Curse of the Sensitive Umpires: The Story Of Scott Barry

(Screenshot from MASN Broadcast)

On Wednesday night, the Nats were playing alright. They turned 3 double plays, including a remarkable 8-4 throw from Bernadina in center field. They got some hits early with 2 outs that resulted in 2 runs.

Then in the 8th inning Zimmerman came up to bat. The count was 3-1. He got a pitch on the outside corner that he thought was ball 4, but was called strike 2 by home plate ump Scott Barry. Zimm got back in the batter's box and foul tipped a ball into the glove of Brian McCann for strike 3. Zimmerman slammed his bat and helmet on the ground and immediately got ejected. He hadn't said a word.

On Tuesday night, Ivan Rodriguez was ejected in the dugout by third base ump Brian Knight, allegedly for throwing his bat. In the dugout. Apparently this umpiring crew really, really has an affinity for maple trees. How DARE these players hurt that wood? What did the bat do to them?

Anyway, this only continues this 2010 season of simply atrocious umpiring. The new young class of umps (plus Joe West/Angel Hernandez) have come into the league with the goal of being relevant. They want their names known. Well, it's working, and baseball is suffering.

I've said it a million times, so here's one more: Baseball needs to intervene.

Umpires that have short fuses and eject guys like a future Hall of Fame catcher (Pudge) or one of the most cool and collected stars in the game (Zimmerman) without an extraordinary reason should be disciplined. Zimmerman has never, ever in his MLB career been ejected from a game until Wednesday. Just one day after a Hall of Famer was ejected. That has to tell you something.

These umps are looking for a fight; so much so that they're targeting guys that aren't even looking for a fight. Something needs to be done, now.

Nats Have Successful Homestand, Head West Monday

(AP Photo/Nick Wass)

The Nationals came home from their last road trip dejected. They were 3-7 on that trip as they traveled through Florida, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee. But as they have all season, the Nats returned to DC with some spark. They won 4 of 6 against the numbers 1 and 2 teams in the NL East. They came just inches from sweeping the Phillies on Sunday and earned the series win on Saturday with yet another Ryan Zimmerman walk-off homer. It was to deeeeeeep center and the 7th walk-off homer in his career.

But the latest homestand merely proves what most of us already knew. The Washington Nationals are a great home team; they have a 29-22 record. Away, they are simply dreadful, only 17-36. For those keeping score at home, that's a distressingly low .320 winning percentage away from Nats Park.

But there are things to look forward to as we're barely 2 months from the end of the Nationals' season. Rizzo didn't move Adam Dunn at the deadline. While it's still very questionable whether the Nats will choose to re-sign Dunn, at the very least the Nats will get compensation draft picks for him. At the best, the Nats will land the slugger for a few more years before he starts to trail off. Remember, the Nats still have Bryce Harper to sign and only have until August 16th to do it.

The Nationals starting rotation is also starting to settle in, but you'll have to wait to read about that until my Monday afternoon post. I know, the horror! Just check back here around lunch time. I'll do my best to include a Esteban Loaiza reference, but I'll probably fail.

But in the mean time, the Nats are starting yet another road trip. This time they head to Arizona for 4 games against the D-Backs and 3 against the Dodgers. So it's a week of staying up late for us east coasters. The Nats hope to take adavantage of a depleted Diamondbacks team after they lost some depth at the trade deadline. So until the afternoon post...

Ryan Zimmerman Is An All-Star

Last night, MLB Network announced that Cincinnati Reds 1B Joey Votto would be the final vote selection for the 2010 All-Star Game in Anaheim. Originally, I was going to write a scathing post about the the voting process, how Ryan Zimmerman should have been selected, that Zimmerman's numbers were much better than the rest of the people at his position, especially compared to Votto's elite competition at 1st base. That post quickly became impossible, as it's simply not true.

Joey Votto is hitting .314 with a .417 OBP and is slugging at a staggering .595 rate. He ranks #1 among all NL first basemen in these 3 categories. Better than Pujols, better than Howard, better than Gonzalez. So then you really have to wonder, why wasn't Votto selected before the final vote when he is the best player thus far in 2010? It's not like he's even playing for a bad team; he's playing for the #1 team in the NL Central. But I digress...

