This was a great game — if you were an Arizona Diamondbacks’ fan: Joe Saunders pitched seven complete shutout innings, middle reliever David Hernandez notched a hold, and J.J. Putz put the game away in the ninth. And the gravy? The 2-0 Arizona win put the D-Backs back in first place in the N.L. West, just half a game ahead of the San Francisco Giants.

But if you were a Nationals’ fan, the Arizona shutout brought back barely suppressed nightmares that the hitting drought that stigmatized the team for the campaign’s first two months had returned: the Nationals accounted for just four hits against Saunders, which wasn’t quite enough to give Livan Hernandez (who pitched seven complete of his own) a win. “To me, it has been more about good pitching in general,” Nationals’ manager Jim Riggleman said after the game. “Myself on down to the coaching staff to the players, we feel terrible about the way we have squandered some chances to win ballgames when we have pitched this well.”

The loss cooled off Michael Morse, who struck out twice. In fact, the only Nat who seemed to get to Saunders was Jerry Hairston, who was 2-4. The loss dropped the Nationals to 25-33 — nine games back of the Phillies in the N.L. East, and two games behind the Mets for fourth place.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: Craig Stammen has made his way back to the big leagues after the Nationals placed Doug Slaten on the disabled list with an “elbow injury.” Slaten has been struggling: the lefty has a low ERA, but that hardly tells the story. Fifteen of 30 runners he has inherited have scored. The Nationals are running out of patience with him — as are the fans . . .

Before being put on the D.L, Slaten claimed he was healthy, which brought doubts from skipper Riggleman. We can almost hear Riggleman: “I think you’re hurt, Doug — in fact I’m sure of it.” The move on Slaten may well spell the end of his time in Washington, as a lot of Nats’ fans are speculating. The Nationals will use Stammen as a reliever, even though he has a serviceable record as a starter in Syracuse (where he was 5-3). That likely means Yunesky Maya will get yet another shot on the mound before . . . well, you know — before he gets sent down.

Adam Dunn’s two home runs and five RBIs powered the Washington Nationals to their fourth straight win on Friday night, 8-3 — sending Atlanta to their fourth straight loss and dimming their chances for a post-season birth. It was Dunn’s 36th and 37th home runs of the year, as the big slugger has now accounted for 101 RBIs on the season. Dunn’s homers were greeted with standing ovations from Nats’ fans, who chanted “Sign Adam Dunn” during the game. Dunn’s power display helped Jordan Zimmermann to his first season win, as the big righty pitched five innings of three hit baseball, lowering his season ERA to 5.76. It was the kind of outing that the team has been hoping that Zimmermann would provide as he recovers from Tommy John surgery in 2009. Willie Harris added an exciting inside-the-park home run to help the Nats win decisively. The largest crowd of this home stand, some 22,000-plus, watched the fireworks provided by an energized Nationals’ line-up. Tyler Clippard, Joel Peralta, Sean Burnett and Miguel Batista closed out the game for the Nationals, who have now won 66 games on the season.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: You don’t need to be an investigative reporter to know that Craig Stammen is not happy being a reliever — it’s written all over his face. The righty has been solid out of the bullpen over the last month, the only real blip coming during “the Nyjer Morgan game” against the Marlins back on September 1, when Stammen yielded six in 3.1 innings of work. When he gets the ball down in the zone he pitches effectively, and he’s done so impressively out of the pen a number of times. Truth is, the Nats seem to be doing some of this in reverse (though there’s no absolute tradition in creating a starter), by using an assignment to the bullpen as a kind of demotion. Of course the Nats would deny that, but that’s sure the way it looks. And our bet is that Stammen feels that way. Maybe it’s time he got another chance . . .

