Fouled-Off Bunts: Blogger Blather Edition

Federal Baseball puts the burden of proof on Jeff Smulyan. Since he once proclaimed that he'd never want to get back in baseball, why is he now pushing to get back, and what's changed to make him an effective owner, which he most spectacularly was not in his time in Seattle?

Nationals Farm Authority tills the land, but finds only evidence of Trade Jim's slash-and-burn farm techniques. Ruben Mateo!? I remember back in 1997 (literally!) when Peter Gammons was convinced that Ruben was going to be the next Hank Aaron. He hasn't even been the next Tommie Aaron.

Banks of the Anacostia makes a triumphant return, and pushes for a Soriano/Wood deal. He also gives a thumbs up to Sosa -- contigent on a couple of pretty big 'ifs'.

Beltway Boys has second thoughts about Matt Lecroy. While I can't understand why he's discarding AL stats (as if there's much of a difference between the leagues anymore given that the leagues are fully integrated, and there's tons of player movement between leagues), his point about needing to look at other bits of information is a good one. At the same time, I'm not sure how useful splits of the sort he uses are. Are they indicative of an actual ability? Or are they just a random sampling?

One thing does concern me about LeCroy, though. I took a quick look at his hitting chart, and he's not much of a pull hitter, even though he seems like he would be. I've thrown around the theory that only pull hitters can have success at RFK (which is why I'm slighly more optimistic about Soriano than many others). Obviously I haven't crunched numbers or parsed stats -- it's just observational from the 30 or so games I attended. Regardless, it's something to keep in mind as we watch the season unfold.

Nats Triple Play makes Dashiell Hammett hang his silver head in shame. His neo-nats-noir answers the unanswerable: What happened to Darrell Rasner? (1, 2, 3)