Ryan Zimmerman is the best all around 3rd basemen in the NL, and quite possibly in baseball. David Wright is a quality 3B, and Rolen is having a great season as an older player, but the fact remains that Zimmerman is the reigning Silver Slugger and Gold Glove winner. Unfortunately for Zimm, he plays for a Washington Nationals team that's in last place in its division. And has been for most of the team's short history. It's also team that, besides Stephen Strasburg references, barely gets acknowledged by local, let alone national, media. So although Zimmerman is 2nd in on-base percentage and 3rd in slugging percentage among qualifying 3rd basemen, he was left off of the list for Omar Infante, a utility player for the Atlanta Braves. That's right. A utility player.

I would like to be outraged by this development, but I'm simply not surprised. The Washington Nationals front office didn't exactly do an ideal job getting out the vote for any Nationals players this year. I saw ushers passing out ballots once all season. Meanwhile, in Baltimore, ushers were passing out ballots to everyone in the seats.... The Nats got outshined by the worst team in baseball. But in all reality, it probably wouldn't have mattered. When you have an average paid attendance of barely 20,000, you're not going to compete with teams like the Yankees and the Phillies that have average attendance over 45,000. That's more seats than exist at Nationals Park.

So 2011 is another year, and maybe if the Nationals are respectable this year and get the dream rotation that Boswell wrote about, the team will be visible nationally, and more Nats players will get a serious chance at making the All-Star team. Guys like Zimmerman, Dunn (RE-SIGN HIM!), Willingham, and possibly even Strasburg could make a run. But until then, let's hope that Matt Capps can help the National League win a game that they hasn't won since 1996. That game was hosted by the Philadelphia Phillies... at Veterans Stadium... and the MVP of the game was Mike Piazza. It's time to start a new baseball legacy for the NL... one from this millennium.

Stephen Strasburg: Exceeding Exceptional Expectations

It's the top of the 7th inning. The crowd has been standing for a few minutes now. The cheers are booming; the crowd in awe. All eyes are on every single pitch. A spontaneous "Let's Go Nats" chant starts in the upper deck and makes its way around the entire park. The Blackberry's are put away; cameras are flashing. This playoff atmosphere wasn't for the playoffs at all. It was for the Washington Nationals who were 4 games below .500 entering Tuesday night, and the kid who has lived up to exceeded every unreasonably outrageous expectation: Stephen Strasburg.

Everyone knows about the outing by Strasburg by now, but it's worth repeating. Strasburg pitched 7 innings of 4 hit, 2 run baseball. Oh and he didn't walk a single batter. Oh, and he struck out 14 Pirates. You may be saying to yourself, wow, when's the last time a pitcher did that in his debut? The answer: 1971 when J.R. Richard struck out 15 for the Houston Astros. Yea, 29 years ago.

Strasburg did his 7 innings of work on 94 pitches. The last time someone got 14 strikeouts on less than 96 pitches? Never. In the history of Major League Baseball. Never ever. (Thanks to @AdamKilgoreWP for the stat.)

Strasburg's first strikeout of the night was against Lastings Milledge on 3 pitches. The die hard Nats fans ate it up. The crowd erupted. After Strasburg gave up a 2 run home run to Delwyn Young in the 4th inning, he retired the next 10 batters in a row. 8 of those 10 batters were struck out. Delwyn Young's home run came on a Strasburg change up after he threw two in succession.

In the 7th inning, Young was Strasburg's 13th strikeout victim of the game. On 3 fastballs. 98 mph. 98 mph. 99 mph. He learned from that mistake. After the game, Pittsburgh's Ronny Cedeño said, "His change-up is like 89-90-91 miles an hour, man. That's hard to hit." That it is, Ronny. Especially after seeing a 99 mph fastball.

And then, there was the offensive comeback. The Nationals heart of the order was just that. Zimmerman, Dunn, and Willingham all had home runs, with Dunn and Willingham's back-to-back in the 6th to shoot the Nats ahead of the Bucks 4-2.

