Click to Read an Important Member Update Regarding Our Comment System
We recently upgraded our comment system to improve reliability, performance, and long-term control, and we’re currently running both systems during the transition. This shift moves us away from an external service to a system we run and control directly—meaning we own the content and can continue improving it over time. We’ve also reduced the comment refresh delay from about 30 seconds to 10 seconds, making it much closer to real-time.
We understand there have been frustrations and increased feedback, and we’re actively working to improve things. What we ask is simple: use the system and give it a fair shot. If you run into issues, please submit them through the support form so we can track and fix them properly. Repeated complaints without details don’t help us solve problems—we appreciate your patience as we continue refining the experience.
If you’d like a full side-by-side comparison of the platforms and the reasons behind this decision, please refer to the chart below. This change is being made with the long-term benefit of the entire community in mind.
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Dusty Baker called into MLB Network Radio on the “Inside Pitch” show hosted by Jim Bowden and Casey Stern yesterday. The “Inside Pitch”show airs weekdays starting at 2pm EST on Sirius XM. http://www.siriusxm.com/MLBNetworkRadio
It was a long interview that was lengthened when Dusty lost his cellphone connection twice. At one part of the interview Dusty seemed to digress to a text message he received from Jeff Kent and then Dusty corrected himself that it was actually an email from Jeff Kent which Dusty revealed,
“Tell my soul Mormon brother don’t play so angry ’cause you will make it harder on yourself”
Dusty Baker this afternoon had a call-in interview on MLB Network Radio on the “Inside Pitch” show hosted by Jim Bowden and Casey Stern. Stern has a relationship with Dusty from his on-air TV work with Dusty. Dusty’s intro from Stern was “my friend and a brotha from another mother” which set the tone as a lighthearted interview.
This is just 4 minutes on the link in the Tweet from Dusty’s interview:
— MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM (@MLBNetworkRadio) November 13, 2015
Dusty said that Ted Lerner personally called to tell him don’t believe what you’re hearing in the media about the Nats managerial job meaning the job was not necessarily going to Bud Black and shortly afterwards his agent John Hamilton was negotiating the deal with the Nats.
The Hot Stove season is long and there are only so many what if stories we can come up with during the winter. We thought that an occasional story about things the Nationals do off the field might be of interest to Nationals fans. Most of us know about honoring military folks at every game. And a lot of us have heard that the Nationals have created the Dream Foundation, but very few of us know much about the activities it is involved with. Continue reading →
One of the reports out of the GM meeting was that support was growing for a rule change that would require a reliever to face at least two batters. There was little or no detail about how the rule would be implemented. For example, does the reliever have to start the next inning if he has only one PA, but he gets the third out? Continue reading →
Scott Boras was the center of attention at the GM Meetings today at the Boca Raton resort today in Florida. Boras had many subjects to talk about today which included talk on everything from Bryce Harper to Max Scherzer to Stephen Strasburg to Denard Span.
The other agents name that sounds like “Boras” is Jeff Borris who is recognized by few. He’s the agent at Beverly Hills Sports Council and reps Darren O’Day who is the most popular reliever this year given the very light crop of Free Agent relievers. Even the bullpen rich Royals are rumored to have their GM, Dayton Moore, in touch with Borris.
The Nats 2015 payroll moved the team into the upper echelon with the big spenders breaking into a figure firmly in the Top 1/2 Dozen for Opening Day 2015. The Nats Opening Day payroll was #6 according to Sports Illustrated’s calculation of Opening Day payrolls at $162,014,559.The 2016 Opening Day payroll budget for the Nats is almost certainly known by Mike Rizzo at this time; however, without the MASN settlement for RSN rights, don’t expect the payroll to far exceed 2015’s $162 million figure.
It is pretty clear that Mike Rizzo needs to build a better bullpen for 2016 than he did in 2015. Continuing our Rizzo for a Day series, who are your free agent reliever targets? Continue reading →
Lots of different notes to go through this weekend on Dusty Baker, the training staff, and the health of Denard Span, and whatever happened with managerial candidate Dave Martinez. Lastly, what’s Bryce up to? Continue reading →
We got an anonymous email referencing a short article in ESPN Magazine from July 12 2002 titled “Prior Restraint” that we were told would contradict the quotes that Dusty Baker made about Mark Prior at his news conference. Seemed a little “cloak and dagger”. What does that have to do with the Nats?
Reading this ESPN article was like a Back To The Future lesson where you know the ending of the story. The article was very insightful on how you want to handle a young arm like Mark Prior. Written right after Don Baylor was fired by the Cubs and before Jim Hendry even thought of hiring Dusty Baker who was the Giants manager at the time, this article was ahead of it’s time in 2002.
When we first mentioned Dusty Baker was a finalist on October 23rd, the comments on our pages were lukewarm if the Nats hired Baker mostly based on reputation, and many reputations are fair and many when they are negative are not.
This was the typical story on the ‘negative’ that followed Dusty Baker around like this one from 5 years ago in Bleacher Report: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/367793-got-young-pitching-keep-it-away-from-dusty-baker Articles on Dusty rarely talked about his successes taking failing teams to the playoffs or how former players showered Dusty with positives, rather they focused on the negatives.
To digress, every day we get a traffic report from a software add-on called Jetpack and it tells us how people find us, where they are geographically, what they read, etc. On search engines, people actually typed these words and phrases (insert pic) and found us through Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, etc.
“Was dusty baker wrongly convicted for baseball deaths of kerry wood, mark prior?”was exactly how one person searched and found our site even though we never used those exact words. Inquiring minds wanted to know and Dusty answered a similar question after his Press Conference on Thursday and appears Dusty was probably “wrongly convicted” in the world of public opinion that operate on deep emotion. Dusty needed to answer his critics as this “ruining arms” label has followed Dusty for more than a decade or as the person more specifically typed in “baseball deaths”.
As we referenced above to this Back To The Future stuff in ESPN Magazine in July 2002, the article was written by a young writer Andy Latack who is now a lawyer. Latack referred to future ace Mark Prior:
“…Baylor got used to the boos before he got canned. “This kid is going to be a franchise pitcher very soon,” Baylor said. “So to ruin his arm by having him throw 140 pitches? Even if I’m gone,that’s something I don’t want on my resumé.”
We recently upgraded our comment system to improve reliability, performance, and long-term control, and we’re currently running both systems during the transition. This shift moves us away from an external service to a system we run and control directly—meaning we own the content and can continue improving it over time. We’ve also reduced the comment refresh delay from about 30 seconds to 10 seconds, making it much closer to real-time.
We understand there have been frustrations and increased feedback, and we’re actively working to improve things. What we ask is simple: use the system and give it a fair shot. If you run into issues, please submit them through the support form so we can track and fix them properly. Repeated complaints without details don’t help us solve problems—we appreciate your patience as we continue refining the experience.
If you’d like a full side-by-side comparison of the platforms and the reasons behind this decision, please refer to the chart below. This change is being made with the long-term benefit of the entire community in mind.