Alex Bregman’s link to the Nats started decades before he was born!

The Washington Senators had a rich history of baseball in the nation’s capital for over 70 years.

The Bregman family lived in Washington D.C. before the Washington Senators were founded in 1901. His great-grandfather, Bo Bregman, was a boxing promoter and later became part of the ownership group with George Preston Marshall that moved the Boston Redskins to Washington, D.C. to become the Washington Redskins. Bo’s son, Stan Bregman, was chief legal counsel for the Washington Senators. He was also part of the recruitment to get Ted Williams to manage the Washington Senators in the late-1960s and successfully did that. Also in the 1960s, Stan’s son, Sam, was born. He would attend Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and later play baseball at University of New Mexico. His son, Alex, would take the family’s love of baseball to the next level.

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Several Nats’ roster moves made. Some expected — some not!

All MLB teams had to add back their 60-day IL players to their 40-man roster yesterday. For teams without open 40-man spaces, they had to make room on their rosters. The Washington Nationals made several moves yesterday that began with the Baltimore Orioles announcing they claimed pitcher Thaddeus Ward who the Nats had placed on waivers, and the O’s snatched him up. Also gone are Joey Meneses, Michael Rucker, and Ildemaro Vargas.

The players reinstated from the 60-day IL were: Joan Adon, Cade Cavalli, Josiah Gray, and Mason Thompson. Once Spring Training starts, players can be placed back on the 60-day IL like Gray who is recovering from UCL elbow surgery and will miss most or all of the 2025 season.

Most roster moves were expected — although some were not expected at this time. Technically, the Nationals did not need to clear 40-man spaces with the DFAs, but they did this housecleaning, sooner than later to open up four spots on the roster.

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Jacob Young, a Gold Glove (finalist) was the bright spot in a poor Nats defense

With no spin on the Washington Nationals defense, it was awful overall in the 2024 season. The Nats ranked as the 5th worst defensive team in baseball, and that includes having the best defender in all of baseball with Jacob Young in center field. Young was named a finalist for the Gold Glove Award, and was robbed in the final vote. By the way, in Nats history, only Ryan Zimmerman in 2009 and Adam LaRoche in 2012 had won Gold Gloves previously.

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The Nats and Juan Soto need to tango

The phrase, “Takes Two to Tango“, actually came from a song that was written and composed in 1952 by Al Hoffman and Dick Manning, and sung by Pearl Bailey in 1952. Since, it has been used in a lot of sports idioms. LeBron James recently said,  “In free agency it takes 2 to tango.” Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo has said the same before James, and what it means is that the team and player must both agree to “dance” to get a deal done. So here we are at the first weekend of Juan Soto‘s free agency, and contemplating who will be on Soto’s dance card.

While most think it is all about the money for Soto, there are always other factors such as team history, current status as a winner, taxes, friends, and family. The Nats have several advantages if the money is equal as the team has a history with Soto, building towards being a winner, reasonable taxes, and Soto’s brother, Elian Soto, is a minor leaguer with the Nationals. Maybe that won’t matter like it did with James and his ability to play with his son, Bronny, but it is a fact that the Soto brothers can only be together with one team — the Nationals. If you have that sense of déjà vu here, yes, the Nats had a minor leaguer named Bryan Harper, and he did not cause Bryce Harper to stay.

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For some fans, it is never enough!

Say what you want about the frontrunner fans in Philadelphia. That team went through 10, yes 10 consecutive non-winning seasons from 2011-2020, even with Bryce Harper on their roster for 2019 and 2020, and they came back to the ballpark as soon as they signed Harper. Their attendance skyrocketed from 2.158 million to 2.728 million, year over year. They didn’t wait for winning. They were there to support ownership that spent “stupid money” and signed Harper which was really smart money.

The money spent on Harper at a bargain price of only $25.38 million per year was paid off two times over with that attendance increase. That was an increase of nearly 570,000 and that equated to 7,000 more fans for every game that season. The last two years they went over 3 million in attendance.

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One month into the offseason and no clarity on the Nats’ plans

Today marks exactly five years from the day the Washington Nationals hoisted the World Series championship trophy. Since then, the Nats have started their offseasons on the same day as their regular season ended. Hopefully, the future has meaningful Octobers for the Nats.

Not much is going on in Natstown right now. They had already extended all of their coaches and left little to do publicly on their MLB calendar. All the baseball talk right now is about the World Series, managerial changes with other teams, and free agent speculation. In Washington, D.C., the talk is mostly about the first place Washington Commanders football team, and the beginning of the NBA and NHL seasons.

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Major League Baseball Expansion: A Look at Potential Cities

As we move to Game 3 of the World Series, the Yankees and Dodgers feature the two biggest markets in baseball. There are smaller markets that have been identified as spots for Major League Baseball (MLB) expansion. The league expanded to 30 teams in 1998 with the addition of the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and that came four years after MLB established an expansion committee. As the sport continues to grow in popularity, there is ongoing speculation about potential future expansion cities. While no definitive decisions have been made, several cities have been mentioned as strong candidates for new MLB franchises. Some think a 32-team league will happen, and others hope they go to 34 teams.

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Yankees’ fans can sort of thank the Nats for Juan Soto

First off, happy 26th birthday and feliz cumpleaños to Juan Soto — and good luck in the World Series. While the Washington Nationals did not trade Soto directly to the Bronx Bombers, they traded him to San Diego, and the Padres flipped him to New York. By extension, the Nats made it possible for Soto to land in Yankee Stadium.

By trading Soto, the Nats didn’t repeat the mistake they made in 2018 by wishing on a star that Bryce Harper would stay with the team that originally signed and developed him. All of Harper’s perfusive love for D.C. guaranteed nothing. Wishful thinking with the heart rarely works when you’re talking $100’s of millions.

When general manager Mike Rizzo made a reversal of courses and traded Juan Soto, a little over two years ago, Riz saw the future and made the absolute right move. Second guessing him is commonplace for all of the armchair quarterbacks in the cheap seats, although not one has given a detailed plan that made sense except the retort, “Pay the man.” Well, they tried, as the team offered a sum with Soto’s previous earnings that would have topped more money than Ted Lerner paid to buy the Washington Nationals in 2006.

Sure, Rizzo and the Lerner ownership group were viciously criticized for trading Soto — and some are still crowing about this. In my opinion, Rizzo was right then and now — Soto was traversing his road to free agency no matter what record-setting offer was made to him. Okay, he would probably take no deferrals on $750 million today — but the Yankees aren’t doing that. They might follow the same script that snagged Arson Aaron Judge away from San Francisco.

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Robot Umpiring: The Future of Baseball?

The advent of advanced technology has revolutionized many aspects of sports, and baseball is no exception. This was discussed at length on TalkNats this week, and here we will focus on one area that has seen significant discussion and experimentation in the use of robots as umpires. While the idea may seem futuristic, robot umpiring is a topic that has gained traction in recent years.

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Check swing video technology debuted last night

Technology has come a long way since the Fred Flintstone days. Yabba, dabba, dooo, baseball now has the technological advances to challenge just about anything — but MLB is still only using limited video challenges for now, and not using all of the technology that could be implemented.

Why not get the game right? With legalized sports gambling, there is a lot riding on the honor code with umpires. And don’t fans deserve as close as we can get to zero-defect umpiring to get the correct calls?

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