Jason Marquis couldn’t find the strike zone in his first regular season outing, and when he did the Phillies took full advantage. The Phillies chased the free agent righthander after just four innings and went on to an easy 8-4 victory over the Nats. The Nationals have now begun their season 0-2, and probably can’t wait to for the Phillies to leave town. “The whole Phillies lineup is dangerous, but they all can be pitched to,” Marquis said after the game. “They have holes in their swing, you just have to make pitches against this lineup. There is no letup. I wasn’t able to make as many pitches as I wanted to.” What Marquis meant was: I wasn’t able to make as many good pitches as I wanted to. There’s no desperation just yet (heck, it’s only the second game of the season), but to hold their home fans, the Nats cannot afford another 0-7 start — and are growing anxious to notch their first win.(Well, I suppose if it gets really bad, Stan could bus in some people from Phillie or New York.)

If there’s good news, it’s that shortstop newbie Ian Desmond is hitting the ball — if inconsistently. The rookie stroked a beautiful line-drive home run into straight away center field and a double down the left field line. But the good news is more than balanced by the bad: Desmond notched three strike outs (one looking). The kid can hit fastballs (hell, I can hit fastballs), but he needs a tune-up on anything moving over the plate. The other piece of good news is that Josh Willingham seems in mid-season form: he was 3-5 last night with a walk and he looks tough at the plate. Willingham is hitting .571 to start the season. For Nats fans, the post-game was nearly as interesting as watching Cole Hamels (who wasn’t sharp) wrack up his first win. Callers to the “Nats Talk Live” post game show on WFED were in their football mode, telling Phil Wood that it was time to “blow up the team” and “send a message” to guys like Marquis and reliever Matt Capps. “I don’t buy this ‘the season is 162 games and there’s a long way to go,’” an angry caller told Wood. “We need to do something now.” Yeah, like what? It’s not like the Nats can trade a couple of draft picks for a celebrated slinger, then hold a reassuring press conference to sooth their fans. This isn’t that game.

It’ll be okay. The Nats head to New York to face the already-struggling Mets this weekend and there’s no reason to panic. The team that’s on the field at Nats Park (that is, the home team, not the Phillies) is galactically better than last year’s edition: Adam Kennedy and Pudge Rodriguez will make a significant difference, the Nats are finally playing their young players, and the bullpen is not nearly as shaky as it was a year ago (Matt Capps threw well last night, and would have been out of the ninth if it weren’t for an Ian Desmond error). It’s only a matter of time before Lannan and Marquis hit their stride and the quartet of Zimmerman, Dunn, Willingham and Rodriguez put some numbers on the board. Which is to say: the season is 162 games and there’s a long way to go.

In The Land of the White Elephants: The modern version of the double header is to leave Nats Park right after the game (at about 10:45) and arrive at home in time to watch MLB Network’s west coast feed. Without extra innings or fireworks, it’s possible — and rewarding. Then too, you can flip between the west coast game and the thirty minute version of Baseball Tonight and, if the semi-goofy Bobby Valentine isn’t the featured BBT analyst, the games and comments are as entertaining as anything on television (maybe that’s not saying much). Even so, last night’s Navigators vs. White Elephants tilt was a barnburner, a classic match-up between two teams that don’t like each other even a little bit. This is the west coast version of the Boston-New York rivalry and, when the A’s are good (which they’re not, not really) it’s something to see.

While BBT’s on-set announcers go on (and on) about how crucial the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is to the future of humanity, the A’s versus Mariners games have been as entertaining. The two have played two walk-off last-at-bat games in as many nights, with last night’s 5-4 bottom-of-the-ninth victory a model of west coast junior circuit baseball. The hero was Oakland catcher Kurt Suzuki, who came up to face Seattle fireballer Mark Lowe with newly acquired Kevin Kouzmanoff (who, honest, played like Brooks Robinson) on first. Suzuki promptly lofted a Lowe fast ball into the left field darkness which, for all the world, looked like it would clear the fence. As Suzuki did his Carlton Fisk routine down the first base line and Seattle outfielder Milton Bradley maneuvered vainly to snag a circus catch, Kouzmanoff (head down) circled the bases for the winning run. Suzuki’s shot hit just above Bradley’s glove and the celebration was on. I swear: even with the ninth inning meltdown of the emotionally impaired Jonathan Papelbon in Boston (it came against the Yankees, after all), the A’s dunking of the Navs in Oakland was the most entertaining game of the night.

