That leash you see dragging on the ground behind Rob Dibble? That’s the leash his wife has on him. And that collar? She put it there too. Listen, we don’t know anything about Rob Dibble (not a damn thing, honest), but the droogs who write for this blog (and just for the record, here we — all males — are) have a sense about these things. And our sense is that we’ve heard just enough from Rob Dibble himself during his MASN broadcasts to conclude that his wife (a teacher, he says), knows him well enough to understand his irritating little foibles. And (we’re also sure — based on our own experience) to endlessly and grindingly try to correct them. So when “Taliban Rob” lowered the boom on some female Nats fans the other night during a MASN game broadcast (“Those ladies right behind there, they haven’t stopped talking the whole game”), our hunch (and believe us, we oughta know), was that Mrs. Dibble probably lowered the boom on him. She wasn’t alone.

Dan Steinberg leaped on Dibble about his comments, which included one of those in-game graphics — where Dibble circled the women and noted that “they have some conversation going on. Right here. There must be a sale tomorrow going on here or something . . . Their husbands are going man, don’t bring your wife next time.” Ugh. Steinberg seemed to relish Dibble’s gaffe (all of four days ago now), and touched on it again this morning, when he noted that Dibble had issued an apology. Of course, as Mrs. Dibble will surely tell her chagrined husband, that is certainly not the end of it. She’d be right: Nationals Fangirls are all revved up about Dib’s comments (or “fired up,” as the case may be), issuing a broadside about Dibble’s “sexist, misogynistic” ideas. We’re fans of Nationals Fangirls (we actually read them, and regularly) and can’t take issue with them, except for their added, unnecessary and interesting (as in “it’s interesting they would commit the same gaffe”) comment that maybe Dib’s wife “helped feed the stereotype.” And then, one of the fangirls added this: ” . . . but perhaps I shouldn’t say that. I’m sure she’s very pretty.” Ah yeah, now we get it: pretty women can’t think. Groooowwwwww, phtttt.

Listen, we’re not exactly drum beating fans of Rob Dibble (we find his endless talk of how “these guys have to learn they’re competing for jobs” pretty tiresome), but maybe (just maybe) it’s time for a little perspective. Dibble issued an apology and it sounds to us like he was sincere. Then too, Rob Dibble’s repetition of a common stereotype hardly makes him a scimitar wielding Taliban leader; frankly, it’s a stretch to say he’s “misogynistic” — a crime that ought to denote something a  bit more loutish than the rather banal opinion that women go shopping. Rob Dibble as Mullah Omar? C’mon. But really (really) what we’re most afraid of is that the Dib’s gaffe will send the Nats’ front office into a search for a more appropriate but far more nauseating voice. Like Don “I Love America The Beautiful” Sutton or Ron “where the hell am I” Darling.

And there’s this. For all of his faults, Dibble beats the daylights out of the ever popular Steve Czaban and sidekick Andy Pollin, who make book on saying that men who don’t weigh 350 pounds and play left tackle “wear skirts” — a phrase that’s more offensive than anything Dibble has ever, ever said. No one has ever complained about them, perhaps because they do it so often if confirms their lack of even a minimal middlebrow intelligence (“this quote is from George Bernard Shaw, ever heard of him?” Pollin once asked “the Czabe” — and guess what . . . ). Then too, unlike Czabe and the crew (who sound like they actually hate baseball — and want the Nats to fail), Dibble not only knows about the game he’s covering, he actually once played it.

Apology accepted.

Tim Lincecum struggled on Wednesday — leaving his fastball up in the zone and failing to throw strikes with his curve — allowing the Nationals to score six runs and pound out six hits in taking the second game of a three game stint in San Francisco. Luis Atilano, meanwhile, dominated Giants’ hitters through the first four innings, before San Franciso put together a mini-rally in the fifth. Even with that, San Francisco (which is struggling at the plate) was unable to connect against Atilano, or Washington’s relievers. “Everything was working good,” Atilano said of his performance. “Finally, I was able to command my sinker. I was just throwing sinkers and changeups the first couple of innings. Everything was good. I was happy I finally got back to the point where I was on top of my game. Hopefully, it will keep going like that.” Atilano is now 4-1 on the season — and a surprise for the Nats — while Lincecum lost his first.

