We woke up bright and early this morning for day two of our spring training trip. It was pretty cloudy and a little chilly for practice today, but we arrived at the stadium to see the players take the field for the morning drills. Everyone seemed wide-awake and ready to train upon arrival. We were greeted with several good mornings and smiles. The biggest news of the day was the arrival of catcher Jesus Flores. He got in last night after dealing with a week of Visa issues. Turns out he didn’t get the correct form he needed for the Embassy in enough time to process the information before spring training started. Regardless, he is here and already working hard. Better yet, the Nats finally have a catcher on the roster who can catch full bullpen sessions.

Elijah Dukes arrived shortly before a majority of the team. He again continued to surpass off field expectations and was gracious with fans, taking pictures and signing autographs. Despite the initial concerns we’ve had about Dukes, we have been impressed with what we’ve seen thus far. We asked for a photo with him, and he willingly obliged.

We watched the group warm ups again and really felt the positive energy. After the full squad warm-up we separated again to watch the different fields. I watched the catchers throw long balls. Lo Duca and Flores played catch for quite a while. Estrada was throwing some simple tosses also.

Yesterday we realized that the fun group to watch were the guys working with Coach Aponte. Kristen and I headed over to check out their drills. The pitchers were working on fielding plays again this morning, focusing on covering first base, and receiving the throw from second. Again Ray King and Ryan Wagner were comical with their joking around. At one point Ryan Wagner was supposed to throw the ball to second, instead it landed in the outfield. His response, “Can I get some effort here, at least it had good movement.” During the drills if a guy messed up, they stayed put and did it again until they correctly executed the play. This proved a bit difficult for Chad Cordero this morning. The group was practicing a situational drill where the bases are loaded and the play is at home. The batter hits a short hop, which the pitcher is supposed to recover and make the play. Chad bobbled the first ball, so he had to remain on the mound and do it again. However, when he missed the second ball, Ryan Wagner, kidding and giving Chad some friendly grief exclaimed, “You’re a closer. This is a save situation; the bases are loaded. You just blew the game.” After Wagner was kidded for not making another play, he stated, “Hey we’re not first basemen.”

While Kristen and Stephanie were watching the bullpen crew, Lindsey went over to watch the infielders get some practice in. Manny and several other coaches were hitting grounders to the position players. After the initial warm up, they ran double play drills and a drill to practice the throw from short and third to first. Overall Zimmerman looked very aggressive, but when a ball got past him early on during the drill one coach yelled “base hit!” Zimmerman teased “That one was Felipe’s!” Later in the session the group worked on fly balls. I have to admit that I was a little nervous for Nick and Austin, but both looked great and very comfortable being back out on the field together. One of the first balls Manny hit went into shallow left with Pena, Zimmerman and Lopez all going for the ball. Manny joked around yelling, “It’s a triangle! It’s the Bermuda Triangle!” Manny was encouraging the guys to really call their ball, and no one was more excited about this drill than Ronnie Belliard and Dmiriti Young. They both dramatically waved off their teammates and screamed, “I got it!” loud enough for central Florida to hear them.

I was able to watch Chief, Patterson and King’s bullpen sessions. All three looked good, I noticed that Chad’s fastball looks very nice. Kristen watched both Bergmann and Rivera’s sessions. Bergmann was noticeably ready to get his session started, and Saul looked great.

Batting practice today was good also. We watched Josh Smoker, Tyler Clippard, and Jon Rauch throw today. Clippard and Rauch both looked like they had good stuff. We watch the catchers hit today also. Flores seemed like he was trying to make up for lost time and hit for a while. He hit a couple would be home runs and looked pretty solid. Estrada hit also and looked seasoned.

After two days of watching practices one thing has really stuck out, and that is Felipe Lopez’s work ethic. He is always hustling and looks very focused during drills. He is in the group with Ryan Zimmerman, Dmitri Young, Ronnie Belliard and Aaron Boone. While Lopez is involved in the conversations, he never stops swinging a bat and working on the little things that will improve his hitting. It’s clear that he is energized, focused and ready for the 2008 season.

Check out our photo album from today.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 7:25 pm and is filed under Road Trips, Spring Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.