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This weeks Nats Mailbag featured several comments that peaked our interest. The first issue is something that we have been discussing amongst ourselves and no doubt many Nats fans have taken notice as well. Tim Tolman, Nats third-base coach, has made some questionable decisions throughout the season. Perhaps the tipping point for me, was the decision to wave Bergmann home only to be thrown out at the plate and injure his hamstring. In a recent Nats Xtra or Nats Access, Bergmann talked about the play and the fact that he was surprised to be waved home even though he knew he wasn’t exactly what you would call “fast.”There have been numerous other decisions by the seemingly spontaneous Tolman. In a recent article, Tolman said that “you have to be aggressive” when making decisions to send runners home. I completely agree, however there is a difference between being aggressive and being unaware of your runner’s capabilities. There are times in games when we see Dmitri Young waved home on plays that speedster Felipe Lopez would have to hustle to get home. Anyone who has seen Dmitri run for a double, or that RBI triple, knows that he should probably only be waved home in instances when he can pretty much walk there. We love D, but let’s be honest about his speed. Isn’t the job of the third-base coach to know which players are quick, and which ones aren’t? As a former third-base coach, Manny Acta should perhaps consider having a long discussion with Tolman.

The other issue that grabbed our attention was a comment in the discussion of the Schneider/Flores debate. One person acknowledged that making Flores a starter may hinder his development, he also wrote, “Flores is a good player, but he is also a rookie who has never before played above Class A ball.”While it’s true that Flores had never played above Class A on Opening Day, he has now appeared in 64 games, taken 136 at bats and already recorded 3 home runs - 2 of which were game changing in Philly and Arizona. At what point are fans supposed to stop stating that he has never played above Class-A? Yes, he is a rookie. Yes, he has a lot to learn, but, more importantly, YES! he has not only played but proven himself a big-league catcher and should now be considered one. Flores has made the jump from Class A to Major League look far more seamless than many who go from AAA to Major League. As long as Flores continues to stay healthy, learns as much as he can, and works hard, the improvements are going to come and he is certainly part of the bright future of the Nationals.

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Reed Saxon

That long West Coast nightmare is over. Till next August.

What a miserable week for Nationals fans. Things were looking good after Houston. Chad’s Friday night defeat at Colorado set the pace for two more sweeps, bad defense, a shaky bullpen and close heart-wrenching losses throughout the rest of the roadtrip.

Wednesday’s loss comes - not at the fault of the spectacular (unexpected) offensive production from some of our guys — but rather at Shawn Hill’s somewhat shaky outting (seven runs — six earned — in 5 1/3 innings) and a bullpen who cruised through July with some of the best numbers in baseball.

Coupled with another important Felipe Lopez game-changing error, the Nats lost their 8-3 lead to be defeated 10-9 in 12 innings.

It’s hard to even write about Ayala giving up a 2 home-runs and a double in his appearance. We’re big fans…but it was not his day.

Colome (any word on what happened to him?), Rauch, Schroder and Cordero kept things under control. Saul Rivera entered in the 12th inning — giving up 2 hits and the game-winning sacrifice fly by Hillenbrand to Austin Kearns. Austin’s throw to Flores was just off and the Dodgers took to the field to celebrate the sweep.

What was good:
Robert Fick hit a homerun. Really.
Flores continues to pleasantly surprise us. He went 3 for 5.
Church also got back in the groove - going 4 for 5.
Schneider-Man played first base in the 12 inning!
The Nats are finally back home where we can put a stop to this streak (oh, and boo Barry Bonds).

And since we’re all angry and defeated after this collapse, Steph sent us a timely e-mail this morning to cheer us up.

You’ve gotta have hope!

Musn’t sit around and mope.
Nuthin’ half as bad as it may appear,

wait’ll next year and hope.

Another dissapointing close-enough-to-win loss. And here’s the thing. We’ve been frustrated with Felipe Lopez all season. But there’s a difference between frustration and downright - please don’t make me have to cheer for this person. With Felipe, it’s just frustration. We’re upset because we do believe he has potential, but he continues to dissapoint us….not just at the plate. The former All-Star talks about his desire to win a Gold Glove someday but we have yet to see that kind of energy and purpose on the field. But lately, in addition to struggling at the plate — he’s been ending important momentum building rallies and making costly errors.

“There’s a lot of inconsistency in his approach. He gets into a good groove and then he falls back into the other one, just a down period.” — Manager Manny Acta

This is not to say that we’ve given up on Felipe. In fact, perhaps the opposite. I told the girls we should all be pulling for someone who really needs it…they’ll let you know who they choose, but my choice is F-Lop. It worked a little bit on Monday night (he had a hit and a diving stop), but I fell asleep and our Short Stop fell apart. Same sort of thing Tuesday night — started the game with two hits (thanks to hustling) and a stolen base. But later, he grounded into a double play and made the 7th inning error that changed the game.

