The Home for Washington Nationals Game Talk

We had some criticism of the current CBA negotiations in an article written last week, and particularly Max Scherzer‘s focus on what seemed to be centered on money in the collective bargaining agreement wranglings that were at an impasse. Shortly after the article published, Scherzer tweeted out a more detailed list of what needed to change. Much of what the three time Cy Young award winner tweeted was central to issues fans sure care about like tanking, service time manipulation, and allowing younger players to financially get paid much more than the league minimum. Scherzer and I can continue to disagree on caps.

We want a system where threshold and penalties don’t function as caps, allows younger players to realize more of their market value, makes service time manipulation a thing of the past, and eliminate tanking as a winning strategy.

— Max Scherzer (@Max_Scherzer) February 4, 2022

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We knew that the CBA negotiations that led to a lock-out imposed unilaterally by MLB owners could hit an impasse, and apparently it got to a point that baseball owners have now asked for federal mediators to step in according to Jeff Passan of ESPN. Continue reading →

Time to be brutally honest — with this baseball lock-out, it is challenging to come up with ideas for a post that people can have fun with and discuss. In an email exchange, DonH and I decided that it might be fun and interesting to do a series of posts that ask a specific question, and then ask you all for your answers and discuss it in your comments.

DonH will already have charts with the answers from the Game Day data (and yes, acknowledging it’s warts) to get you the answer key. He has shared that information with me before the post goes live. So we will both be careful in our comments – but that does not mean we will be silent 🙂 . Continue reading →

With most of Washington, D.C. frozen over, the business of baseball has thawed some, but not enough to lift the owner’s lock-out. Without a new CBA, there is little to talk about in baseball outside of trivia, the lock-out, and the Hall of Fame debate. Sure, David Ortiz is getting enshrined in Cooperstown. That was the big announcement this week along with the MLB and MLBPA finding some middle ground in their ongoing labor dispute. Continue reading →

Last week was last week. It was a busy week for the Washington Nationals, on-and-off the field. On Saturday, the team announced their international signings which was highlighted by the long-awaited signing of phenom Cristhian Vaquero. Shortly afterwards, the team announced 21 new hires and several other key moves in their player development system. News broke on Wednesday that the team signed former top prospect, Rusney Castillo, to a minor league deal. On Thursday morning, the Nats published game times for the 2022 schedule. Not to be finished, the Nats and MASN jointly announced early the hiring of former Nats’ player, Kevin Frandsen, as the new color commentator for the Nationals on the MASN network.  On Friday morning, we got word that the Nats added reliever Ronald Herrera on a minor league deal. Continue reading →

Nobody knows what is going on in baseball, including the owners and Player’s Association. The lockout is a significant issue, and it’s unknown when baseball will return. Spring Training will likely be delayed in some way, which means Opening Day could be in jeopardy at this point. Continue reading →