The Beginning of the End

Wily Mo Pena-Mo-nium's anticipated trip to the DL is a reality, and the team has recalled human doorstop Erik Johnny Estrada from his rehab assignment. With that, here are the position players on the Active Roster as the Nats open the "second half" of the season in Atlanta tonight:

Catchers

23 Johnny Estrada

3 Jesus Flores

16 Paul Lo Duca

53 Wil Nieves

Infielders

10 Ronnie Belliard

5 Kory Casto

15 Cristian Guzman

2 Felipe Lopez

4 Pete Orr

21 Dmitri Young

Outfielders

1 Willie Harris

25 Austin Kearns

29 Ryan Langerhans

Too many "catchers"! Too few outfielders!!! Even if you count Casto and Orr as corner outfield utility guys, we're one or two bad hammies away from seeing the "LF Dmitri Young Experiment" put into action before our weeping, paper bag-covered eyes!!1!

Four Things to Watch for in the Second Half: lightning bugs, four-leaf clovers, loose change, September 28th.

But hey, because misery loves company (and makes a mean cocktail) be sure to check out Misschatter's BotB Extravaganza!

All-Star Thoughts

I spent most of my Tuesday night and some of my Wednesday morning watching the All-Star game. The plan was I would tivo the first hour of the game and them watch from the beginning so I could skip all the commercials. By about 1:00am I had burned through all my buffer and I was watching real time. Here are some of my thoughts:

First off, I had quite a few personal rooting interests in this game. I play fantasy baseball with Dave and Nate and this year I have a whopping NINE all-stars on my team. It would have been ten if I had held on to Joe Crede. Despite all that talent, I'm in 9th place in a 10 team league at the break. This leads me to Uggla, my starting second baseman.

Uggla just looked lost out there. He's the only all-star to ever record three errors in the midsummer classic, two of them to start the tenth inning. To be fair that third error really wasn't his fault. The ball took a very wicked hop and he kept it in front of him. I've heard of golfers getting a case of the yips but I've never seen it happen to a ball-player before. I really hope this doesn't put him in the tank for the second half of the season.

Despite Uggla's troubles, there was some spectacular defense in this game. When the AL loaded the bases in the tenth with nobody out the NL, specifically Rockies' pitcher Aaron Cook, managed to get not one but two infield grounders to get the force out at home. Major props to our own Cristian Guzman for one of those outs. Gooz was playing out of position at 3rd base for the first time in his major league career. Also some love for Miguel Tejada who made a great scoop and throw to first to get the final out to end the tenth. Nate McLouth's outfield assist in the 11th was another defensive gem.

I love that both coaches had to empty their benches. I always get a little extra thrill when the guys from my team get in the game and seeing as this is supposed to be for the fans I think everyone should play. The fact that they used every pitcher was even better. Part of me wanted to go to sleep but another part of me wanted to see Evan Longoria come out to pitch the 16th.

Finally, I think the winning league/home field advantage in the World Series result has to be scrapped. It was a nice idea to try and get some impact behind the All-Star Game but it failed miserably. Home field advantage should go to the team with the best record, period. What is arguably the biggest advantage in sports should not be decided by the running ability of the third string catcher in the bottom of the 15th inning.

The Best Shortstop $1.4M Can Buy?

According to SI.com, the FBI/MLB investigation into Jim Bowden and Jose Rijo is centered on the 2006 signing of then 16-year old Dominican shortstop Esmailyn "Smiley" Gonzalez, and the attending $1.4M signing bonus. Another raft of unnamed sources suggest that Bowden and/or Rijo and others may have skimmed some of the signing bonus money to line their own pockets.

Former Nats WaPo beat writer Barry Svrluga did a must-read series on baseball in the Dominican Republic in late 2006. He described a system where major league teams are held captive by sometimes unscrupulous coach/agents known as buscones. The buscones are the conduit through which talented young Dominican ballplayers reach the minor leagues. In return they collect up to 50% of the players' signing bonuses and kickbacks to coaches, agents and academy directors, if not commonplace, are hardly shocking. The Gonzalez signing was Washington's first major foray into this marketplace and a highly publicized feather in the cap of the front office.

Even given the widely acknowledged quasi-corruption in the Dominican play acquisition system, the theory outlined in the SI piece suffers from at least one serious problem: Esmailyn Gonzalez and his parents say that he received every dime he was owed under the contract. From the article:

[Gonzalez] says he received the entire sum he signed for. He also tells SI.com that he paid his buscon, Basilio Vizcaino, and his agent, Rob Plummer, their due percentages and that he has not been cheated out of any money. "Gracias a Dios [Thanks be to God], that didn't happen to me. The people I trusted didn't cheat me."[...] Gonzalez's mother, Ana Mercedes Marte, says she received the full amount of the bonus in Dominican pesos and remembers people stopping by their house to collect their money for their role in coaching her son.

There are certainly ways to spin the above quotes. The Gonzalez family is relatively poor and uneducated. Would they even notice the absence of part of the bonus money, considering the acknowledged payouts and the conversion from US dollars to Dominican pesos? Perhaps not. Nevertheless, when the subject of the article flatly contradicts the premise of the article, that's hardly building from a rock-solid journalistic or legal foundation.

I have a few other quibbles with the piece. The author suggests that the Nats overpaid for Smiley, and justified that excess by overhyping him as a 5-tool player. In support the article quotes an anonymous executive from another club, who says Gonzalez "doesn't run all that well, [and] has an average arm." A player evaluation dispute? Stop the presses! And did the Nats overpay? Sure they did, and they all but said so at the time. The Gonzalez signing was about sending a message to the buscones as much as it was about acquiring the next great Dominican shortstop. A little context and historical perspective would go a long way.

