Young Washington National, Bryce Harper, played in his first simulated game against real major leaguers yesterday afternoon and do you want to guess how he fared in his two at bats?  Well he struck out twice.  Disappointing?  Totally! Surprising?  Not in the least.

It just can’t be surprising if you’ve followed sports in this town for the last twenty years.  DC has been full of young athletes with promise that only serve to let us down over and over again.  We have had several high draft picks or young phenoms that have come into this town and failed, sometimes in spectacular fashion.  DC might actually be one of the worst cities in all of sports in terms of positively assisting in a young athlete’s growth.

Plus, he’s super young (big strike against him), he’s super confident (can he handle not having immediate success), and he’s super inexperienced (can he handle injuries, can he handle the life in the big city, can he handle his money). The odds really are stacked against this kid unless the stars align.

The stars rarely align in DC however. If history is our guide, Harper will be yet another huge disappointment. So let’s look at a brief history of the other highly touted disappointments DC has had, at least in recent memory:

Stephen Strasburg

Ok, so sure, its a little early to judge the whole career of this kid but c’mon, he blew out his arm in his first taste of the majors.  That is a huge disappointment.  Especially from a pitcher who can only be compared to the likes of Doc Gooden, who never took care of his body and in fact abused it to hell with drugs and partying but still managed to avoid Tommy John surgery his entire career.  This city named the day that Strasburg pitched “Strasmas!” for crying out loud. What a huge disappointment that in his FIRST YEAR he blew out his arm.

Sure he could recover from it and be as good or even better than what he was those first few starts he had for the Nationals.  On the other hand, he couldn’t.  Knowing DC superstar disappointment history…he probably won’t. As of right now, this whole city is disappointed that Livan Hernandez will be tossing out the first pitch on opening day instead of Strasburg.

Alexander Ovechkin

This guy was supposed to be a combination of Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux with a dash of pre-concussion Eric Lindros in there.  A big guy, unafraid to mix it up, who was agile, fast and an unstoppable scorer.  He was supposed to be the best. For a little while, there might’ve been an argument that he was the best, this year however, he isn’t even close.

With 24 goals in 63 games, Sidney Crosby is STILL ahead of him even though he’s been out with a concussion for what seems like half the year.

This isn’t even the real problem with Ovechkin however.  All of this season stats could just be a massive, season-long slump. A blip on the career of an incredible player.  Its way too early to tell.  The real problem with Ovechkin is that he has never won anything, anywhere.

Great players are supposed to elevate the talent around them…or at least win a championship at some point.  That Ovechkin hasn’t been able to do that yet, despite teams full of massive talent and promise, is INCREDIBLY disappointing. Read the rest of this entry

Nothing spells clichéd journalism like a “second coming.”  There’s no doubt in my mind that what will take place tonight in a weird little neighborhood in southeast Washington, DC will be a benchmark moment in the history of the Washington Nationals franchise, but it will also be wholly unsatisfying.  Why?  Sports journalists have already ruined it.

As I read countless Strasburg debut articles last night and this morning, they all spit out the same story over and over again: un-athletic kid comes from nowhere, shows up one day throwing 100 mph, then gets $15.1 million.  The phenom is the “real deal,” loves his wife and hates the spotlight.  He’s the next Walter Johnson (hell no) and half Barack Obama (I hope it’s the half that smokes!).  It’s tired, it’s boring, and it’s been done.  I guess there’s something to be said for the brick-brain who came up with “Merry Strasmas!” but I think that would be, “Please jump off a bridge.”

So before 45,000 “fans” sweat themselves silly tonight on the Green Line, Bill Plaschke will write about the 90 year-old retired scout, who in between hocks of Skoal will recount how he once saw Bob Feller unfurl a heater in 1946 that beat Triple Crown Winner Assault by a few furlongs, who says that Strasburg “can’t miss.”    

What’s going to happen tonight, and hopefully for the next 15 years, is something that will be unique and different.  God willing, it’s not going to be a canned story that comes straight out of a Bernard Malamud novel.  To all the Jay Mariottis of the world, give it a rest.  A guest spot on “Around the Horn” isn’t worth it.

And by the way, Strassy (see, I can make witty nicknames, too!) will go 5 1/3, give up 1 run on 4 hits, walk 2, strike out 7 and get the hook mid-inning so he can get the standing ovation.  Tomorrow, I will stop reading newspapers for a month.

Watch enough sports and you’ll get the feeling that while analysts seem like pretty nice guys that enjoy interacting with the fans, don’t ever forget: you never played or worked in the game, so leave the heavy lifting for us.  When you’re younger, you tend to give them the benefit of the doubt because, well, what do you know anyway?

