At age 22 in 1941, Reiser finished second for National League MVP. In just 137 games, he had 70 extra-base hits and led the league in runs (117), batting (.343), doubles (39), triples (17), total bases, getting hit by pitches and, if they’d kept track of on-base plus slugging back then, that, too (.964).

He was as good in reality as Harper dreams of being.

Then Reiser started running into walls. He never led the league in anything again, except stolen bases a couple of times….

“In two ...

The latest Rohrshach test the swiftly emerging Umps Behaving Badly narrative:

Bryce Harper was ejected in the first inning of the Nationals’ 6-2 victory over the Pirates Sunday afternoon after he drew the ire of umpiring crew chief John Hirschbeck with his reaction to a check-swing third strike. The incident left the Nationals without their best player and, owing to behavior from Hirschbeck that Manager Davey Johnson deemed overaggressive, raised the issue of contentious relations between ...

In 2011, Strasburg threw first-pitch strikes 71.6 percent of the time, the highest in baseball. He carried over his “challenge” mentality from college and put fear of shame into hitters. Last year, he threw 62.3 percent, 34th among starters. Wednesday, he was down to 56.2 for the season, an awful 84th among 107 starters.

...

Until he gets his 0-0 phobia fixed, until he reverses the balance of terror between him and hitters, getting back to the level of confidence he showed when he arrived ...

At the heart of the Washington Nationals’ 2-0 loss to the New York Mets on Sunday was one at-bat that left Jayson Werth sitting in front of his locker staring into the abyss.

With runners on first and second and no outs, and left-hander Scott Rice having thrown six straight balls—and seven balls in his last eight pitches—Werth swung at a 3-0 pitch and ground into a double play. It squashed the Nationals’ best scoring chance, though hardly their only one, and left him dejected. [...]

“I ...

Four for five, despite being on an IV drip right up until the first pitch and vomiting in the 2nd inning.  Yeah, he’s a gamer.

[M]ake no mistake about it: Bryce Harper was still sick.

The 20-year-old phenom went 4-for-5 with a double and an RBI and recorded three hits off Marlins starter Ricky Nolasco in the Nationals’ 6-1 win over the Marlins after sitting out the previous game due to a stomach flu that kept him up all night.

But Harper deemed himself well enough to play after a pregame IV, ...

“Lately, it just sort of seems to be a thing that—come the sixth inning—somebody wants to do the wave, regardless of the situation in the game,” Lattuca says.

The “Kill The Wave” effort is really about respecting other fans at the ballpark, he says.

The Nationals today announced a partnership with Bloomberg Sports to design and maintain a player evaluation system that melds statistics, scouting reports and video that can be accessed by Nationals scouts and officials on laptops and mobile devices. Rizzo described the system as a “microwaved” version of their current database – faster, bigger, better video capability and more all-inclusive.
Director of Baseball Operations Adam Cromie built the Nationals’ current database essentially ...

“We just thought it was pretty cool,” Santangelo said early in Thursday’s broadcast. “When you watch Babe Ruth’s swing on the left, watch his back foot come off the ground at contact. Now we’ll move over to Bryce Harper on the right-hand side, and we’ve seen this before – at contact, foot off the ground.
“They’re both hitting off a firm front side,” Santangelo continued. “It creates so much torque and power throughout the course of their swing that it’s almost ...

What struck me, when looking at Harper’s home runs on Monday, was how familiar they seemed–not to baseball players and fans, but to devotees of the other great ball-and-bat sport on this planet: Cricket. To answer Stu’s question directly, the body of cricket scholarship suggests that Harper can be very successful indeed with his “unorthodox” mechanics–because, at least as they presented themselves on Monday, they were perfectly orthodox cricket batting mechanics.

RTFA

I just wanted to tell you I’m a big quitter, too! And I quit!

In 2011, [Jim] Riggleman, in the final year of his contract, 75 games into the season, resigned as manager of the Washington Nationals when the team would not give him an extension. Riggleman believed then, and he believes now, that he was simply a lame duck manager. So he quit. The Nationals, with a 38-37 record, were possibly headed toward their first winning season since arriving in Washington and Riggleman didn’t want to be there ...

“As Cromie was building an analytics department from the ground up, Mondry-Cohen’s fandom was sparking his interest in how baseball and numbers interact. He grew up in San Francisco, a rabid fan of the Giants. His father taught high school calculus and kept Bill James’s Baseball Abstracts on his bookshelf.

