WaPo | Ryan Mattheus breaks throwing hand punching a locker, adds to bullpen disarray

The disarray in the Nationals’ bullpen reached a bizarre and self-inflicted new height Monday night. After the Nationals’ 8-0 loss to the Giants, Manager Davey Johnson revealed that set-up man Ryan Mattheus had broken his right hand Sunday when he punched his locker after a dreadful performance, landing him on the disabled list and leaving the Nationals scrambling for fresh arms.

Slate: The Dreaded C-Word

A person’s head collides with an object. Unprepared for the impact, the head jerks in a violent whiplash motion. The person collapses, rolling on the ground and holding his head, before rising slowly and unsteadily. Eyewitnesses testify that the person was confused or disoriented.

“By definition, that’s a concussion,” says Dr. Daniel P. Perl, a professor of pathology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., the American military’s medical school. “A concussion is a transient loss of neurologic function following a blow to the head. Typically it can be confusion, memory loss or loss of consciousness.”

That’s what happened to soccer star Abby Wambach last month when she was hit in the face by a speeding ball, and it’s what happened Monday when Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper ran face-first at full speed into the outfield wall at Dodger Stadium. “Initially, it was like he was confused,” teammate Denard Span said. “I don’t think he realized he was on the ground.”

Washington Post: Boswell:  Reiser Offers Harper A Cautionary Tale

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 and a half years in the minors, three seasons of Army ball and 10 years in the majors, Reiser was carried off the field 11 times. Nine times he regained consciousness either in the clubhouse or in hospitals. . . . Seven times he crashed into outfield walls, five times ending up in an unconscious heap on the ground.. . . Three times Pete sneaked out of hospitals to play. Once, he went back into the lineup after doctors warned him that any blow to the head would kill him. . . . In the ’47 World Series, he stood on a broken ankle to pinch-hit.”

WaPo: Bryce Harper ejected in first inning arguing check swing

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 umpires and players.

With two outs and none on, Harper tried to check his swing on a 2-2 curveball from Pirates starter Wandy Rodriguez. The Pirates appealed to Hirschbeck, the third base umpire, who rang up Harper. “He made the right call,” Johnson said.

Harper raised his hands in protest, with the bat over his head. Hirschbeck, in his 29th season as an MLB umpire, started yelling at Harper and walking toward him. Home plate umpire Bob Davidson chimed in from behind.  Harper appeared to yell back at Hirschbeck and threw his bat on the ground. Hirscbeck pointed at Harper, who then threw his helmet. As Johnson sprinted out of the dugout, Hirschbeck ejected the 20-year-old slugger.

“I didn’t like that he put his hands up with the bat,” Hirschbeck said. “That’s kind of what I yelled at him. He continued and threw his bat. I kind of pointed like, ‘That’s equipment.’ And then, he still continued and slammed his helmet down. That’s when I ejected him.

“I was actually just being nice. Even the hands up in the air is showing me up, to me. I could have ejected him right then. I was nice enough to leave him in the game. And then he slammed his bat down. And then on top of that, he slammed his helmet. I had no other recourse, really.”

Stephen Strasburg must get back to putting first-pitch strikes first

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.

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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 in the majors four seasons ago, he’s going to be a very good pitcher who doesn’t go as deep into games as he’d like.

Nibble nibble.

Washington Times: Looking at Jayson Werth’s 3-0 double play from the eyes of those on the field

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 just got caught up in the moment,” Werth said. “Just really, looking back, trying to do too much. Trying to win the game right there. I can sit here and talk about the situation but, I just tried to do too much. The situation got the best of me. Probably one of the dumber things I’ve done on the field in a while.

MLB: Bryce Harper tallies four hits despite suffering from flu

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, and he said he felt “solid as a rock” afterward. He simply wasn’t going to sit out Wednesday, even as bad as he felt on the field.

“I was still struggling. The biggest thing was trying to keep everything down and fluids down,” Harper said afterward. “I think getting in the box and swinging made my head spin a little bit. It was just a matter of trying to have good ABs and trying to get some knocks and trying to help the team out.”

Believe it or not, Harper said his worst moment wasn’t when he left the dugout to vomit in the second inning. He felt the worst after a sixth-inning double off Nolasco. He was bending over, sick and worn out, but he kept playing.

“I thought he was going to die every time he went up there and he got a hit,” Nationals manager Davey Johnson said.

His last hit (shown in the video at the link) was the most impressive.  Top of the 9th, two outs, already up 5-1, he hits an infield grounder…and beats the throw to first base, allowing another run to score.

‘Kill The Wave’ effort at Nats Park gains following

“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.

Nationals team with Bloomberg Sports for new analytic player evaluation system

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 from scratch. He said the new Bloomberg will enable the Nationals to create a better system than they otherwise could have.

“The Lerner family has made a significant investment in order to allow us to tap into Bloomberg’s programming and data expertise,” Cromie said in an e-mail. We have a lot of smart people in the organization, but we do not have a lot of capabilities on the software development end of the operation. We’ve found that building that type of core competency can take many years and a lot of failure to accomplish effectively.  This is a way to allow our people to focus on what they do well while providing them with advanced technology resources.