Of course, as you get older, those feelings of reverence dissipate… rapidly.  AOL Fanhouse “columnist” Steve Phillips is a prime example.  Setting his personal foibles aside (he’s not exactly husband of the year), before Phillips became a prominent personality on ESPN’s baseball programming (and was subsequently fired – for personal reasons), he was also General Manager of the New York Mets. 

Phillips, much like his former colleagues at ESPN, never miss a chance to point out that while casual fans (especially those who are statistically inclined) may love the game, they’ll never “get it” because they didn’t play the game.  It’s a convenient tool to keep most fans from being critical when a commentator suggests guys that walk too much “clog the bases.”  So at the end of the day, who do you trust more: the guy who drafted David Wright; or the guy named “Rob” who probably has never set foot in a locker room?  Logic unfortunately favors the former.

Well, that’s an interesting question, because for every David Wright and Jose Reyes acquisition that Phillips throws around, there’s an overpriced and aged Mo Vaughn or Jeromy Burnitz also lurking on his resume (just above the Jason Bay trade). 

But don’t you dare tell Steve Phillips that you could have done his job any better.  It’s impossible.  Don’t even think about it. Being a GM is tough: you gotta watch video, answer phone calls and go to games.  You don’t know – you didn’t play the game!  Really Steve?  Would stupid fans like us be ignorant enough to suggest a Roy Oswalt for Stephen Strasburg trade, straight up?  Oh wait, you just did that yesterday. 

I’m not trying to pick on Phillips, although his ineptitude has bothered me for a long time, but it’s stories like this that highlight the old boys’ club culture that pervades most sports: you’re either in or you’re out.  So, unless you played the game years ago, you better know someone else who did.  Sure, things have started to change, but the fact that guys like Phillips can still command a presence in baseball is sad: fans deserve better.      

And you know what?  He may have never set foot in a locker room, but Neyer seems like a pretty nice guy who knows his stuff (and who also apprenticed under Bill James — you may have heard of him).

Sure its exciting that the Washington Nationals have Stephen Strasburg, the next Mark Prior or David Price or Doc Gooden or whatever.  That is great news.  The sad thing is that they possibly could’ve had 2 such prospects if they wanted to pony up the cash for Aroldis Chapman like the Cincinnati Reds did.   Chapman, as a Cuban defector, was a free agent available to anyone in the league and in the end it seemed like the Nationals and the Reds were the last two in the  running for his services, but the Nationals felt that they didn’t want to spend $30+ million for 6 years on an unproven commodity.  It was the safe call, it was also the inexpensive call…and it very well might be the wrong call.

Of course one should never draw conclusions from one, split squad spring training game against lesser bats but in just looking at the way Chapman pitched I am going to do just that.  Seriously, he doesn’t look like he will be waiting around to start in the show for long.  What did he do in his first MLB start in spring training?  Here’s what, allow me to paraphrase Dave Brown in Big League Stew’s wrap up of Chapman’s start in some bullet points for you:

• He threw 26 pitches, 15 for strikes and his control got better as he pitched more.
• At least one pitch reached 100 mph.
• He can throw sliders with two different breaks.
• He unexpectedly cuts his fastball
• He once followed up a pitch in the upper 90s with an 80-mph change-up.
• He struck out three Royals batters in two scoreless innings.

Meanwhile, with Strasburg set to pitch at 1pm today, what have the Washington Nationals combined to do thus far this preseason?  Oh, only 61 runs given up in 50 innings, a 1.22 runs an inning average and just over 10 runs a game allowed.  Gee, you think the Nationals could have afforded to spend $5 million a  year on second possible pitching savior now?   Ya think?  Do you think they wished they had his arm right now when the entire staff is sucking more than a room full of Dysons?  Its not like he is Daniel Cabrera, he actually HAS control.

According to the Washington Post back in January,

…when the total value of the last Nationals offer approached $25-million, almost $10-million more than the Nats paid to sign No. 1-overall draft pick Stephen Strasburg, Washington had reached its limit.

I hope they didn’t take a pass on a chance at a dominant 1-2 pitching combination all because they didn’t want to hurt the ego of their young phenom.  I hope they didn’t pass on the chance had having a dominant 1-2 pitching combination because of just 5 million more dollars, because if all worked out well his VORP would be through the fraking roof and well worth that gamble .

I know that the Nationals have “The Plan”™, I like “The Plan”™, but Chapman would’ve fit into the plan and this was a blown opportunity to possibly dramatically speed up “The Plan”™.  He’s still a young player if you believe his papers, he has as much potential as our #1 draft pick and he wouldn’t have been so expensive that they couldn’t work around his salary if he failed.

Its a snap judgment, yes, but from what it looks like right now, the Nationals probably blew it being cheap.