Washington never looked back, scoring another run in the bottom of the 8th. The Nats Clipp'd n Saved for Stephen Strasburg's first career win and Capps' 19th save on the season. A comeback that Capps desperately needed after blowing 3 of his last 4 save chances.

As a lifelong baseball fan, I have never been to a game that was so exciting with such an electric crowd. It is a game that not only Nationals fans, but baseball fans, will remember forever. Strasburg summed it up perfectly himself on MLB Network last night after the game. After he got 3 shaving cream pies to the face, he was asked if the cream stung. His response: "A little bit, but it's the greatest feeling in the world." For us, too, Stephen.

Ryans and Nyjers and Strasburgs: Oh my!

Happy Memorial Day to all of you out in Natstown, especially to the individuals and families that have dedicated their lives to protecting our wonderful country. It would be cliché to say this if it weren't so true, but every one of the 300 million of us owe you a debt of gratitude for your selflessness in service. Now I try to tackle the big news of the weekend without losing my cool (see disclaimer at bottom for an explanation).

My initial idea for today's post was going to be about how the Nats were seeing Roy Oswalt before the Nats offer some prospects (Chris Marrero and Chris Duncan, anyone?) and an obscene amount of guaranteed money for the Astros ace behind closed doors. Because let's face it, the Nats need starting pitching. But Oswalt got tossed in the 3rd inning for showing his displeasure for the home plate umpire's strike zone a bit too excessively. In fairness to Oswalt, it did appear that he was squeezed on a pitch to Adam Dunn, who rocked a 3 RBI double to right center later in the at-bat. He may have had a legitimate gripe. But after his short and unimpressive 4 run outing before the ejection, I was panicked thinking of a new blog post idea. But thanks to a 9 run 7th inning in a blowout and Mike Rizzo's Strasburgeriffic news, my job was pretty much done for me.

In the afternoon holiday game, the Nats simply exploded offensively, scoring 14 runs over the Astros, with 9 of them coming in the 7th inning. The Nats haven't scored that many runs in one inning since the team returned to the District. They did it on the efforts of Ryan Zimmerman and... Nyjer Morgan? What?

Coming into Memorial Day, Tony Plush (he earned the name back after this outing) was 2 out of his last 23. He acknowledged he was swinging a bat of ice and he needed to fix it. Everyone that watched him play saw his desperation to recover, which was making him even worse and more frustrated. A vicious cycle. So Jim Riggleman, like Nostradamus, said, Let's try Nyjer batting 2nd behind Guzzie. Well, it resulted in a 3 for 4 day, plus a walk, and 4 runs scored for Nyjer in that 2nd spot. This may be a fairly permanent change for the Nats in the coming weeks. Why change a good thing?

And then: Gentleman Zimm. Zimmerman had an OBP of 1.000 today. Basically, that pretty much sums up Zimm's night. 2 walks, plus 2 hits, including a big fly that landed him 3 of his 4 RBI. The stats speak more loudly than I can at the moment.

Then there's the news. STEPHEN STRASBURG WILL START JUNE 8TH! I would make that flash and blink and stuff, but I mean, every sports organization on the planet has already broken that story, so I won't beat it to death. But he probably is the best pitcher ever, right Curt Schilling? Of course, the game sold out in about an hour. Most of the tickets probably went to Phillies fans because of Stan Kasten. Or maybe not, I'm just speculating.

As a note of disclaimer: I'm fully aware that this post is unusually sarcastic, but my brain is still trying to process a Flyers loss, putting them down 2-0 in the series against the Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Finals after an incredibly dominating 3rd period performance. The frustration is working its way out in rancorous form. I'll get back on the wagon tomorrow with a legit post along the lines of "Seriously, why isn't Cristian Guzman the Nats every day 2nd baseman? I mean... really?!" Until then...

Nats Subdue The Freak

Tim Lincecum goes 4 2/3 innings, giving up 6 earned runs and 5 walks. It was an unpleasant display. The real problems started for Lincecum in the 5th.

Adam Kennedy stole his way around the bases after being walked in the 5th. Lincecum never looked to hold guys on base. Zimmerman stole a base as well after being walked.

