If You Didn't Think This Team's Leadership Was Incompetent Already
...Let's throw another log on the fire.
Alex Escobar, who replaced Ryan Church on the roster, is injured ALREADY. He hurt his hamstring on Sunday, didn't tell anyone until late today, and had to be scratched from the lineup (might this clubhouse's premimum on manly men with giant balls have played a factor?). At any rate, the team is considering their options, and they're talking about Double-A outfielder, Frank Diaz.
What the hell!?? Diaz is hitting .289/ .325/ .434 in DOUBLE-A! What do you think he'd hit in the majors?!??
Seriously. Why the hell would you even consider that? Is this just Bowden trying to show off his 'farm system' roots. "Look, Stan, we've got young players! I developed him!" Meanwhile, Ryan Church rots. New Orleans only has Mike Vento, but if you're reaching into Double-A, you're doing something wrong.
Plus, there are outfielders up the wazoo on the team. Damian Jackson and Marlon Byrd can play center. Soriano, Guillen, Byrd, Jackson, Anderson, Ward, and Fick can all stand around in the corners. I just don't get it!
But that's not ALL the stupidity....
Yeah, complacency. Bill, I'm not sure if you read this, but tell your 'baseball source' that they're farkin' incompetent, and that they should retire, even if they're a Hall of Famer.
I'm so sick of this team running down its players to the media. Have you ever seen another team go to war with its players like this one? What does it serve? What's the point? Is anyone being motivated by it? It's garbage. Pure garbage.
This team stinks on ice. You can smell it halfway to Topeka. And the personalities on this team -- from the huckster drunken SOB GM to the senile, incompetent manager -- make it really hard to root for. I WANT to like them. I just can't sometimes.
The weekend featured news that's a steaming pile of crap, too. Why are Joey Eischen, Felix Rodriguez, and the other stiffs on the team still? Cause the team can't afford to release them.
Ordinarily I'd go into the standard rant about sunk costs; We're paying Eischen regardless, so why not cut him and bring up someone who's actually useful.
But the problem goes beyond that. They can't do that because Major Leauge Baseball will NOT give them the money to call up a minor leaguer. Yeah. Read that sentence again.
A minor leaguer is going to make the minimum salary, which is roughly $350K. That's prorated for the season, and the season is roughly 1/4 over. Further, because the ownership transfer is to happen in 6 weeks or so, MLB would only be on the hook for $75K or so. I'd sure like $75 K, but there's probably that much hanging behind one of Bud Selig's skin tags.
It's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
Telling to me is that neither Kasten or Lerner have stepped forward saying that they'll foot the bill -- in front of or behind the scenes. Instead, we're stuck with watching Joey Eischen strike out batters in between scorching line drives, and watching Felix Rodriguez do his impersonation of a High School pitching machine.
Seriously, why should I be a fan of this team? The players are unlikeable jerks. The field management is incompetent. The front office lost its three-year plan when Bowden spilled his Schlitz on the cocktail napkin it was written on.
Yet, here I am watching, listening and writing about them every farking night.
I feel like Wil Cordero's wife.
Sure, tomorrow'll be better. I know you're trying, dear. I know, I know. You'll never hurt me again.
Game time's 7 tomorrow, right?
Alex Escobar, who replaced Ryan Church on the roster, is injured ALREADY. He hurt his hamstring on Sunday, didn't tell anyone until late today, and had to be scratched from the lineup (might this clubhouse's premimum on manly men with giant balls have played a factor?). At any rate, the team is considering their options, and they're talking about Double-A outfielder, Frank Diaz.
What the hell!?? Diaz is hitting .289/ .325/ .434 in DOUBLE-A! What do you think he'd hit in the majors?!??
Seriously. Why the hell would you even consider that? Is this just Bowden trying to show off his 'farm system' roots. "Look, Stan, we've got young players! I developed him!" Meanwhile, Ryan Church rots. New Orleans only has Mike Vento, but if you're reaching into Double-A, you're doing something wrong.
Plus, there are outfielders up the wazoo on the team. Damian Jackson and Marlon Byrd can play center. Soriano, Guillen, Byrd, Jackson, Anderson, Ward, and Fick can all stand around in the corners. I just don't get it!
But that's not ALL the stupidity....