Frustrated but pulling for him to get out of this. He’s my pull-for-him-like-crazy project for the rest of 07.

The Good Stuff?

How about Tony Batista’s pinch hit homerun?

Saul Rivera continues to dominate hitters reaching his 70th appearance of the season.Bergmann wasn’t perfect, but we can live with 3 runs on 6 hits in 6 innings — if you forgive his error, not a bad appearance at all.

“It was a battle the whole time. I really didn’t have good command of my off-speed stuff, but the fastball was there when I needed to go to it,” Bergmann said. “The slider was not very good. My curveball was up. I’m just not hitting my spots with those pitches, which were treating me really well during my rehab assignments. But the fastball was there and I’m very happy that I had that.” - Jason Bergmann

What Else?

Fall ball for a newly-clean-shaven Jesus Flores!

A feature story on Manny Acta by Tim Brown

A timely debate on Felipe by Barry at Nationals Journal

Bob & Don want fans to rally around a Gold Glove bid for Austin Kearns. We’re game.

Three homeruns just wasn’t enough for the Nationals to hold off the Dodgers last night. Mike Bacsik gave up 2 of his 5 runs in the first inning to put the Nats in a quick hole. The Nats weren’t giving up that easy though. Dmitri Young started off the second inning with a bang as he homered to deep left. Austin Kearns was up next and singled to bring up Wily Mo. Pena hit a home run that scored Austin Kearns, bringing the score to 3-2. Unfortunately, Pena fouled a ball off of the top of his foot during that at bat and hobbled around the bases to the dugout, where he remained for the rest of the night. Ryan Church was brought in to replace him. Not wanting to be left out of the fun, Ryan Zimmerman also hit a solo shot to deep center in the top of the 5th, which would be the last run of the night for the Nats.AP Photo/Mark Avery

Bacsik, who had a tough night, said later that he didn’t feel good all night. In true fashion though, he would not use that as an excuse for a rough performance. Jesus Colome and Ray King combined for an inning, while Luis Ayala and Jon Rauch pitched an inning each. All four of these relievers were able to hold off the Dodgers for the rest of the game, but the Nats bats were unable to get a couple more runs.

Noteworthy Nats News:

Yahoo Fantasy Baseball publishes their top 3 Hot/Not Batters and Pitchers every day. Today, Ryan Zimmerman was listed as a hot batter, and sadly Chad Cordero was listed as a ‘Not’ Pitcher. Hopefully Ryan keeps up the hot swing and Chief can work on his issues and make it into the ‘Hot’ column.

Jason Simontacchi is out for the season. The pitcher has returned to St. Louis to determine if his elbow soreness is tendonitis or something more serious, such as the bone spurs Jim Bowden talked about. Let’s hope that whatever it is, Jason is able to make a full recovery and come on strong for what will surley be one of Major Leagues best pitching competitions in March!AP Photo/Mark Avery

As you can see, there were certainly some interesting photos from last nights game.

Another great discussion at Nationals Journal…

Chief, Ayala and Rauch…and tons of insight from Nationals fans.

What do we want in 8 and 9?

With no strong desire to write about those Rockies games…(felt like last year’s long August roadtrip - all over again)…

I wanted to draw your attention to this instead. This month’s Washingtonian features a photo-set of four of our Washington Nationals entitled “Wait Till Next Year.”

The Nationals are nearly done building a sparkling new stadium. They hope to build a winning team around these players.

Matthew Girard’s sepia-toned photographs of Ryan Zimmerman, Dmitri Young, Brian Schneider and Chad Cordero are worth picking up the magazine this month.

Hi, this is Doug, I live in Cincy right now (moving to DC for good in September) and I recently attended the Columbus Clippers v. Louisville Bats game last night in the beautiful Louisville Slugger stadium. No, seriously this stadium was amazing…it even had a Merry-Go-Round in the outfield for the kids to ride and watch the game as they ride around in their Louisville Bat painted horses in circles.

As far as the baseball went, it was a great pitching matchup between Billy Traber and Phil Dumatrait, two guys who have been in the majors this year and both have great stuff. Traber gave up a long home run to Aaron Herr on the 1st pitch right after my buddy Ryan (who is a Reds fan) stated that Herr has no shot to make it to the majors. We had pretty good seats so I like to think that he heard him and was proving him wrong. As far as Nats go, Langerhans looked pretty bad at the plate going 0-3 (shocker i know).

There was a good surprise for me though. I consider myself a pretty intelligent Nats fan and know a good amount of our AAA players. Jonathon Albaladejo is not a name that has ever really come up before as a serious prospect. He impressed me more than anybody making some of the Reds players (including the Reds best prospect Jay Bruce) look silly chasing pitches at the plate. Although he did give up a 420 foot home run to Joey Votto (the second best Reds hitting prospect) he really had great stuff for 2 innings. His numbers back it up too: 12 games in AAA, 21 IP, .86 ERA, 16/7 K/BB, .151 BAA….his numbers in AA were very solid too. He’s only 24 and he could be another quality arm to add to the already loaded bullpen we have.

