The Nationals search for a centerfielder and lead-off hitter is heating up, according to Ken Rosenthal, who says that Washington’s front office is interested in acquiring outfielder Denard Span from the Minnesota Twins. Rosenthal adds that closer “[Drew] Storen may be in play.” This is not the first time that the Nationals have talked to the Twins about Span: Rosenthal made a similar report earlier this month, though apparently without mentioning the price.

So what are the chances of a Storen-for-Span swap? In our estimation, exactly “zero.” G.M. Mike Rizzo has made it clear that Storen and Tyler Clippard are untouchable. Even so, speculation abounds. The Twins are retooling in the midst of a difficult campaign, one that saw the team battling nagging injuries to their stars. They need younger players and they desperately need relievers. But, honestly, the Twinkies will take help wherever they can get it, even at shortstop.

Which is why the inclusion of Drew Storen in a straight-up trade for Span seems like wishful thinking for Twins’ fans. It just isn’t going to happen. Storen is an important piece for the Nationals, and it’s hard to believe that after all the work in developing him, G.M. Mike Rizzo would swap him now. And how exactly do you replace Drew Storen?

Acquiring Span, however, might well be a coup for the light-hitting Nats. He’s a first rate on-base man, an exciting player and a good defensive outfielder. Span is young and fast and he’s under contract until 2014. The question that needs to be answered is whether Span has fully recovered from a June 3 collision with K.C. catcher Brayan Pena. Span has been unavailable to the Twins since, though he’s currently on a rehab assignment in Triple-A.

The Nationals search for an outfield bat has been serious: B.J. Upton is obviously on the team’s radar screen, as is Halo outfielder Peter Bourjos and Houston speedster Michael Bourn. Span might be cheaper than any of those three, particularly considering his long stay on the disabled list.

The move for Span has to be “deja vu all over again” for the Twins, who last talked with Washington last year when they were searching for a closer. The result was Mike Rizzo’s acquisition of youngster Wilson Ramos for closer Matt Capps. The trade was essential then for the Twins, but the development of Ramos has made Rizzo look like Nicolas Cage from “Gone In Sixty Seconds.”

So here’s the thinking, or presumably so: because the Nationals are near dead last in hitting in the majors, the powers that be have decided to shift the batting order, moving players in and out of the lead-off spot and juggling through a series of middle-order options in an attempt to “get the bats going.” Nothing seems to have worked, though sometimes (as with putting Jayson Werth up top), the attempts have been pretty creative. The most recent thinking is that what the Nationals really need is a good lead-off hitter, a set-up guy that would allow big-bangers like Ryan Zimmerman and Michael Morse (and, ostensibly, a revived Werth), to drive him in.

The thinking isn’t all the bad, though it comes with some caveats — it’s made on the assumption that Roger “The Shark” Bernadina is not built to lead-off, that the Werth experiment was more an attempt to get him going than to really fill a top-of-the-order need and (embarrassingly), Rick Ankiel just hasn’t worked out. Which leaves the Nats where they are: searching for a lead-off hitter with a high OBP who can also play centerfield. The latter requirement is apparently the result of front office thinking that Bernadina who sometimes is (but mostly isn’t) the team’s go-to guy at the top of the order. Three names have been mentioned.

The most recent is Julio Borbon, the Texas Rangers’ sometime lead-off guy who is currently playing in Triple-A for the Round Rock Express — “an athletic position player” who (whether he worked in the lead-off spot or not) could hit for average, get on base, be a threat on the base paths and be a solid defensive outfielder. Borbon might be a good choice, and perhaps cost less than the other two names mentioned: the Rays’ B.J. Upton or the Astros’ Michael Bourn. The problem with both of these latter “solutions” is that they would be expensive — with teams around the league apparently agreed that the player-to-get would be reliever Tyler Clippard, one of the very best set-up men in the game.

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Tom Gorzelanny should have been the news on Saturday, but it was Jake Peavy instead. While Gorzelanny threw seven stellar innings of seven hit baseball, Jake Peavy was the pitcher who captured the headlines. Peavy, who has been battling shoulder problems since his arrival in Chicago from San Diego in 2009, tamed the Nationals with four innings of one hit baseball, picking up the win in a 3-0 White Sox victory over the Nationals.

