MVN - Most Valuable Network

Nats lose and actual news.

Odalis Perez pitches another decent game. Ryan Zimmerman hits two home runs. Yet the Nats lose again. You’ve got to admire their persistence. They’ll find a way.

Of course the Nats losing, that’s not news, but we’ve got some of that, too.

O’Connor to the rotation…Chico to the bullpen?..O’Connor to the bullpen?!

The Nats have decided to take a break on the Chico, but rather than sending him down to Columbus which, you know, would have made some sense, they’ve decided to move him to the bullpen. If they are serious about this move you’ve taken someone who last year was a 24 yr old, just below average pitcher and made him into a long reliever about a month into the following season. To add to the madness the one thing you could say about Chico is that he could eat some innings. His 167 last year was the highest for any Nat in ‘07.

Some ways this makes sense:

(1) They think the Saint is the only one to fix him, so he’d be better off here than Columbus. Possible, but then why insinuate this could be a long term thing?

(2) They have zero faith in Chico and frankly don’t want him to waste the space of a better young pitcher coming up. Again possible, but why then O’Connor? Haven’t you felt that you’ve seen what you needed from him? Why not someone new Mock, Balester, Clippard?

Some ask for Bergmann. Me, I got to wonder what Schroder has to do to get another shot. Lefty/Righty is overrated. Right now having reliable arms in the bullpen is more important. And of course just to add another hmmmm to the situation, Acta decides he needs to go to the bullpen tonight, and he pulls in who? O’Connor. Huh?

[Did Manny go to the bullpen too quickly? Perez wasn’t struggling and heading into the bottom of the Astros order. Why go then to the bullpen. And again - why to O’Connor.]

LoDuca injures his hand pulling the team up by it’s bootstraps

No not really but considering how little he’s played (even when in the lineup) this veteran redass better be a damn Patton in the clubhouse. I won’t doubt the injury. LoDuca likes to play and will play when possible, even at detriment to the team (isn’t that always?). MRI tomorrow (hopefully finding a season ending injury). You’re very mean parenthesis guy.

Manny messes up

I’ll say this again. Why pull Perez after 5? 84 pitches is not alot. He was heading into the fearsome bottom of the Astros lineup where the corpse of Brad Ausmus has been propped up since 2003. The pitcher spot was quite possibly coming up next inning. Then he compounds the move by going to O’Connor. Forget the whole “Wait, isn’t he a starter now” thing. He’s at least the long relief and with the pitcher spot likely to come up soon, why would you waste him on a 1 inning outing? Of course the inevitable happened. The spot did come up the next inning. O’Connor was pinch hit for. And then Acta had to hang with Hanrahan longer than he would normally because of the potential of extra-innings.

[It’s one of baseball’s logic puzzles. You need to hang with Hanrahan too long because the game might go into extra innings, but by hanging with Hanrahan too long the game won’t go into extra innings. Robot heads explode at this thought]

UPDATE - So Odalis was very sick pre-game.  “Mistake #1″ then is understandable.  He probably just asked Odalis to give him 5.  But the O’Connor choice was still baffling for me.  6th, 7th, and 8th hitters coming up - all righties.  Nats having 6-8 coming up next inning. Maybe he thinks the same of the Nats offense that we do and figured the chances Kearns, LoDuca and/or Pena reaching base at about 10%.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 1:00 am 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.