There’s no question the Nats need to start hitting. While the Anacostia Nine aren’t having the same problems at the dish as the Giants — who are scrambling to find their rhythm — the team’s anemic performance on Tuesday (two runs on just four hits in a 4-2 loss in San Francisco), serves as a cautionary note for a squad that should be among the NL’s leaders in scoring runs and hitting for average. They’re not. The Nats are in the middle of the pack in the NL in batting average (7th of 16), tenth in RBIs, tenth in hitting the long ball, ninth in walks and 11th in scoring runs. With Ivan Rodriguez on the DL, the team will need to have Wil Nieves step into his shoes not only behind the plate, but in the batter’s box. That doesn’t seem likely. Worse yet, the Nats are near the bottom in fielding (12th of 16), having committed more errors than any team but the Marlins. The good news? Surprise. Surprise. It’s the bullpen. The team leads the league in saves and has been solid in the middle innings. It’s a good thing, with a team ERA at 4.45, the Nats remain desperate for arms that can keep their opponents off the board.

Soylent Green Is People: There was an animated dugout conversation between Tim Lincecum and McCovey manager Bruce Bochy last night after Lincecum was removed from the game. Odds are that Bochy was zinging his ace for his inability to keep runners close at first. The Nats stole four bases on Lincecum, three of them in the top of the 5th and two of them on no-throws from catcher Benjie Molina . . . Rob Dibble’s “intestinal fortitude” speech came in inning 5 last night. This time Dibble’s victim was Luis Atilano. Dibble deemed Atilano’s performance “disappointing.” Really? Atilano gave up two earned and four hits in 5.1 and he might well have pitched a complete 6th if it hadn’t been for a Roger Bernadina misplay in right field. Then too, Atilano was coming off two previous rocky starts and was facing baseball’s best pitcher. What the hell is Dibble talking about? “These kids have to learn, there’s competition up here — they should be pitching like their hair is on fire.” Oh come on: two earned and four hits in 5.1? We’ll take it . . .

Speculation about just when Stephen Strasburg will make his debut is the focus of MLB baseball talk — and the Nats blogosphere. Nats Triple Play says that the Nats front office has been manipulating Strasburg’s debut for contract purposes (check) and to sell out a June 4 Friday night game (check). The Nationals Enquirer (meanwhile) gives the Nats a pass, noting that Mike Rizzo had never said when Strasburg would appear: “Heck, about the only thing the Nationals are guilty of is not stepping in sooner to squash the speculation around June 4th. And really: why should they have? It was only last night that anyone from the Nationals even mentioned June 4 as a possibility; and it was Rizzo denying that this date was written in stone.” Still, there’s a lot of anger on fan forums about the June 4 date. So here’s the deal: don’t listen to the Nats, listen to the pundits. About a month ago, baseball guru Tim Kurkjian had Strasburg starting against the Ahoys on June 10. That sounded about right, but Kurkjian might have been off by about two days. My bet is Strasburg will be on the mound on the 8th . . . so here’s a question: what happens if “the next big thing” gets hit around and Rigs has to pull him in the 4th? Let’s not kid ourselves — there are no guarantees . . .

A family member put it best in the seventh inning of last night’s Nats win in Denver: “Maybe the umps are on psychedelics. Maybe they don’t know it’s raining.” It didn’t seem out of the question: for about five innings of the eight inning contest last night, Denver looked more like Manila during a monsoon than Colorado in the warm spring. The night provided Nats and Rockies regulars with a slick slog that puddled the infield and forced outfielders to wade through inch-deep water to catch fly balls descending between torrential rains. The weather didn’t seem to bother the Nats, who banged out 14 runs on sixteen hits, scoring seven in the top of the eighth to seal the victory. Ryan Zimmerman slugged two homers and drove in six, to push the Nats to a 20-15 record. That’s good enough for second place in the NL Least and among the best in all of baseball.

It’s Not A Motorcycle Baby, It’s A Chopper: The Nats shouldn’t get a pass just because they’re playing well. So here goes: what is it that Jim Riggleman hasn’t figured out about Miguel Batista? The Nats skipper brought in Batista’s middle innings arm to provide experience and stability, but Riggleman’s confidence in Batista has to be waning. Mine sure is. Batista was shaky again last night, allowing the Rockies back into the game when they should have been prayed and planted. The former Cubs, Mariner, Diamondback, Blue Jay, Pirate and Marlin sports a 6.04 ERA, but that number should be checked — it has to be low. Last night, the 38-year-old veteran (rough translation: this should be his last stop), came into the game in the 5th, but couldn’t survive the 6th. I almost expected Jim Tracy to beg Rigs to leave him in the game. He gave up a round-tripper to Miguel Olivo. But that wasn’t a surprise to anyone with eyes. Everytime Batista gets behind in the count (which is nearly every batter), he puffs himself up, concentrates real hard . . . and grooves an 87 mph fastball. This is then followed by his shake of the head and a Riggleman visit to the mound. Enough already . . .