For example: The overpaid, overhyped Esmailyn Gonzalez had a league average OPS in 33 games with the Gulf Coast League Nationals as a 17 year old last season. In 15 GCL games this season he's hitting 397/462/552, out OPSing the league by more than 300 points. And he's 8-11 in stolen bases on his young career.

Finally, the article recounts a meeting at "the exclusive Capital Grille steakhouse in Washington, D.C.". I've been to the Capital Grille and if I've been there, it ain't terribly exclusive.

This is not a defense of Jim Bowden or Jose Rijo. If they, or anyone else, skimmed so much as a dollar of this kid's money, they deserve whatever terrible deserts they get. This is a critique of sloppy journalism, which is even less forgivable when the issues involved are hardly matters of life and death. Anonymous sources and insufficient context make for bad reporting. Bad reporting forces me into the position of having to defend Jim Bowden. And I hate defending Jim Bowden.

I Hate Defending Jim Bowden

I am not a Jim Bowden fan. I firmly believe that the few things he does well are outweighed by the many, many things he does poorly. Yet I find myself sometimes defending Jim Bowden only because so many of his detractors refuse to settle for highlighting his reasonably damning record, and launch into fits of hyperbole that border on the invocation of Godwin's Law.

I hate defending Jim Bowden, but I also hate anonymous sources in sports journalism. ESPN is reporting that Bowden and Assistant GM Jose Rijo are being investigated by the FBI and MLB for activities connected with the signing of international free agents. The only sourced quotes in the entire piece come from Jim Bowden. I freely admit that there are issues and circumstances where granting anonymity to sources sheds light on issues of national concern and advances public discourse. I just happen to believe that ESPN doesn't cover those issues, even on the front page.

If Jim Bowden is involved in a kickback scheme with scouts, agents and international players then he's an awful person and deserves to be fired. But that really has nothing to do with any other aspect of his job. The gap between being a pompous, irritating, generally bad GM and being a felon is larger than the gap between being an amateur sports blogger and a Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist. If Bowden were to be mixed-up in criminal activity then he should be axed immediately, even if he was a Billy Beane-like dealmaker and all-around swell feller.

Modified from M. Layton/Getty Images

In the meantime, until someone is willing to put a name and an accusation together in the public record let's all please step back from the precipice and ease up on the hyperventilating. The truth will out soon enough. In the meantime, brother can you spare a first baseman?

UPDATE: Pretty strong denial from JimBo and JoRijo. Doesn't sound like there's going to any gray area here when things shake out.

Ask an Idiot Blogger

From Marc Fisher's WaPo blog post about the Nationals' abyssmal TV ratings, comes the following claim:

"[A]fter 33 years without baseball, the sport is a mystery or meaningless to a huge number of people in this region."

Seeing as how a huge number of people in this region are originally from other regions, including many from regions that have long and robust baseball traditions, I have a hard time believing that it was just the long absence of a major league team from DC that rendered the local populace so ill-informed. Nevertheless, NTP is willing to step up and fill your knowledge hole, with a new occasional feature we're calling "Ask an Idiot Blogger".

As our tagline declares, there are three of us, we're idiots, and we're prepared, when necessary, to share our opinions on baseball and life in Washington, DC. Whether it's basic baseball, like "Why can't that nice man take his stick with him when he runs around touching the white squares?" or something more Nats-centric, as in "Under what system for assessing intrinsic value is Paul LoDuca worth $5 bucks, let alone $5 million?" you ask, we'll answer.

But NTP has always prided itself on being more (or less) than just a baseball blog, so feel free to broaden your sphere of inquiry. Dave is a gadgeteer and business traveller extraordinaire, so he can field all your travel, leisure and technology questions. Watson is the resident media guru and gourmand, so he's got that covered. I'm more of a big picture guy, so if you've ever really wanted an honest answer to the eternal question "Why does God hate me?" hit me up.

Contact info is available under Nate's profile off to the right, and your question will be routed to the appropriate NTPer for research and a public response whenever we get around to it. At a bare minimum, we promise to be more informative than Bill Ladson's latest mailbag. To get the ball rolling:

Q: "Why can't that nice man take his stick with him when he runs around touching the white squares?"

A: "He has been informed by his PO that it would be considered a violation of the terms of his parole."

See how easy that is?

Dennis Franz: Calvin Klein model

VINDICATION! I couldn't be any happier for me Cristian! It's been a long, loooong 4 years, but my steadfast faith in the undeniable power of GUZMANIA! has been richly rewarded. Yes, SS Cristian Guzman is the 2008 All-Star representative of the worst team in major league baseball. I may plotz.

Tip o' the cap to Basil's comment for the title and the graphic.

Tonight's the Night!

No, not like that. (Not like that, either.) But tonight IS the last night you can vote to get Cristian Guzman on to the 2008 NL All-Star Team!

Sure, he's not having a powerhouse offensive season like Hanley Ramirez. And he hasn't rebounded from scandal like Miguel Tejada. And he's not a "good defensive shortstop" as that phrase is commonly understood. But darn it all, somebody's got to represent the Nationals at the All-Star Game.

So it's either Guzie or Jon Rauch. Folks, I've been to Yankee Stadium and I'm here to tell you: Big Jon simply will not fit in Yankee Stadium. That ballpark is a relic of a simpler time, when Americans were smaller and folks of Rauch's stature were mocked as circus freaks until they snapped, rampaged through whatever hick town the carnival happened to be passing through, and were ultimately put down by the local authorities. Come on, you've seen King Kong (the good one, not the Jack Black version.) You know Jon Rauch on the loose in New York City can only end badly. Do you want Jesus Colome closing out games in the second half of the season? Do you?

Guzman in '08: If You Were on the All-Star Ballot, He'd Vote For You!

Image from Getty Images