The single run victory was enough for Peavy, who threw 55 pitches, 38 of them for strikes. Washington hitters could do little so solve him. Peavy, who was once one of the National League’s premier starters, entered the game as a reliever — the first time that has happened in his major league career. “Peavy was unreal,” Nats’ interim manager John McLaren said after the Nationals’ loss. “I was with him during the World Baseball Classic. He had some pitches that were unhittable. He just had really good stuff.”

But Peavy’s four inning gem was more a matter of circumstance than solid strategy. The big righty entered the game in the fourth inning after starter John Danks left the game with a strained right oblique and reliever Brian Bruney appeared to run out of gas. The White Sox were forced to use Peavy after Friday’s fourteen inning marathon burned out the Pale Hose bullpen. “I don’t want to make a big deal of it,” Peavy said. “I needed to do it for my team. That’s the bottom line. We had to find a way to win the game, and give us a chance to win the series tomorrow.”

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In the third inning of Wednesday night’s contest vs. Seattle the in-game interview with the manager commenced and revealed, in hind sight, how swiftly things must have disintegrated between Jim Riggleman and Mike Rizzo. Responding to a question by Johnny Holiday regarding where Jason Werth would be batting in the line-up, the then-Skipper said that Werth would remain in the lead-off spot during the Seattle series but that “when we get to Chicago” they may revisit the situation. What that means is that as of about 8:15 Wednesday evening Riggleman had every intention of going to Chicago 24 hours later.

No doubt the pressures on Riggleman were great. Werth’s veiled outburst in Milwaukee on May 24 (“it’s pretty obvious what’s going on around here”), Marquis’ open defection in Baltimore, and Rizzo’s public comment that he had to come back to Washington in early June “to put out some fires,” all probably weighed heavily on the manager. Rizzo was basically saying that Riggleman couldn’t handle the team. No doubt too — Riggleman mishandled things at times. Thomas Boswell’s piece in today’s Post about Riggleman going after Marquis in the clubhouse in Baltimore was downright wince-inducing (Rule #1 of managing anyone: praise in public, scold in private – even if everyone has a good idea of what’s going on behind that closed door). If the Boswell version of events is right, Riggleman broke Rule #1.

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It’s a trademark phrase in Washington — throwing someone “under the bus” means that you intentionally sacrifice them to make yourself look better, or save your job. It’s being used now by partisans of Jim Riggleman to describe what was going to happen to the just-resigned manager of the Washington Nationals in September: Riggleman was expected to manage the team for the season and do well with it. But come September all of that would be forgotten, and Nats’ G.M. Mike Rizzo would throw Riggleman “under the bus.”

Jim Riggleman doesn’t have many friends in Washington this morning — most of the blogs have weighed in against him (for abandoning the team in mid-season) and the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell scorched Riggleman for failing to make his case on the field. “The GM felt he had proved himself the hard way,” Boswell writes. “Why shouldn’t Riggleman, with the worst record in baseball history of any 12-year manager, have to do the same?”

Okay, but there’s another side to this story. There was a palpable sense, even among fans who don’t have Boswell’s access, that there wasn’t anything (zero, zip, zilch) that Riggleman could do to get re-upped. Everyone in this city who follows baseball closely knew, just knew, that come October (and no matter how well he did) Riggleman was going to be told that he wasn’t coming back next year. And the turnstiles would turn: the Nats would hire a big-name veteran like (say) Bobby Valentine, or (God forbid) Larry Bowa to “take the team to the next level.” Thanks Jim, but Larry will take it from here.

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In the wake of a sweep of the Seattle Mariners at home — and in the middle of a winning streak that has made the Nationals the hottest team in baseball — Jim Riggleman announced that he is resigning as the manager of the Washington Nationals. Nationals’ commentator Phil Wood put it best: “He just felt that his commitment to the club was greater than their commitment to him,” he said. Had he heard Wood, Riggleman would have agreed: “This is more about feeling like this is not the way you want to run your ballclub and keep your manager on a one year deal,” Riggleman said.