Rob Dibble is the constant focus of fan complaints. The MASN baseball analyst is outspoken, a fan of movies that only adolescents would like, culturally out-of-tune (“hey, remember the Fonz?”), and a sometime drain on the patience of Bob Carpenter — a 17-year-old in a forty-something’s body. But for those of us who spend the early hours watching the MLB’s network feeds from the midwest and left coast, Dibble comes across as a guy who knows the game and isn’t afraid to express an opinion. Don’t believe it? Tune into a Cardinals broadcast to see what I mean: Dopey and Sleepy do baseball. I swear — play-by-play guy Dan McLaughlin and color analyst Mike Shannon are terrific, but only if you like long silences and chit chat about everything but baseball. I once timed one of their silences, through two batters and four pitches into a third. And then this: “Nice night.” I thought maybe they’d fallen asleep. I’ll take Dibble any day. Then too (but this is only CFG’s opinion), he beats the daylights out of former Nats broadcast brain Don Sutton, whose phony baloney all-American we-are-family shtick (“Austin Kearns is just a fine young man”) wore out after the first rendition of “America.”

But Dibs makes mistakes, forgivable mistakes to be sure — but mistakes. You can almost feel Carpenter smiling to himself when he does. Last night was pretty typical for the Carpenter-Dibble duo. When Nats’ catcher Ivan Rodriguez came to bat in the top of the eighth with runners on first and second, Carpenter asked his sidekick whether Riggleman would have him push the runners over with a sacrifice bunt. “No way. He’s hitting .407 with runners in scoring position,” Dibs said. “Riggleman’ll have him hit away.” Sure nuf, Pudge laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt, putting runners on second and third. With two on and one out and with first base open, Roger Bernadina was intentionally walked. This brought pinch hitter Cristian Guzman to the plate, who promptly hit a bases-clearing triple. Silence. “Rigs made a pretty good call on that bunt,” Carpenter said.

The Nats-Mets match-up has sparked another friendly exchange of questions from “N.L. Least” bloggers. This time the N.L. East Chatter community and the guys from The Real Dirty Mets Blog (TRDMB) and Phillies Phandom provided  questions for Centerfield Gate (CFG) on the state of the Nats. Some of these questions go a little farther afield than our normal — “what are you going to do for pitching” — entries: as both teams are struggling just to finish the season with some amount of dignity intact. As it turns out, and as our readers will note, some of our blog entries have sparked a little concern among Mets fans: particularly our claim that our very own Anacostia Boys will finish ahead of the Chokes in 2010. We’re asked to explain ourselves and defend our opinions — and then to weigh in on our very own on-air personality, Rob Dibble.

TRDMB: Most likely you guys will have the first pick in the draft again. Since you drafted a phenom of a pitcher last year, what position do you think they will use their #1 pick on?

CFG:  We would love to see them draft a middle infielder – unless there’s a Babe Ruth on the board. But what I want and what will happen are two different things. This is Stan Kasten’s team and his philosophy is unyielding: draft pitchers, pay for players. So that seems to indicate that it’s likely that we’ll draft and sign a big lefty or some big righty (out of some college is my bet) and draft a middle infielder in about the third round. That’s the typical thing for Kasten. The next draft is filled with power arms, so that seems to tilt it in favor of pitching. But there is one guy who could change all of this. Bryce Harper is the newest can’t miss player: a high school catcher who is considering enrolling in community college just to be eligible for the draft. If Harper is there, we would grab him.

TRDMB: Do you think the National will add payroll for next years roster? There were rumors about the money you were willing to drop on Texieira…any chance the Nationals use that cash to bring in some FA talent?

CFG:  . . . the front office has been wiggling all year to cut here and there to have some money in the bank at the end of the season: they reportedly have about $20 million they can spread around and that’s what we expect them to do. I don’t think they’ll offer a blockbuster deal to anyone like they did with Tex: we wouldn’t expect, for instance, that they would bring in a John Lackey. Instead, we think they’ll try to land two or three guys that will bolster the overall team: a reliever, a middle infielder and a second tier starter. We would like to see them dangle some money to Orlando Hudson and John Garland – and re-up Livan Hernandez and then go for a high end middle innings guy, like Oakland did with Mike Wuertz. Of course, he won’t be around, but someone like him would really go a long ways to fixing some sadly broken things. You know: we bet we’ll will be writing the same damn thing next year.