Tim Kurkjian says that the Cubs are giving serious consideration to hiring Ryne Sandberg as their manager, though the actual decision is more than a month away. There’s a glitch, however: the Cubs (Kurkjian reported on Baseball Tonight), are worried that dumping such a poor team on a rookie manager like Sandberg might not go over too well, as those close to the club acknowledge that the team could be in line to lose upwards of ninety games next year — a year of retooling and shedding contracts. It’s not like Sandberg is simply a fan favorite or doesn’t deserve the job: when he said he wanted to manage, some four years ago, the Cubs’ front office told him to go get some experience. So he did. This year he was voted Pacific Coast League manager of the year. Then too, the Cubs are suddenly filled with kids, a lot of whom Sandberg knows well. And c’mon really, what’s the worst that could happen — that the team stinks, loses 84 games and finishes fifth in their division?

I thought it only appropriate that “the loyal opposition” should return at precisely the moment that my first date in Washington (here she is, and take a good look) arrived for our lovely evening. And if by “lovely evening” you mean watching the Washington Nationals and turning their victory into fake reporting then you’re right: but I have no choice but to do this in my current state. This CFG thing, this new-wave-inter-net “we’re down with the twitter blog,” is struggling, really struggling, so I just know that most of this blog’s readership revolves around my pen. And for the benefit of you all, here finally is a picture of me . . .

Tonight Roy Oswalt was out for a stroll with his new team –11 million dollars in tow — when, out of the blue: it’s a bird, it’s a plane . . . no, no, no — it’s the most interesting man in the world. Nyjer Morgan!  Nyjer who? In his first at bat, Morgan hit the ball 400 feet into the center-right gap, flipped off his helmet as he sped around second base, and went totally horizontal, belly first, into third. Nyjer Morgan? It was like watching lightning strike on a clear day. Former Astro Oswalt was so confused by the entire thing he had to pay someone to tell him who it was that just did that to him. “What the hell is going on! Who is that guy on third?” It’s Nyjer Morgan, channeling Ricky Henderson. “Naw, can’t be.”

Morgan wasn’t the only Nats superhero “lifting tall buildings” on Friday night. Adam Kennedy arrived in the clubhouse before the Phillies game to find Cristian Guzman’s assistant sitting (morose and weeping) in the Nationals’ locker room. Kennedy got the message — in the first inning (and with “Rickey” Morgan on third) he hit the ball hard enough to the right side (just as he was instructed) to allow Morgan to lope across the plate: Nats 1, Phillies 0. Oswalt was even more confused — “what the  . . .” But “The Miracle on Half Street” continued. Roger Bernadina began his night by gunning out a sprinting Oswalt at first. Oh, and Craig Stammen was lights out: hitting spots, keeping his pitch count low and quietly sauntering from the mound, as if he was Greg Maddux. Oswalt wasn’t the only one surprised. As I sat watching this team’s Friday night tidal wave I could only repeat Oswalt’s words — “Who the hell are these guys . . .”

Don’t misunderstand: I’ve been watching this team with vigor, knowing that on a good day they’re only mediocre. It’s a self-inflicted baseball passion. They lallygag, throw the ball over the dugout, crash into each other, slam into outfield walls, miss the cutoff man — and their “phenom” pitcher can’t go past the All Star break. It’s fantastic fun. I expected the same on Friday against the Citizens Bank Bullies. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the Nats showed up to play and made glue of the Ponies, embarrassing Oswalt and frustrating Rollins and Howard and the rest of them. So . . .  what happened? The answer is obvious: Mike Rizzo is a psycho. The proof is this photo of Rizzo sitting in Jim Riggleman’s office as players arrived for Friday’s game.

More specifically, on Friday afternoon (just hours before Miss Iowa and the Phillies showed up in Washington), Mike Rizzo decided he’d had enough of his team’s mediocre performance, and that it was time to play “duck, duck, goose.” In “Rizzo Land” the game is not as simple as it was when I was a kid, but it’s the same concept: you line up the players (in any old order) and you raise your right hand and go down the line — “in, in, traded . . . in, in, traded . . .” You only change your tune when you get to Morgan: “in, in . . . and if you don’t hit a triple Morgan, I swear to God you’ll be spending August in Oakland.” Message received. The only player not really frightened by this show of Rizzo passion was Ryan Zimmerman . . . and “the kid.” Even Adam Dunn was included. As for the rest of them. Well, we might have seen the fear in Morgan’s eyes: Rizzo’s antics was placing his bobblehead night in jeopardy. Rizzo didn’t care: “do something Nyjer, or I swear we’ll woodchip those things.”