A baseball source said that it looks like catcher Brian Schneider has become complacent ever since he signed four-year, $16 million deal last January. It hasn't helped that Schneider is off to a slow start, hitting .230 with one home run and 14 RBIs, and is currently on the disabled list.
Yeah, complacency. Bill, I'm not sure if you read this, but tell your 'baseball source' that they're farkin' incompetent, and that they should retire, even if they're a Hall of Famer.
I'm so sick of this team running down its players to the media. Have you ever seen another team go to war with its players like this one? What does it serve? What's the point? Is anyone being motivated by it? It's garbage. Pure garbage.
This team stinks on ice. You can smell it halfway to Topeka. And the personalities on this team -- from the huckster drunken SOB GM to the senile, incompetent manager -- make it really hard to root for. I WANT to like them. I just can't sometimes.
Ordinarily I'd go into the standard rant about sunk costs; We're paying Eischen regardless, so why not cut him and bring up someone who's actually useful.
But the problem goes beyond that. They can't do that because Major Leauge Baseball will NOT give them the money to call up a minor leaguer. Yeah. Read that sentence again.
A minor leaguer is going to make the minimum salary, which is roughly $350K. That's prorated for the season, and the season is roughly 1/4 over. Further, because the ownership transfer is to happen in 6 weeks or so, MLB would only be on the hook for $75K or so. I'd sure like $75 K, but there's probably that much hanging behind one of Bud Selig's skin tags.
It's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
Telling to me is that neither Kasten or Lerner have stepped forward saying that they'll foot the bill -- in front of or behind the scenes. Instead, we're stuck with watching Joey Eischen strike out batters in between scorching line drives, and watching Felix Rodriguez do his impersonation of a High School pitching machine.
Seriously, why should I be a fan of this team? The players are unlikeable jerks. The field management is incompetent. The front office lost its three-year plan when Bowden spilled his Schlitz on the cocktail napkin it was written on.
Yet, here I am watching, listening and writing about them every farking night.
I feel like Wil Cordero's wife.
Sure, tomorrow'll be better. I know you're trying, dear. I know, I know. You'll never hurt me again.
Game time's 7 tomorrow, right?
posted by Chris Needham at
9:48 PM
12 Comments:
Careful, now; I got an anonymous post this morning that tore me a new one for being too bitter about the Nationals.
I'd guess that if all we are is just bitter, then we're doing just fine. They deserve much worse than just 'bitter.'
We waited 34 years for this?
By
Anonymous, at 5/22/2006 10:21 PM
Actually, tomorrow's game has been moved to about 5-ish so that Frank can get to bed earlier. He needs his beauty rest these days.
By
Anonymous, at 5/22/2006 11:40 PM
C'mon, Chris...tell us how you really feel. ;)
I know it's small consolation...but damn, the weather was grand these past few days! I can't think of a block of finer days to have been at the ballyard than these past four or five.
Deeeeep, cleansing breaths....
By
Jim H, at 5/22/2006 11:49 PM
Taking the cue from Brian in the Yudachat, I wrote this email to the company man:
Why do you constantly serve as a mouthpiece for the management's view that some players' performance is attributable to complacency, lack of toughness, or the inability to play hurt? You've done it on several
occasions with Church, and you seem to be doing it again with
Schneider. Guillen's poor performance while attempting to play through injuries in the second half of last season illustrates how trying to "be a man" or "play through pain" is often counterproductive. Instead of just typing up the stories the front office feeds you, perhaps it would benefit the fans if you dug a little deeper into some of the decisions made by the "think tank." In other words, why don't you call the front office out on some of its bullshit, such as why management is always so quick to find fault with the players and criticize them in the media. Or you could investigate why Bowden has such a fixation with toolsy outfielders despite his insistence that what the Nationals really need is "pitching, pitching, pitching." Or maybe you could look into the fact that MLB is preventing the Nationals from trying to improve by
releasing Eischen and Rodriguez and calling up Rivera or Bray because the 29 MLB owners are only interested in collecting whatever last bit of profit that can be scraped off the battered hull of the Washington ship before turning a team on its way to 100 losses over to the Lerners. Rocket Bill, are you a journalist or merely a stenographer?
***
Seems like the Escobar to the DL story was reworked and the Schneider bit was removed. Note that Saul Rivera and Santiago Ramirez have been called up.