TRDMB: How has attendance been this year at Nats park? From a fan perspective, are they optimistic of the future right now? The off-field stories like Strasburg have to be a nice plus, but on the field, there is no consistency.

CFG: There must be a way to assess attendance as a function of projected and real team finishes. It’s probably already being done, but if not we’ll take full credit for the idea. For instance, we need to assess whether (as the worst team in baseball) the Nats could have been expected to draw better than the A’s, Marlins, Pirates, Indians, Reds and Royals — which they have the answer would be “no.” Which leads us to conclude that the front office got a gift: the fans did all the heavy lifting. Everyone else in major league baseball has a better record and yet the Nats are 24th in attendance and not all that far behind the O’s, Blue Jays and Padres. That’s pretty strong stuff. The really weak team in that list — as a measure of fans against production — are the Marlins, who are contending for the wild card but playing in a mausoleum. You could pass gas in Land Shark stadium without anyone hearing it. No. No. You’re exactly right. And there’s no getting around it. This is a terrible team. But the fans keep coming. You know, it’s weird in D.C. If you show up in the first inning, before the first pitch (a matter of principle for real fans), there’s no one there. And you think: oh, oh. But then you look up in the second inning and people are streaming in. And by the third the stadium is half full — or almost so. And then they announce attendance, and it’s always between 20-24 thousand. Which isn’t bad at all. If this city had any kind of team at all we’d be in the top 10 in attendance. Which is a great thing, really, when you think about it. Because the slam against the city is that it is a football town. And it is: but the Nats, just in virtue of what they’ve drawn this year, are here to stay. They are going to draw 1.8 million for the worst team in baseball. Not bad.

Matt R(NLEC): You wrote in one of your blogs lately that you think the Nats will finish ahead of the Mets next year (I think). How do you come to this conclusion?

CFG: Because next year the Nats will have a better team. Well, okay. We’ll explain, and we’re not saying this to bait Mets fans or because we’re Nats fans. We actually believe that all of the evidence points to it. Most of all, we point to the differences in the front office. Our sense is that the Mets front office knows their team had a terrible year and that it has to be improved. But for them it’s: ‘well, we can do this. We’re not that far away: a little dit here and a little dat there, and bingo, we have a contending club.’ And then they think: ‘and if Reyes comes back and Beltran is healthy and Johan is Johan,’ … well you know — there they are. Atop the NL Least. Winner winner chicken dininer. The Nats have no such illusion. The front office knows this is disaster and they have been working all year to get it better and to clear things out for the off-season. It’s not a little dit here and a little dat there, it’s a reset, a makeover. They don’t need to start the makeover in the offseason, they started in July. Then too, the Nats have more at stake. If the Mets fail, well you’re in New York and there’s all that TV money and the payroll is above $100 million and sooner or later they’ll get it right and they have a history — and the Miracle Mets and Casey and Tom Terrific. There’s history there. Not so with the Nats. They need to get it right now. They’ve got $80 million and that’s it. And in DC, everything is at stake. Even the future of the franchise. At the end of the day, it doesn’t come down to Wright or Zimmerman, or Dunn or Murphy or any of that. The strength of a team starts in the front office. And right now, amazingly, the Nats front office is just better. Something happened in New York. And it wasn’t on the field — and it wasn’t good. And it hasn’t been repaired. That’s not true for the Nats.

Matt S(PP): Rob Dibble is a blabbering idiot. Did you enjoy his color commentary and should he return to the booth next season?