Through a family friend, Mondry-Cohen landed a job as a clubhouse attendant in the Giants’ visiting clubhouse. During the 2003 playoffs, he skipped class so he could sneak into the ...

Bryce Harper gets free Chipotle burritos for life.

I will let that fact marinate with you for a second as you consider how horrible your own life is now by comparison.

And now, I’ll be blogging here every week. We’ll also be taking this rich PITCHf/x data and using it in other various ways to bolster The Post’s Nats coverage. Stay tuned, and let us know what you think.

Nationals right-hander Jordan Zimmermann got pounded by the Cardinals on Friday, surrendering eight runs on nine hits in just three innings. He walked two and struck out one. MLB.com’s Bill Ladson reports Washington’s No. 3 starter is now dealing with a “dead arm.”

“Dead arm” might be the scariest term in baseball, but it is a fairly common issue for pitchers this time of year. A lot of guys deal with fatigue after two or three spring training outings and are fine after a few days of rest. ...

Baseball can be a rough game at times, especially during Spring Training, but Nationals reliever Will Ohman got a bit of a surprise on Sunday when Washington cut him…before their game with the Cardinals was even over.

Damn do I ever miss him.

In 2010, the Washington Nationals were hosting the Cardinals when hotshot rookie Stephen Strasburg learned he had a torn ligament and would be sidelined at least a year to recover from the necessary Tommy John surgery.

He said Chris Carpenter and Albert Pujols both sought him out during that series to offer advice. But it was after his surgery that Strasburg heard from the greatest Cardinal.

“As soon as I got home from surgery I had a video message waiting from Stan ...

“It’s not fair,” Nats Manager Davey Johnson said, “but that’s reality in this day and time.”

“I’ve never seen that on a baseball field,” Span said. “I’ve seen it on T.V., you know, bird carrying their dinner. I’ll tell you what, that bird definitely didn’t have good hands. He dropped his dinner.”

And what better day for it than the Babe’s birthday…

Micah Owings is no longer the best-hitting pitcher in baseball. Now he’s just another minor league first baseman trying to make it to the majors, as the 30-year-old has officially switched from pitching to hitting and signed with the Nationals...

he’s far from guaranteed to be a productive everyday hitter, particularly at an offense-driven position like first base.

As a first baseman/pitcher, however, Owings could be awfully interesting ...

The Washington Nationals might have bitten off more than they can chew by naming William Howard Taft as their next racing mascot. If you aren’t familiar with the controversy, the baseball team features four mascots dressed as U.S. presidents that race around the Nationals’ stadium during home games to entertain fans.

“Teddy has handpicked the next president for the Presidents’ Race,” Nationals COO Andy Feffer told the newspaper on Friday, a day before the Taft mascot was rolled out. ...

Major League Baseball has suffered its share of indignities because of the Steroid Era: reacting slowly to a growing problem, issuing the heavily criticized Mitchell Report (which was maligned for being incomplete and seemingly ineffectual) and watching as cherished milestones were reached and records set by players later linked to PEDs. Just three weeks ago, a Hall of Fame ballot brimming with statistically deserving players failed to produce a single inductee.
But perhaps it’s time that ...

Google Images suggests this is a better decision than any Lenny has made since about 1993.

Lenny Dykstra’s son, 23-year-old minor leaguer Cutter Dykstra, is engaged to 31-year-old actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who played Meadow Soprano on “The Sopranos.”

Dykstra has played five seasons in the minors without advancing past Single-A and spent last year playing for the Nationals’ low Single-A team.

...

the Washington Nationals will race a new president this season - President William H. Taft.

The Nats respond to the Braves getting Justin Upton!

“Well, welcome to reality. The Nats set the stage on Wednesday by announcing on Twitter “a major Presidential announcement” at NatsFest this Saturday. And in case there were any doubt about what the news would be, the team made it official on Thursday with this Tweet: “The rumors are true – there will be a #5thPresident racing in 2013! But who will it be? Find out at #NatsFest!”

I was watching some controversial stuff on YouTube about the sandy hooks thing today! It really makes u think and wonder

— Denard Span (@thisisdspan) January 16, 2013

If you don’t know what a Sandy Hook Truther is, take a moment to read Max Read of Gawker’s illuminating look into their strange world. Basically, they are people who believe that the Sandy Hook shooting was actually some kind of elaborate hoax perpretrated by the government, because everything is an elaborate hoax perpetrated by ...