By
Anonymous, at 5/23/2006 2:20 AM
Sorry for the incompetent formatting.
By
Anonymous, at 5/23/2006 2:22 AM
Can't bring up a minor-leaguer? Where has an Expo fan heard that before?
During the Late Unpleasantness, and even still, I heard a lot about how the Expos had no history worth commemorating, and that Montréal fans were somehow at fault for not wanting to turn out in large numbers to see a team (that was hard to find being broadcast) that faced fighting like the D---l to reach .500, and seemed to be managed by incompetents. Plus ça change, chaps.
By
Anonymous, at 5/23/2006 5:26 AM
Am I right that with Zach Day's exit we now have FIVE starting pitchers on the DL?? I count Patterson, Drese, Lawrence, Astacio, and Day. Throw in last season's workhorse set-up man Ayala and the Nats are a mess right now. Should I blame the sports medicine staff? The trainers? Plain bad luck? As much as I hate Bowden, even a reasonable amount of pitching depth wouldn't have helped this team with that number of injuries.
By
Natty Bumpo, at 5/23/2006 8:29 AM
fra paolo -- yep, it's the same sorry excuse they used before. Brian Schneider had to catch how many days in a row because MLB wouldn't let them call up a backup? That's garbage. in this case, at least, I'd have hoped the prospect of a new owner would've changed the decisions process. But that's what I get for expecting things with MLB running the show. Dickbags.
Natty Bump, In most of those cases, you can blame dumb fecking luck. Patterson's always had arm trouble. Ayala was a ticking time bomb with his delivery and the workload Frank gave him. Astacio's always on the Dl, etc.
By
Chris Needham, at 5/23/2006 8:48 AM
Natty Bumpo:
The injury problems the Nats are having may not be specifically due to Bowden (ie, he didn't go out and start beating on the pitchers), but they are indirectly due to Bowden. He built a pitching staff around a crew of pitchers with long injury histories. Pitchers with arm problems in the past tend to keep having arm problems. On the Nats staff, which pitchers have a history of arm problems? Armas, Astacio, Ayala, Day, Drese, Eischen, Patterson, Rauch, Rodriguez and Traber have all hard arm problems in the past. Put that many injured pitchers on a staff, take into account the fact that even formerly healthy pitchers can have arm problems, and I don't think the Nats are having any more injuries than a reasonable person should have expected. More than Bowden expected, sure, but he's not reasonable.
Chris: as a long-time Expos fan, I've seen the "no budget to call up players" excuse before. I didn't buy it then, I don't buy it now. Sure, I think the Nats have maxed out their budget. But the fault for that doesn't lie with the MLB overlords, the fault lies with the stupid GM who knew what his budget was, and proceeded to go out and throw away all that money overpaying mediocre retreads. Eischen, Stanton, Anderson, Fick, LeCroy, Astacio, Rodriguez, Clayton: that's what, almost $8M that Bowden spent on useless players? If the Nats have no budget left, it's Bowden's fauilt, not MLB's.
Scot.
By
Anonymous, at 5/23/2006 9:59 AM
I still hope against hope that all the crap that has been perpetrated against this franchise will prompt Lerner/Kasten et al. to file suit against MLB/Angelos/Comcast/whomever in an effort to rescind baseball's antitrust exemption. Given that they will soon join that cartel I doubt it will happen.
I suspect a lot of the bile coming from the Nats company store is spewing from the mouths of those who will soon be out of a job. I can't wait to hear what current and former players and staff will have to say re Tough Tony, Drunken Jim and Sleepy Frank once they are gone.
By
Anonymous, at 5/23/2006 9:59 AM
As a couple of people have said already - yup, welcome to the life of being an ex-Expo fan. Just because they've moved the team and changed the uniform doesn't mean that the team philosophy has changed. Not yet, at least. It's utter crap, but it's not surprising crap. The good news is that the neglected-foster-child treatment the team is receiving will hopefully be over with soon.
By
Chris Pendley, at 5/23/2006 12:16 PM
Easy, everyone. Stay cool. We've won 2 out of the last 4. That's a .500 record! We just beat the Orioles 2 out of 3. All these front-office idiots with their bad moves and bad remarks will soon be history when Stan the Man cleans house. Meanwhile, support our boys who are out on the field and in their hospital beds!
By
Anonymous, at 5/23/2006 12:23 PM
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