WaPo: MASN compares Bryce Harper and Babe Ruth

“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 impossible to keep that back foot on the ground. If you did, there’d be so much pressure on the hip it couldn’t take it. So guys that swing violently like that have to release the back side off the firm front side. And if you’ve ever watched Tiger Woods hit a driver, same kind of deal — his back foot comes off the ground, he creates so much club speed. Same with Bryce Harper.

Bryce Harper, Cricketer

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

SoE: On Baseball and Quitting

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 anymore if he had no future in the organization. It was a puzzling decision that perhaps nobody but Riggleman really understands to this day.

“As I’ve told many people, it wasn’t the smart thing to do,” Riggleman said. “But it was thought out and it had been going for awhile, but it wasn’t the smart decision. But I thought it was the right decision. That’s the consequences sometimes. Things don’t work out perfectly as you hope. I got to live with my decision.”

In 12 years as a major league manager Riggleman compiled a 662-824 record (.445). One of his teams lost more than 100 games. Only once in the six seasons he managed for a full year did his team win more games than it lost. Only one of his teams made the playoffs. Yet three times Riggleman was asked to manage on an interim basis. It spoke of the respect people had for him in the game. He might not have been the guy to take you to the World Series, but he was a good caretaker. If there was a team in shambles, Riggleman was the right man to calm the waters. Hand him a mess and Riggleman was the man to clean it up. It’s a thankless position, but one that’s appreciated in the game.

Yet Riggleman’s chances at another major league managing job, perhaps even a major league coaching job, appear grim at best for the moment. Most of the goodwill he amassed seems to have washed away.

“I do know that there’s some people in baseball who are ‘Hey, Jim resigned and we have no interest in him,’” Riggleman said. “I knew that was going to be the case with some people. I respect their thoughts on that. I know why I did what I did and I can live with it.”

WaPo: Nationals Rely on Scouts First, but Take Information Elsewhere Too

“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 stadium and fold laundry. He read Tom Tango’s “The Book” and perused FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus on the clubhouse computer in front of players, hoping someone would notice and ask him about it. He once showed Carlos Delgado the FanGraphs player page for Tim Lincecum. “He said it was too much information,” Mondry-Cohen said.”

Bryce Harper Gets Free Chipotle Burritos for Life, World Domination to Follow

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.

Washington Post: Introducing a new baseball analytics feature

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.

Jordan Zimmermann dealing with a ‘dead arm’

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. Chances are the same will be true for Zimmermann, but any time a pitcher complains of a sore or dead arm, the situation is worth monitoring.

Thanks to CB.

Nationals cut Will Ohman mid-game

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.

Post-Dispatch: Stan Musial reached out to Stephen Strasburg following elbow injury in 2010

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 Musial,” Strasburg said Sunday.

“It was a brief message about how big a fan he was. He said he knew in his heart that I was going to be even better and stronger. I was down in the dumps. I had never met him before and he reached out to me, gave me a lot of confidence.”

Boswell: Gio Gonzalez faces suspicion everywhere but Washington Nationals clubhouse

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

Nats practice interrupted by fish falling from the sky

“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.”

Gleeman: Micah Owings switches from pitcher to first baseman, signs with Nationals

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 even if he were just mediocre at both roles and for a minor-league deal the price is certainly right for the Nationals.

OTP - Feb 2013: Baseball team flunks history with Taft mascot pick

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. “There was a great amount of banter and discussion back and forth, but Teddy won out with his recommendation.”

On Saturday, the sanitized Taft mascot made its debut at a fan event, looking at least 100 pounds lighter than its real-life counterpart.

The reaction in the media, so far, is that even sportswriters who aren’t historians know the two men hated each other.

The Post’s Dan Steinberg asked a local historian how bad the blood was between TR and Taft.

Allan Lichtman, distinguished professor of history at American University, told Steinberg that each man considered the other a backstabber, and they had no qualms taking down each other in a presidential election.

“The rivalry was as bitter as it gets in politics,” said Lichtman. “There’s nothing like the feeling of betrayal, and both men felt betrayed by the other.”

SI: Steroid Era, A-Rod won’t go away but give MLB a break here

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 thinking changed somewhat. In this case Major League Baseball—through its Department of Investigations, which was created on the recommendation of the Mitchell Report—was already aware of the clinic in the Miami area. Soon after the Miami New Times report was published, the league released a statement that began as follows:

“We are always extremely disappointed to learn of potential links between players and the use of performance-enhancing substances. These developments, however, provide evidence of the comprehensive nature of our anti-drug efforts. Through our Department of Investigations, we have been actively involved in the issues in South Florida.”

We don’t have to take just MLB’s word for it. The New York Daily News, citing a law-enforcement source, reported on Saturday that a league investigation into Anthony Bosch was already underway. The league’s investigation is continuing, and the players named by the Miami New Times will likely be interviewed about the allegations. The league’s capacity to conduct such an investigation comes from a recommendation of the Mitchell Report, which wrote that “the Commissioner should establish a Department of Investigations.”

Gleeman: Tony Soprano’s daughter is marrying Lenny Dykstra’s son

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.

Washington Nationals welcome Taft as new racer

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