The surprise announcement has stunned Nationals’ fans, who have consistently praised Riggleman for his handling of Washington’s young team. And it is clearly a blow to the team front office — who have kept Riggleman uncertain about his future. It’s hard to blame the skipper, and it will be difficult for the team to replace him: the Nationals have played exceptionally over the last two weeks, lifting themselves into third place in the N.L. East. Rizzo responded to the news by telling MASN that he and Riggleman had had a talk before the Thursday game and that Riggleman had “expressed his displeasure” at the Nationals not picking up his option. The two then had a discussion after the game, Rizzo added, and Riggleman submitted his resignation.

“I am disappointed for the guys in the clubhouse, for the team, for the fans and yeah, sure, it’s disappointing.” Rizzo said, but added that the team would have a manager in place by the time they arrived in Chicago and that “we will put this distraction behind us.” Once it is game time in Chicago tomorrow, Rizzo said, “it will be business as usual.” Rizzo added that while the clubhouse was jubilant after the win against the Mariners, the clubhouse was “subdued.” It was “kind of a shocking situation here today,” he said. “The fan base in Washington is a great fan base,” he said, “this is just a small bump in the road [but] We’re going in the right direction.” Phil Wood was more realistic. “They can call it a bump in the road all they want,” he said, “but to me it sounds like a death in the family.”

If you’re going to score four runs off of Tim Lincecum — no matter how much he might be struggling — you take it and head for the dugout with a win. Right? The Nationals had Lincecum on the ropes on Monday night, but the Washington relief corps couldn’t put the game away, and the Giants won in 13 innings, 5-4.

The most recent Nats’ problem has been with their bullpen, as Monday’s starter John Lannan provided a solid outing — perhaps the best of his career. Lannan held the Giants to four hits over seven innings and the offense came through, with Michael Morse providing the big power, then providing his own timely hitting to put the Anacostia Nine up by 4-1 heading into the 8th. That’s when the Nationals bullpen decided to implode.

The eighth inning was a nightmare: the Giants notched, in order, a single, a double, a single, a single and a single. None of the balls were particularly hard hit, but the hard luck Nationals could not keep the Giants at bay. The primary victim was Sean Burnett, who pitched well, but could not keep a bleeder from Aubrey Huff dropping in front of Jayson Werth along the line in right field. It seemed as if this was just “one of those games,” except that the Nationals have been unable to recently hold leads, but have often been able to escape the danger — as they did in Arizona on Sunday.

Sean Burnett was emotional on the mound after giving up the Huff single, as if he couldn’t believe that the ball actually dropped in: “You make good pitches. He hit it where they weren’t,” Burnett said after the loss. “It’s frustrating. You’ve just got to keep pitching. Hopefully your luck changes. I feel like I’m throwing the ball well, but I’ve got nothing to show for it.”

The denouement came at about 3 am Washington time, when San Francisco faced off against semi-Newbie Craig Stammen, who gave up a walk to Chris Stewart and a single to Andres Torres, before Freddy Sanchez put a single down the right field line to score Stewart and win the game.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: The Giants of 2011 look a lot like the Giants of 2010 — they win one run games, they’re tough at home, they depend on hitting with runners in scoring position, they have a crew of tough starters, and a lights-out closer . . . which is to say, they are built for the playoffs. Their missing piece might well be Juan Uribe, a spark plug that they now wish they’d re-signed . . .

Kiss It Goodbye? Arrogance in a baseball player isn’t always a bad thing, but the game has a way of beating it out of you. Harper blew a kiss (here tis, folks) to Greensboro Grasshoppers pitcher Zachary Neal after hitting a homer off of him — apparently his 14th of the year. Mike Rizzo and Jim Riggleman might have something to say about it, if his manager at Hagerstown hasn’t already made it clear . . . it would be interesting to see if he’d ever do it against a guy like, say, Roy Halladay or, better yet — Carlos Zambrano . . . well, he’s not here yet, so there’s time . . . Mike Schmidt had a bit to say about this, and well said: “Tone it down and play the game.”