by SaoMagnifico
We are repeating the initiative we started in 2021 (Donate Your Unused Red Carpet Rewards Points to the Nationals Youth Academy) and repeated in 2022 (The Kids Do Love It – Donate Your Unused RCR Points), collecting items from the RCR program to donate to the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy that supports scholar athletes from under-served communities.
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The Washington Nationals announced their 2024 Major League coaching staff today, and the biggest surprise was the coaches who were retained. Both pitching coach Jim Hickey, and hitting coach Darnell Coles had their contracts extended after the Nats posted a 5.02 team ERA placing them only in front of the Rockies in the NL, and the team was last in offensive home runs in the NL. While some optimists could look at areas where the team was good in pitching and hitting, and use a team in a rebuild as an excuse for the deficiencies — then why were other coaches not retained? In actuality, there needed to be changes in the coaching staff, and maybe there were reasons to keep Hickey and Coles. The addition of Miguel Cairo at bench coach is a move that will add a wealth of experience to the coaching staff from both the development and coaching side.
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The GM meetings started on Tuesday and were supposed to have concluded today in Scottsdale, Arizona, until a bad case of stomach flu hit dozens of attendees. At first they thought it might have been food poisoning — but once it was determined to be a virus, MLB shut it down on Wednesday. Today’s schedule is really for the benefit of registered MLBPA agents, and their meetings will be conducted on ZOOM calls.
Yesterday, in the early afternoon in Scottsdale, Nats’ GM Mike Rizzo spoke in MLB Network and then to the assembled media in two separate sessions. There was really nothing new from Rizzo, rather he just reiterated what he has been saying since the end of the season that he will be working on acquiring starting pitching, bullpen help, and a middle of the order power bat.
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Didn’t the 1971 Washington Senators just win the World Series? To see two of baseball’s Top-7 overall prospects donning Senators jerseys has to bring back some visions of grandeur. The 2024 Washington Nationals will almost certainly be tapping in on the two top outfield prospects, Dylan Crews (No. 4) and James Wood (No. 7), in the upcoming season — and maybe one of them makes the Opening Day roster.
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The New York Times newsletter had an interesting article Parade of Strikeouts recently. The article talks about the positive of the recent rule changes and concludes that more changes are needed. So lets discuss.
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There are only 30 GM jobs in MLB, and it makes it one of the most coveted jobs in the world. In the new-age era of moneyball-to-analytics, the GM’s job spills over on many teams to almost make some of the managers into puppets — with the GMs pulling the strings. There are GMs that have overrides on lineup configurations and when to pull a starting pitcher. Mister Geppetto just has to be smart enough to know which strings to pull. Modern day managers don’t even realize how much their jobs have changed since the days when a manager like Davey Johnson was doing his own rudimentary form of analytics in the dugout — a first for a manager.
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The Washington Nationals made their promotion official with Eddie Longosz taking on the position of Vice President and Assistant General Manager of Player Development and Administration in an announcement by Nationals President of Baseball Operations and General Manager, Mike Rizzo.
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The World Series could end ended (updated) tonight, and we could are officially be in the offseason tomorrow. Free agency is looming right around the corner — and will really get going at the Winter Meetings in Nashville on December 4. That is just 33 days from now.
Washington Nationals’ owner Mark Lerner said that he will leave the free agent decisions to his general manager Mike Rizzo. With that said, it looks like the onus is on Rizzo to do what he needs to do to improve the team and sign free agents. Yesterday, Jim Bowden of The Athletic put out his predictions on contract values and length for free agents as well as landing spots. He has the Nats as possible landing spots for Jeimer Candelario, Harrison Bader, and Jack Flaherty. The Nats do not need Bader given that the team has Jacob Young as well as top prospects Dylan Crews and James Wood. The Nats priorities are starting pitching and a power bat.
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If you are 50 years old or younger, you missed seeing “The Capital Punisher” in a Washington Senators uniform. Fortunately, I saw Frank Howard in-person from Section 528 of the upper deck in 1965. The man hit moonshots. RFK Stadium could not contain him. He was the star player at the time for the Washington Senators, thanks to a blockbuster trade with the Dodgers.
In Howard’s career of 1,895 games, he spent most of his career donning the Senators uni for 1,077 games. He actually played a few months for the Texas Rangers in their inaugural season in 1972 before owner Robert Short traded him mid-season to Detroit. Of his 382 majestic home runs, 237 were with Washington.
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Baseball fans in Washington D.C. were 95-years in waiting for a World Series championship. You had to go back to 1924 to Walter Johnson‘s Senators for the only D.C. baseball championship. That all changed in 2019, and next year — Johnson’s championship turns 100. Can you believe it has been exactly four years since the Washington Nationals won the World Series! Savor it, enjoy it. They do not happen often — even when you spend so much money that you blow through the CBT cap to win. It took a good team with incredible chemistry and veteran leadership along with some youthful exuberance and some divine intervention from the baseball gods. The “CLANG” heard ’round the world was courtesy of Howie Kendrick, and that put the final clang exclamation mark on it.
"Opening Day should be a National holiday"