The Mike “Corleone” Rizzo, “Duck, Duck, Goose” is more than just a cute kids’ game — it’s like rendering someone to Burma for “questioning.” It’s more like playing in the Olympics for Iraq. Okay, I admit. It could be that the appearance of Katie Conners helped to spark Friday night’s outbreak of unusual excellence, but I really doubt it. For as this mammoth publication goes to press, the Nationals are fast becoming a new team. And it’s because of their general manager. They’re getting better, a lot better, and they’re doing it quickly.

The word in baseball is that you can always get a closer and Rizzo showed that this week as he dealt Matt Capps to Minnesota. And you can always deal, at the very last minute, a slap-hitting veteran infielder for a handful of prospects, especially if the other team’s All Star second sacker ends up on the DL. As Cristian Guzman learned. Adam Dunn may be next: or maybe not. But the truth it, it doesn’t really matter. Mike Rizzo — the Washington Nationals’ true fearless leader — is playing “duck, duck, goose” in the clubhouse. And he’s made it clear to those who are staying with the team: “play hard and play hard now  – - – or you’ll be shaking your head somewhere else a year from now and wondering where it all went wrong.

Nats bench bat and right fielder Michael Morse slammed two home runs and drove in four, but the Washington Nationals fell to the Milwaukee Brewers 7-5 on Friday night. The game might well have come down to one play: with two outs in the fifth inning (and with Craig Stammen providing a solid outing), shortstop Ian Desmond failed to throw out a sprinting Alcides Escobar at first. Escobar then took second and scored on an up-the-middle single from pitcher Chris Narveson. The Escobar single shifted the game’s momentum, with Narveson eventually scoring on a Jim Edmonds’ single. The Desmond play, had it been made, would have ended the fifth with a Nats’s lead of 5-1 and left Stammen cruising into the sixth. “I think Desmond made a great play to get to the ball,” Jim Riggleman later said. “Escobar hit it sharp. Desmond may have had a little more time. Escobar runs well. That’s baseball. It’s still two outs, man on first and the pitcher is hitting. We have to put that inning away.”

But the Nats didn’t put the inning away — and the Brewers rallied for two runs against Tyler Clippard in the sixth before Edmonds lofted a home run against Sean Burnett in the seventh. The bullpen collapse is particularly worrisome, as it repeats a pattern that has seen Tyler Clippard struggling to find the form that made him one of the best middle relievers in the season’s first three months. “It’s about the third time we have gone through that with Clippard,” Riggleman said after the loss. “We give him a couple of games and boy, here he goes again. He is looking good. Today, he had great momentum striking out Fielder. I felt, ‘OK , that’s huge,’ but [then] he walked Casey McGehee. Again, that gives them the opportunity to think, ‘Hey, we are one swing away.’” Clippard’s ERA continues to slip: he is now at 3.45 for the season. At the end of June, Clippard’s ERA stood at 2.20.

The Team That Bud Built: While MLB Commissioner Bud Selig is a much derided figure among large numbers of baseball fans, it’s hard to find anyone in Milwaukee who openly criticizes him. For good reason: there wouldn’t be baseball in Milwaukee if it weren’t for Selig, whose loyalty to the city assured that it would retain its big league tradition. Selig was a minority owner in the Milwaukee Braves and fought a lonely, but losing battle to keep them from moving to Atlanta, then virtually blackmailed baseball to keep a team in the city by inducing the Chicago White Sox to play twenty games in the abandoned Milwaukee County Stadium in 1968 and 1969. The threat was clear: if the White Sox didn’t start drawing on the south side, Selig would buy them and move them north. But Selig’s bid to buy the Pale Hose in 1969 was blocked by the American League, which was committed to keeping two teams in Chicago. Selig got the booby prize when the league allowed him to purchase the no-account (and bankrupt) Seattle Pilots for $10.8 million and move them east.

