MVN - Most Valuable Network

Pre-season thoughts

It’s done! The month long battle is over and Willie Harris strides over the corpse of Pete Orr’s major league career! Huzzah, Willie! Huzzah!

The 25 guys that will make up YOUR Washington Nationals have been decided on. Honestly if you took a guess on Feb 14th you would have probably nailed 21 out of 25, and the only mistakes would have been because of injury or the mysterious disappearing John Patterson. Poof! (that is not a comment on his toughness)

So now what? Now we get ready for Opening Day. Look foward to crazy predictions tomorrow, and a live blog on Sunday (if only to take advantage of the fact that all Nats bloggers will actually be at the game).

Some thoughts that have solidified for me over Spring.

Don’t you just love Manny Acta? He understands the “rules of the game” are sometimes horribly flawed. At the same time he doesn’t come across as a egotistical know-it all or an unfeeling robot computer. He can deal with everything Jim Bowden throws at him, all Felipe Lopez talk, takes everything with ease.

Don’t you just hate Paul LoDuca? Maybe that’s just me.

I’m most excited to see Lasting Milledge. I’m a big Ryan Church fan, I’ll even go as far to say I think Ryan will match Lastings for a year or two. But Lastings is 6 1/2 years younger. Six and a half!

I’m concerned about injuries. Like I said earlier injuries happen to everyone, what matters is WHO the injuries happen to. Shawn Hill is disappointing but expected. Wily Mo is a bigger deal than we think - power has never been this groups strong point. Estrada is needed and it seems like a half-dozen guys with some import this year got nicked up in this Spring. Add that to the stress the bullpen’s gone through and the fact we’re asking most of the starting staff to pitch more major league innings than they have pitched ever….

I’m very pleased we’ve heard nothing from Elijah this spring. The Nats put him in a bubble. The bubble is holding. Be strong, li’l bubble, be strong.

I’m really tired of Jim Bowden brining in guys as favors and wasting Spring at bats There’s a difference between identifying a guy still with some tread left on the tires (Dmitri Young, Aaron Boone) that could be useful in some way, and just bringing in guys to be nice. Bret Boone wasted 38 at bats this spring and will eat up somones time in AAA. Before that it was Jeffrey Hammonds, Michael Tucker. If a guy is in his mid to late 30’s and hasn’t performed for years, just let it go dawg.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 11:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.