Fouled-Off Bunts: Hurt Worse Than We Thought Edition

We knew that Brad Wilkerson had a sore forearm which sapped much of his power, and reduced his already fishy ability to make contact. But did we know he was hurt this badly?

A sore forearm turned into a sore hand and eventually a chipped bone in his hand, which led to a sore shoulder.

Instead of resting his original injury, Wilkerson kept playing through the pain and made things worse.

"The biggest thing I learned from last year," he said, "was that sometimes you just have to sit down."

It's a good thing the team has such strong leadership to tell players when they need to sit down, right, Frank?

Adam Wogan landed on his feet in New York. Wogan was the Nats Director of Player Development until Jim Bowden fired him, thinking that Bob Boone could do a better job. I wonder what Wogan thinks of Preston Wilson's centerfield defense?

The Baseball Hall of Fame will hold its Negro League Hall of Fame balloting at the end of February. There are many deserving names, chief among them Minny Minoso, Luis Santop, Jose Mendez, and Mule Suttles. Of note, Frank Robinson will be addressing the committee, though it doesn't appear that he has a vote.

Sammy Sosa plays poker with Alex Rodriguez. Who knew?

David Catania has posted most of the documents relating to the ballpark lease on his website. If you want to dig through the full lease, it's there.

Of particular interest is the arbitration-enabled document answering Linda Cropp's demands point-by-point.

Of particular interest is their response to demand #4, local ownership. For their less-than-inspired answer, check page seven.

And finally...

The Good Phight, a Phillies blog, takes a look at road park factors. Since teams play such extreme unbalanced schedules, it's not safe to assume a neutral road environment anymore. They take park factors and compute them using each team's actual road schedule and show that certain teams have pretty extreme road environments.

In the Nats' case, multiple games in Philadelphia and not having to play road games at RFK give the Nats the fourth highest run environment on the road. Read his explanation for more details and the importance of its application.

I'll also point out that it confirms my suspicions with respect to Soriano. With a steady diet of Oakland and Seattle on the road, the Texas Rangers had the toughest road park assignments in the American League. While that doesn't completely excuse Soriano's pitiful road performance, it also means that his road line isn't a fair baseline, and is probably just as distorted as his home batting line is.