The best part of the night had to be the minor league atmosphere though. After attending so many Major League games, I had forgotten how much more laid back the atmosphere at a minor league game is. It helped that the San Diego “Famous” Chicken was in attendance too and made for a fun night. In the bottom of the 3rd, the Bats let him coach 1st base in which hilarity ensued including holding up posters to Billy Traber, mocking of umpires and Clippers players. He even got the entire Clippers team into his act by starting a water balloon fight with a Clippers coach and then the entire Clippers team coming out of the dugout and nailing the giant chicken with water balloons of their own. Good times and something that we would never get at a night at RFK or any other Major League park. All in all, it was a great experience getting back to the fun of the game, and if you are ever in the Louisville area, make sure you check out Louisville Slugger stadium, one of the best places to catch a fun AAA game.

While the Nats are on the road, the girls and I decided to head south a little bit and check out the single A Potomac Nationals. If you’ve been there, you know that single A ball seems like a different world. We experienced, perhaps the craziest night in baseball we have seen in a long time.The P-Nats were able to come up with a 5-1 win, but not before some very exciting/interesting baseball. The first 3 innings were like clockwork for the Myrtle Beach Pelicans. Three Nats up, three Nats down. These boys were swinging at everything that came their way. A little tutorial from Lenny about patience would have done them some good. However, in the 5th inning, things got going. The Nats’ bats came alive and they scored 5 runs, which was all they would need for the night.

Some interesting notes on our Single A experience:

1. There are only two umpires! While one is charged with overseeing home plate and calling balls and strikes, the other is left with the entire field. The helped explain some of the questionable calls we saw throughout the game.

2. It’s a ‘wild’ game. We saw more wild pitches last night that we have all season with the Wash. Nationals.

3. Speaking of wild pitches, #43 Thissen, the 3rd baseman who looks eerily like Austin Kearns, saw a wild pitch that he felt was aimed at his head. So he promptly headed towards the mound and the benches cleared. I have never seen the benches clear so fast in my life…and the bullpen even got in on the action! Luckily, no punches were thrown. However there were several questionable pitches following the incident.

4. Apparently it doesn’t matter where you stand as long as one foot is in the batter’s box. The P-Nats’ second baseman, Rogelstad, was consistently standing with his back foot out of the box.

5. Pop fly’s drop! We probably saw around 5 or 6 very catchable pop flys drop to the ground. Some were even in a guys glove before they found the grass! I was amazed to see these players unable to get such easy outs.

6. Where is Ross Detwiler? We didn’t see him anywhere during the game.

Like the Potomac Nationals, our Washington Nationals had a 5-1 lead heading into the 9th inning. The girls and I comfortably walked into IHOP confident Chief would get the job done. Four runs is a good cushion right? WRONG! Chad gave up a single and home run in his first two pitches, yet Manny kept him in. Chief had some problems the night before, and it seemed that with a 4 run lead, Manny could have given him the night off. Chief would finally be sent to the bench, but not before the bases were loaded with no outs. Rauch was brought in and put in a difficult situation. With the bases loaded, we expect that a run is going to come in, but we also expect him to at least get an out or two. Unfortunately, the Nats watched their 5-1 lead evaporate into a 5-6 loss. Also, Hill was given a no decision despite another spectacular performance.

Either Don Sutton or Bob Carpenter posed this interesting question during the Nats’ Thursday night defeat of the Astros. There is no denying that this Washington Nationals team has something special going on in the clubhouse. Anytime there are shots into the dugout, we always see players chatting with each other and having a good time. Whenever someone hits a homerun, or gets an RBI the whole team gets jazzed about it. This may seem like this is the way it is supposed to be in baseball, but if you look around at some other teams, that’s not the case. However, we’ve got it goin’ on. In Ryan Zimmerman’s weekly column in ‘The Examiner,” he talked about the toll that road trips can take on players. At the end he said that he doesn’t mind going on the road too much because, “On the road you get a chance to just hang out with your teammates.” Zimmerman clearly enjoys the company of his teammates, and they enjoy his company. All of the time they spend just “hanging out” off the field is building a relationship on the field, whether they are aware of it or not. It is this great chemistry that allows plays like Ronnie Belliard’s flip to Felipe Lopez. It creates a camaraderie on the field that everyday the guys are out there to do battle for each other. It is something that can’t be taught and it’s something that every baseball manager probably wants on his team. It’s those little things that can make the difference in a close game. Even newcomer Wily Mo Pena has looked like he’s been in DC all season. Zimmerman ended his column by letting us all know what we probably already know: that these guys really enjoy going to the ball park together.Photo Credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais 

I highly recommend checking out this very important discussion about Brian Schneider and Jesus Flores at Nationals Journal. It’s a tough one but we’ve all been thinking about it a lot this season as we’ve watched Flores meet and exceed our expectations.