Craig Stammen’s up-and-down season (and it’s been spent mostly down, in Syracuse) headed upwards on Tuesday — as the former 2010 starting hurler and career .217 hitter put a single into right field, then scored the winning run on a Ryan Zimmerman RBI to give the Nationals another 3-2 victory in New York. Stammen’s heroics at the plate were matched by those on the mound, as he picked up the win in relief.

Stammen has not been with the big club that often this year, but when he has he’s produced, accumulating a 1.93 ERA in very limited exposure. Even so, Stammen’s time in Washington, while measly, has been impressive, and Davey Johnson confirms that the righty is in the running for a spot in the bullpen for 2012.

Stammen’s outing, and the win, brought praise from the Nationals’ skipper, who is testing farm arms with an eye towards next year: “That is the second time I’ve seen him since the callup,” Johnson said following the game. “I’ve really been impressed with the way he is throwing the ball. I gave him a couple of days rest. He was sharp. I’m pleased with what I’m seeing.”

The Nationals win came after the Mets scored two runs in the fifth off Washington starter Chien-Ming Wang. Wang has struggled in the first inning of his outings this year, but he broke that mold on Tuesday, allowing a double and three singles to a line-up that had little trouble smacking the ball around the yard. In all, Wang pitched five complete innings, but he gave up nine hits — not a stellar outing from an arm that Nats hope will fill a hole in the back of the starting rotation next year.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: There’s a lot of hubbub in New York, and around baseball, about baseball’s decision that the Mets would not be allowed to wear NYPD and NYFD hats on 9/11 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of al-Qaeda’s U.S. attack. After the Mets loss to the Nationals on Monday, Mets manager Terry Collins said that, because of the controversy, his team was not focused on the game . . .

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The word around the Nationals’ clubhouse is that Jayson Werth, struggling through a season-long slump, is finally starting to hit. The Nationals’ everyday right fielder — and headline off-season free agent acquistion — is hitting .306 in his last thirteen games. Indeed, Werth showed some pop at the plate on Wednesday night, sending a typical short-stroke liner into Wrigley Field’s left field bleachers for his fourteenth dinger. But Werth’s home run wasn’t enough to beat the Cubs, who took advantage of their own long ball to down the Nationals, 4-2.

The game’s non-story was Ross Detwiler, the team’s constant experiment on the mound, who pitched (in skipper Davey Johnson’s phrase), “just okay.” Lefty Detwiler gave up three runs and seven hits in five innings of work, the biggest knocks against him coming on long balls from catcher Geovany Soto and journeyman Reed Johnson. Detwiler running buddy Collin Balester (they’re both familiar with how to get from Syracuse to Washington — and back), was less than mediocre in an inning of relief: Balester gave up a home run to Alfonso Soriano to put the game out of reach.

And so it is that the Nationals’ search for more pitching among a group of yesteryear’s youngsters (Detwiler, Balester, Garrett Mock, Shairon Martis, J.D. Martin and Craig Stammen), continues, but without the kind of premium (“he’s a keeper”) results. With the next round of young arms waiting in the wings (Tom Milone and Brad Peacock — and perhaps one or two others), Nationals’ fans are starting to clamor for some new faces, and wondering how long it will be before Rizzo, Johnson & Company run out of patience.

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.”

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?

Led by the defense of Ian Desmond (who also had a 4-5 night) and the hitting of Roger Bernadina, the Washington Nationals pounded out 12 hits and eight runs on Saturday, to defeat the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park. The offensive outburst came at the expense of Phillies’ starter Kyle Kendrick, who had trouble making it out of the first inning. Desmond looked like “the wizard” at short, making barehanded plays behind Strasburg, Stammen and Slaten, while Bernadina slugged his eighth home run (putting the game out of reach) in the ninth. But the win was marred by an injury to starter Stephen Strasburg, who was forced to leave the game in the 5th after suffering a strained flexor tendon in his right forearm; it’s not known how serious the injury is — an MRI will be conducted to determine the damage on Sunday. The injury detracted from one of the team’s most solid performances against the Phillies, who trail the Atlanta Braves for the N.L. East lead.

Once again, as was apparent in Atlanta, the Nationals’ bullpen proved key in the Philadelphia victory. After Strasburg departed, Craig Stammen, Doug Slaten, Tyler Clippard and Miguel Batista combined to shut down the Phillies — throwing 4.2 innings while giving up just two hits and no runs. Tyler Clippard was particularly effective. After suffering a fall-off in his performance in late July, the righthander has lowered his ERA to 3.04, solidifying his reputation as one of the National League’s premier set-up men. Stammen also seems to have found his place: the former starter is now filling a first-out-of-the-bullpen role, being used by skipper Riggleman when someone in the rotation collapses. Washington’s bullpen is now ranked seventh in the majors, and fourth in the National League — and is one of the real success stories of the Nationals’ season.

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.