Ian Desmond put the icing on the cake to The Freak's outing with 2 outs in the 5th. To take a term from Todd Wellenmeyer last night, Desmond had a "duck fart" single to right field that scored Zimm and Hammer, putting the Nats up 6-0. Lincecum got yanked here, and then Denny Bautista got them out of the jam after he threw a wild pitch that let Desmond get to 2nd.

Eventually the Nats added another run, and the Giants got 3, give the Nats a 7-3 victory and putting them at 24-23 on the year.

It was the kind of breakdown that you don't expect to see from the reigning 2 time NL Cy Young Award winner who is now 5-1 on the year. The likelihood of the Nats losing to a 5+ ERA guy like Wellenmeyer and losing to a less than 3 ERA guy like Lincecum were against the, but again, the team figured it out. This sort of success against a Cy Young winner may have been exactly what the Nats needed to get their stagnating offense a boost. In the 11 games prior to last night, the Nats had scored more than 5 runs only twice, one of them was in a 10-7 loss against the Mets.

On the other side, Atilano looked great until the 6th inning, where he looked like he almost gave up a bit. But never fear, Doug Slaten got them out of the inning. Storen gave up another run in his one inning appearance on a walk and a hit, but the run was not earned on an Ian Desmond error. Tyler Clippard had a great 2 inning outing to close the game where he gave up 1 hit and struck out two. He threw 19 pitches in 2 innings, and 14 of them were strikes.

The Nats looked great against a San Fran offense that has struggled all year. The Nats will try for the same results this afternoon at 3:45 in the east before they head down the coast to San Diego for a 3 game series against the NL West leading Padres.

Game 25: And We're Back

After a productive weekend enjoying friends and family, Capitol Baseball is back! Just in time to briefly sum up the weekend's series against the Marlins and for a Nats off day to travel home from their 6 game road trip.

I'm starting out with a summary focused on Ryan Zimmerman, because, well, wow. He came back for the Florida series, and while I had lots of great things to say about the defensive replacements AG and Willie Harris last week, Zimm proved why there is just no one who can replace him this weekend.

On Friday evening, I was the party pooper who insisted on watching most of the game while at a friends. Luckily, no one seemed to mind that I was distracted by baseball for 3 of the 5 hours that I was out. In this game, the Nationals won 7-1 for the 3rd win in a row and put them 3, yes THREE, games over .500. In his return, Ryan went 3 for 4 with 2 home runs and a double. Welcome back, Zimm! Scott Olsen got another win to put him at 2-1 and his ERA came all the way down to 4.35, a very respectable number for a starter. Especially since it was almost 12.00 after his first outing. He went 6 scoreless innings in the victory. And then, there was Saturday's game...

On Saturday, it was the same 7-1 score, but the Nats were on the losing end of this one. Stammen pitched only 4 innings, which for this team this season, that almost certainly means a loss. But Zimmerman still looked great going 2 for 4 with a double and two great defensive plays. This knocked the Nats back down to 13-11 and back to 3rd in the NL East.

In Sunday's game 25, the Nats, as they so often do, jumped out to an early lead. It makes the game exciting to watch and makes it easier on the pitchers. However, then Lannan has yet another break down on the mound in the 3rd inning. The Marlins scored 4 runs, 3 of them on a Hanley Ramirez home run to deep center. Lannan seemed to have trouble controlling and locating his pitches, with many of his pitches ending up in the zone. If you follow Lannan, you know that's disaster for him. He never recovered, and neither did his bullpen. Brian Bruney had another simply awful outing and the Nats lost 9-3.

The team has come back down to earth with two losses in a row, but are still 13-12 and are coming home for a 6 game homestand. But it'll be another 19 days before the Nats get another day off when the return to action on Tuesday. That's a long stretch, and hopefully the Clippard and Capps can hold up the bullpen for most of the time until then.

Finally, there are lots of guys in AAA and AA who are more than capable of eating some innings from the pen that would be much more effective than Brian Bruney has been since he joined the team. I know the Nats are paying him, $1.5 million this year, but at some point you have to cut your losses. I've been hard on Bruney this year, and will continue to be. I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong if he ends up figuring himself out. Until then, give English or another guy a shot to see what he can do.