CFG: Yeah, Rob Dibble is a blabbering idiot, but he’s our blabbering idiot. Thankfully, he’s married to a schoolteacher, so at least she’s in her element. That poor woman, we’ll bet he’s a handful. We look at it this way: if you think Dibble is bad, you oughta get a load of what we had before him. We once had Ron Darling in the booth and he was as soft as a pillow. He used to hang around media conventions looking for a job. He was desperate. It was pathetic too. So he ended up on Nats’ broadcasts for about a year. We remember he once said, as the Nats took the field: “Wow, those are sharp looking uniforms.” Sharp looking uniforms? The guy was total Brooks Brothers. If you go down there now in Manhattan and wait a while he’ll show up. Then we got Don Sutton. This guy spent his time in front of the mirror practicing his salute and telling us how great Austin Kearns was because he was just such a solid citizen. I mean, who cares? We would sign Stalin if he could hit the ball. And Sutton had this habit of talking, unintentional we’re sure, that signaled all the wrong things: like how he was giving us these really inside little gems that were big secrets. So now it’s Dibble, and he’s a child – but he can be fairly entertaining and when he actually talks about the game (which isn’t all that often) he can sometimes actually be right. Thing is, he’s often as wrong. He and his sidekick (Bob Carpenter, who really is very good) loved Ronnie Belliard, for instance – going on and on about what a good hitter this guy was. Ronnie was hitting about .183 at the time. And they play favorites. They don’t like Alberto Gonzalez (not the attorney general, the second baseman), who’s actually a good, young, up-side guy. But they’re down on him. Thing is, when he started to break out of his slump last week the damage was done. So they treated everything he did as a fluke. You know, we have to say something good about Dibble, just to kind of even it up. So here it is: back when the Nats were really suffering (back in April and May) he just let them have it. He was unrelenting. It was ruthless, ugly, articulate, and right on. So let’s give him that. He’s not a homer. There are long silences during some of these games, in the middle of a sixth inning collapse, and you can actually hear him breathing. And then he’ll say: “Long inning.” Great stuff, really. The really good news is the in-studio guy is Ray Knight, and he’s terrific. A great grasp of the game, a way of putting the viewer at ease, and he can be very outspoken. Everyone likes him: he cares about the team, the fans, the viewers. Just an all around nice guy who is always prepared.

John Lannen looked nearly unhittable for six complete innings tonight, but Philadelphia hitters got to him in the seventh, hitting back-to-back home runs and powering the first place Phillies to a 5-3 win at Nationals Park.  The damage was done in the top of the 7th, when Jayson Werth and Raul Ibanez hit back-to-back homers. The Werth-Ibanez dingers were enough to chase Lannan, who was relieved by the usually effective Tyler Clippard. But Clippard gave up a homer to Chase Utley that sealed the game. The Nats threatened in the ninth against shaky Phillies’ closer Brad Lidge, but with runners packing the bases Ryan Zimmerman (the hero of Monday’s contest) and Adam Dunn (already the proud papa of 35 round trippers this year) could not bring them home. Zimmerman struck out to Ryan Madson and Adam Dunn hit a crippled duck to second base.

A dejected John Lannan gave up 4 round trippers on Tuesday (AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

 

 

 

DWilly’s piece yesterday about the Red Sox was right on the money: their age is showing. I’ve been looking for a word that describes their play since the All Star break and I’ve had a difficult time coming up with just the right moniker. Then, this morning, I read a piece in the New York Times on the Sox newest Japanese import Junichi Tazawa and there it was: “wheezing.”  Perfect. Their batting averages show it precisely. The Red Sox top four guys are hitting .297, .300, .292 and .308.  After that the averages fall off, with their eight- and nine-slotted guys (Varitek and Gonzalez) not hitting their weight — at .222 and .210 respectively. Combine that with a two man rotation and you get what you get.

It is a truism that this not the ’04 ball club. There is no “Cowboy Up” talk and no emotional sparkplug. There is no Kevin Millar. The oldest guy in the Sox lineup that year was third baseman Bill Mueller, who was 33.  Today Varitek is 37, third sacker Mike Lowell is 35 (both, shown below, in the ’07 series) and two other guys are 33. Not the geriatric ward but no spring chickens either. But there is one similarity with the ’04 club. Today the Sox are 70 – 52, 6.5 games behind the Yanks. On this day five years ago they were in a similar position: 70 – 53, 6.5 games behind the Empire. The Sox finished the ’04 campaign with 98 wins, which is .700 baseball.  But without a bottom half of the lineup and a beat up pitching staff it’ll be quite a feat to match their ’04 glory.