Selig’s conviction that baseball could thrive in Milwaukee was much like a second marriage: it was a triumph of hope over experience. The Braves never drew well after their late 1950s success and the city seemed only marginally interested in supporting a major league team in the 1970s. Milwaukee was hit hard by the successive rust belt recessions that stripped jobs from the city’s machine tool and heavy engine manufacturing industries. Thousands of jobs were lost at Milwaukee’s largest plants — Allis-Chalmers, Evinrude, Briggs and Stratton, and Harley-Davidson. The city’s breweries started disappearing in the late 1960s and into the 1970s as Schlitz (“the beer that made Milwaukee famous”), Blatz (“it’s draft brewed Blatz beer, wherever you go”) and Pabst (“it won the blue ribbon”) closed or merged with larger brewers. While Milwaukee’s beer brands have been revived, the old scions of the industry (named for Milwaukee’s most famous German-American families) are gone, gone, gone. By the late 1970s, the miles upon miles of Polish, German and African-American working class neighborhoods were either disappearing or being gentrified.

Selig ignored the evidence, gambling that the city would survive and support a team. It was a lousy gamble, but it has paid off. While the team limped along in the 1970s, Selig (the inheritor of his father’s successful car leasing business), not only inaugurated a marketing program that brought fans into the city from northern Wisconsin, he built a scouting and development team that identified young talent (Robin Yount and Paul Molitor) — mixing them with Milwaukee legends (the Brewers brought Hank Aaron back to Milwaukee for the 1975 and 1976 seasons), that boosted attendance and solidified the Brewers’ identity in the city. While the Brewers were busy winning MLB Organization of the Year awards (seven in all), Selig was becoming an increasingly important figure in the game itself — leading an owners’ revolt against baseball commissioner Fay Vincent and heading up the powerful MLB Executive Council. When Selig replaced Vincent he ceded ownership of the Brewers to his daughter Wendy and in 1994 the team was sold to Mark Attanasio, an out-of-state investment management mogul, for a measly $224 million.

You have to be impressed with “The Team That Bud Built.” While the franchise has never won a World Series, it has consistently outperformed baseball’s expectations, fielding small market boppers like Prince Fielder and filling the seats by building a team that focuses on a mix of Milwaukee’s working class history and Old Europe traditions — from the Archie Bunker-like downscale “wallbangers” to the puzzlingly popular sausage races. It has helped that the Brewers were able to plan and build Miller Park, with a fan shaped convertible roof. Not surprisingly, the Miller Park brand (which runs to 2020 and costs the brewing company $40 million) comes from one of the remaining great (and financially successful) brewing companies of Milwaukee, founded by German immigrant Frank Miller in 1855 and sold by his granddaughter (a temperance advocate) in 1966 — to an international conglomerate. The opening of Miller Park was the last piece of the puzzle for Selig’s plan to make baseball a permanent Milwaukee tradition: the Brewers brought over 3 million fans into the park in 2009 in an urban area that is half the size of Washington.

The Washington Nationals succumbed to their own lack of production, falling to the Florida Marlins 1-0 on Sunday in Miami. The loss squandered the team’s opportunity to back the stellar pitching of starter Craig Stammen, who held the Marlins to one run in six innings of work. The inconsistent Stammen, who seems to be on-again and off-again, put in one of his best pitching performances of the year, keeping the ball down in the zone against the befuddled Marlins’ hitters. Stammen threw 98 pitches, 62 of them for strikes. His only trouble came in the 5th, when he gave up successive doubles. Joel Peralta finished out the game, providing his by-now usual in-the-strike-zone relief effort. But as was the case on Saturday, Nationals’ hitters could not seem to solve Florida’s pitching: Washington rapped out eight hits, but their celebrated middle of the line-up heavyweights were a combined 2-9, stranding an embarrassing 11 runners. The Nats now head to Cincinnati to face the surging Reds. Duck.

