip has already worn thin. Have no fear:

http://www.thelostogle.com/2007/08/14/the-jim-traber-drinking-game/

Not Really News, but Stephen Strasburg Has Signed

The staff here at The Bombs will never promise to break news, as bedtime often comes before even Nats Xtra ends, let alone deadlines for signing picks and firing managers.

In any event, Boras got his record-breaking deal, Strasburg gets to play baseball, the Nats front office receives a gold star from their peers for working out a deal, and The Bombs would have won on The Price is Right with their estimation of the final contract value.

I'm not sure this makes the next Blogger Day less or more intriguing.

Now you know the Nats are hoping to climb out of the cellar to avoid the Bryce Harper fiasco next year... who smells 20+?