MASN commentator Rob Dibble was even more outspoken than usual during the second half of Houston’s pasting of the Nats last night. “I think some of these guys are mailing it in,” he said during the seventh inning of Washington’s 9-4 embarrassment. “It’s pathetic,” he said at another point. Dibble’s comments are now the talk of the blogosphere, including a long article on his comments on D.C. Sports Blog — which reviewed color analyst Ray Knight’s post-game response to some of Dibble’s charges. At first, it seemed, Knight was unwilling to associate himself with Dib’s criticisms but, after hearing him out, issued his own blistering attack. “You know what I would do? I’d clean house,” Knight said. “When guys don’t make plays defensively I’d sit ‘em on the bench. I’d give a guy a chance to play. And I’m talking about for a week, I don’t care if you’re hitting .320, I don’t care what you’re doing, I’m tired of seeing it too. We’re just two former players that busted our butts, and we’re here working for a company that you expect a fine product.”

Neither Dibble nor Knight blamed Manny Acta or the team’s coaches for the team’s weakness. ”I know Manny Acta and I know these coaches are busting their butts to get the most out of these guys, but the players, they don’t expect that out of each other in that locker room,” Dibble said. “That’s what I’m saying. Somebody needs to point a finger in there and say, ‘Enough’s enough. You guys are on my team, you’ve got to go out there and back me up.’ John Lannan deserved better out of his bullpen, he deserves better defensively, and he definitely damn well deserves better offensively after what he’s done the last six outings on a bad ballclub . . . So for me to watch a guy like John Lannan, who I think has a huge heart, and he goes out there, he never mails it in, I think there’s a lot of guys who should apologize to him.”

In retrospect, while Dibble’s and Knight’s comments seemed aimed at the entire team, they came in the aftermath of a yet another particularly sloppy game by Washington shortstop Cristian Guzman, whose year long indifferent fielding continues to hurt Nats’ starters. This is the second time that Dibble has focused his attention on the Nats’ shortstop — the first being in Colorado when Guzman booted a ground ball that hit his ankle. Knight didn’t need any more clues: “I don’t know who exactly you’re feeling it about,” Knight said. “I’m feeling it about certain people. But Manny has to make that decisions, or [Mike] Rizzo. If you think that there’s a player out there not defining the position . . . Take shortstop. Balls are going up the middle, knocked down, erratic type play. It looks like, to me, Goozie’s mind is somewhere else. He’s the guy I’m most disappointed in.”

Dibble and Knight’s comments are significant. Both men are not only former highly regarded ballplayers, both feel a part of the Nationals’ organization. Dibble regularly refers to himself as a part of the Nats’ team (“we’ve just got to do better”) and Knight has gone out of his way to get to know players and coaches. Unlike former MASN analyst Don Sutton (who departed when a broadcasting slot came open elsewhere), neither are looking at their MASN work as a launching pad to stardom. More specifically, while the new “nasty boys” tandem of Dibble and Knight have said that “Manny has to make that decision, or Rizzo” — their comments are a direct challenge to the Nats’ front office: if you’re going to get rid of lazy players, you might want to start with ”Goozie.”

It’s not hard to figure out who might need Guzman. The ten year veteran has a sharp bat and has been in the thick of a pennant race before — with Minnesota in ’02, ’03 and ’04, years in which the Twinkies reached the off-season. Guzman seemed to feed off the Twins’ success, registering just 12, 11, and 12 errors respectively during that time. Teams in contention and shopping for a shortstop are likely to see Guzman’s glove work in Washington (where he’s accumulated twelve errors already) as a result of playing for a last place team. A team like the Seattle Mariners, for instance, might find Guzman’s bat a plus in any run-to-the-division title. While the Mariners’ claim they’re satisfied with Ronny Cedeno’s play up-the-middle, the former Cub is hitting just .149. Cedeno would do better with full time work: he only saw action while subbing for regular shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt, who was rehabbing a strained left hamstring.

Even if Cedeno stays in Seattle, Betancourt is available. After returning from his rehab, Betancourt was shifted to second (he had never played there before), before being put back on the bench — fueling rumors that he was headed out of town. A straight-up swap of dissatisfied shortstops might appeal to Seattle, whether the trade involved Cedeno or the 27-year old Betancourt. It is well-known that the Mariners’ have been discussing Betancourt with the Pirates, but given the Knight-Dibble rebellion, the Nats might think about getting into the mix. While Dibble thinks that Guzman should be benched in favor of Alberto Gonzalez, the young Venezuelan has not proven he’s a slick fielder, with six errors in 21 games this year. Either Cedeno or Betancourt would be a step up — even if the Nats had to fork over some extra dollars to swing the deal: Guzman is owed $8 million for 2010 while Betancourt (a better and younger player) is in the second year of a four year $13.75 million contract.