Those Are The Headlines, Now For The Details: MASN play-by-play man, Bob Carpenter, informed his viewing audience on Sunday that he’d been told by Marlins’ beat reporters that ex-Florida manager Fredi Gonzalez was “absolutely not” fired because of his troubles with Hanley Ramirez. According to Carpenter’s discussions, Gonzalez was fired because Marlins’ owner Jeff Loria knew that Fredi was headed to Atlanta to take over for the dearly departing Bobby Cox at the end of the season. So (we are led to believe) Loria thought for a minute and decided ‘why not make a change now?’ Moreover, Carpenter added, the reason that Bobby Valentine (lined up to be the new Marlins’ manager), wasn’t hired is because he insisted in bringing his own set of coaches to Miami — while Loria wanted him to retain the Gonzalez crew. The deal fell through.

I don’t doubt that Carpenter was told by the Miami press that Fredi Gonzalez was not (“absolutely not,” as Carpenter emphasized) fired for benching Hanley Ramirez (as we speculated, here), and I don’t doubt for a minute that Marlins beat reporters actually believe that. And, in fact, it may well be that Gonzalez wasn’t fired over the Ramirez incident. That’s quite possible. But we (we here at CFG) will insist on this: anyone who believes that Gonzalez was fired (suddenly, surprisingly, and summarily) because he planned to go to Atlanta (news to me) during the off season is simply buying Jeff Loria’s line. Or defending Hanley Ramirez. Or something. That said, the other part of the story (that Valentine wasn’t hired because he wouldn’t retain the Marlins coaching staff), makes sense. But it’s the only part of the story that does . . .

We’ve had a bit of this lately. When Omar Infante was named to the All Star team, fans were a more than a little puzzled. But not the “MLB Network” cheering section, or the guys at “Baseball Tonight,” who spent their time telling us what a great player Omar is — despite not having the requisite number of at-bats to be taken seriously. Infante shoved aside Joey Votto, Ryan Zimmerman, Dan Uggla, Rickie Weeks and Adam Dunn (whose home run totals led the NL), who actually play every game. Infante doesn’t. He’s a utility man, pinch hitter and filler. When he got the call from Atlanta GM Frank Wren that he’d made the team, he expected the worst: that he’d been traded — to Toronto. Never mind: the guys at BT and MLB Network were in the bag for Infante, telling all of us morons what a terrific ballplayer he is. Listen, Tim Kurkjian is right, no one should blame Infante for getting picked, but please, please, don’t try to sell us the line that Omar Infante (good family man, nice guy and all that) is a really good player who deserved it. If that was really true (if Infante deserved to be on that field instead of — say –  Adam Dunn), there wouldn’t have been any controversy . . .

The New York Mets provided the fireworks on July 4 — taking an 8-0 lead against the Washington Nationals and going on to register a “no contest” 9-5 victory at Nationals Park. The heat wasn’t the only thing that was unbearable at the stadium: up-and-down sometime starter Craig Stammen inaugurated the contest by serving up batting practice middle-of-the-plate pitches, which were duly deposited by Mets batters to all parts of the field. “I wasn’t very good. That’s the reason we lost. We move on,” Stammen said after the game. “It’s not anything physical. It’s how I’m thinking out there, a little bit, and sticking to the game plan little more — having conviction with my pitches.” Stammen’s outing, after a superior appearance last week versus the Bravos, was evidence enough that the Nats pitching staff still needs some kind of help.

The team’s pitching stats tell only a part of the story: while the Nats are just below the middle-of-the-pack in ERA (17th of 30, at 4.14), every other NL East team leads them with, not surprisingly, Atlanta at the very front of the division. While Washington’s bragging rights bullpen has been stellar (it ranks 9th in major league baseball), the stats don’t tell the entire story: the numbers imply that the Nats are bullpen dependent, calling on their middle relievers and closers in 35 of the first 40 games — more than anyone else except for three other MLB teams: proof positive (it seems) that the Nats starting pitching (while better than last year) is still woeful. Pitching into the 7th is a huge problem for the Nats rotation. A part of the team’s starting pitching problem is injuries (the DL list is a pitching graveyard), but it’s also true that the Nats simply lack the horses at the front of the rotation to climb out of last place in the “NL Least” — and there’s no guarantee that the return of Jordan Zimmermann, Scott Olsen, Jason Marquis or Chien Ming-Wang will solve that problem.

The San Diego Padres roll into town today (with a game tomorrow night at Nats Park) with the best pitching staff around: a 3.07 ERA that is provided by a bevy of kids and veterans — Mat Latos has been the surprise, but he’s supplemented by a noted ground ball guru (Jon Garland) and a legendary closer. How did they get there? They followed the Rizzo Principles: they drafted and developed young pitchers (Latos was drafted in the 11th round in 2006, Wade LeBlanc was a second round pick in the same year) and then traded a veteran (Jake Peavy) for a passel of young prospects. If Mike Rizzo follows the same pattern he will wait on Zimmermann, Olsen, Marquis and Wang — and set aside the enormous temptation of trading Adam Dunn or Josh Willingham, whose middle-of-the-order bats are essential to transforming the young staff into winners. That’s probably a pretty good strategy for a team that’s still rebuilding, but it’s near-beer for Nats’ watchers. Which means? Which means that the Nats staff is not only unsettled, it’s likely to remain so.

The Washington Nationals dropped an ten inning contest to the Cincinnati Reds 5-4 on Sunday, losing two of three to the surging Concepcions. The Nats have now lost ten of their last fourteen and have dropped to four games under .500. The Sunday loss was particularly painful, as usually reliable Nats reliever Matt Capps dropped a winnable save in the ninth, while Doug Slaten gave up two unnecessary singles in the tenth to provide an exclamation to the collapse. Nats starter Craig Stammen pitched well, hurling six-and-two-thirds innings, while allowing one run. But Stammen’s effort was not enough to save his job with the big club: after the game he was optioned to Triple-A Syracuse to make room for Stephen Strasburg, who will start on Tuesday against the Pirates.

Stammen was philosophical about his demotion. “The proof is in the pudding. I knew I was kind of one of the guys in line for [the demotion],” he said after hearing the news. “I haven’t been very consistent and it’s just the way it is. To pitch in the big leagues, you can’t really worry about if you are going to get sent down or staying or going or eating cheese for lunch. You have to be able to get guys out.” It has been known for some time that Strasburg’s arrival would mean the demotion of someone in the starting rotation — and the decision came down to one between Stammen, J.D. Martin or Luis Atilano. Outside of Stammen, the continuing big story of the Nats is the inability of Matt Capps to get out of the ninth with a win. Once again on Sunday, Capps found himself in a save situation that he couldn’t complete. Capps entered the contest with one out in the ninth, but gave up successive doubles to account for the blown save, his fourth of the year. “I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t very good,” Capps said following the contest.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: Bill Ladson has the Nats “leaning” towards drafting big bat catcher/outfielder Bryce Harper with the first pick in today’s first year player draft. While Harper is only 17, his bat is so good that he’s become the prohibitive favorite — and has been called “the greatest amateur player of all time.” So, as most Nats blogs agree, Harper is the pick: Nationals Farm Authority (who are good at predicting these kinds of things) says that Harper is “a lead pipe cinch,” while detailing the top ten prospects in the lottery. Meanwhile, back on June 3, Nationals Enquirer published a video of Harper’s ejection from a recent junior college game. The rap on Harper has been that he has a bad attitude, but the report seems more rumor than fact. Then too, if being ejected from a game were cause to question a person’s character, there wouldn’t be many draftees eligible. Even so, over at Capital Punishment they’re worried about the attitude question and meticulously rework worries about Harper’s swing. CP says that Harper is no “sure thing.” Too true.