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.

The details of the Strasburg signing are now becoming known. The San Diego State righthander has signed a four year contract for a total $15.1 million guaranteed, with a $7.5 million bonus and $7.6 million in salary. The contract includes a number of unreported incentives. There are unconfirmed reports that the Nationals had weighed in with an offer somewhere in the range of $12.5 million, before upping the total in the waning hours of Monday, just before the trading deadline. This would contradict reports that the Nats had put an offer of between fourteen and sixteen million dollars to Strasburg agent Scott Boras this past weekend. Team officials met with Strasburg several weeks ago and were impressed with him. The Nationals front office is touting the deal — it is the lead story on both the MLB and the Washington Nationals’ team website. With the signing the Nats have completed their most successful draft: signing 13 of their first fifteen picks.

Speaking by telephone to Washington, D.C. sports radio 106.7, a Baseball America reporter said that he had talked to Strasburg, “who seemed out of breath but clearly pleased” that the signing had been completed. The reporter said that Strasburg told him that agreement with the Nationals was reached at 11:58 pm on Monday, just two minutes before the signing deadline. Nationals Journal reports: “For weeks, the pitcher and the organization had been locked into the highest-stakes contract negotiations in amateur history, and the 11th-hour deal left both sides on edge as the midnight deadline approached. Deal done, Strasburg will begin his professional career, and the Nationals will enter an era very much tied to the career of their newest, richest player.”

Despite the recent Nationals team success — a record of 21-20 since July 4 — the signing of Strasburg was seen by many baseball commentators as a litmus test for the struggling franchise, particularly after the Nats failed to sign last year’s top draft pick, pitcher Aaron Crow. As late as Saturday, Nats President Stan Kasten was expressing doubts that the deal would get done. ”With 48 hours to go, I simply have no idea whether we’re going to be able to reach a deal,” Kasten said in an interview with the Associated Press. The signing of Strasburg has given the franchise and its owners reason to celebrate: the team has made a huge, but not bank-busting commitment to the team’s future. There was no question the pressure was on the Nats: NBC Washington was breathless in its use of adjectives: “By midnight tonight, Nats fans will know whether the team they follow will have squandered away a second consecutive first-round draft pick.” Squandered? Well, maybe. But maybe not. The question for the Lerners is whether the calculation they made will be worth it: should Strasburg not pan out or get injured, the Nats ownership may feel that the only thing squandered was the money they spent for no return. 

Strasburg may well be a once-in-a-generation talent — a pitcher who can immediately jump from college ball to “the show” (a Ryan Zimmerman of pitchers) — or he could be like those other pitchers drafted with the first overall picks who made their way to the big leagues in their first year: David Clyde (drafted in 1973) and Ben MacDonald, drafted in 1989. We won’t know until we see him pitch for the first time at Nationals Park, and we won’t know even then. But this we do know: owners that want their teams to compete in the majors pony up. The Lerners had to show that they knew this and were willing to spend the money to play with the big boys in New York, Boston, Philly, L.A. and Chicago. Nats fans should be overjoyed. After months of saying they were committed to putting a better team on the field, and spending the money to do it — the Lerners showed they meant it.  

Mark Lerner Congratulates Stan Kasten on Strasburg Pick

The announcement that Manny Acta has been dismissed as manager of the Washington Nationals will not come as a surprise to Nats fans. The move had been rumored for weeks, with three-time manager (Padres, Cubs and Mariners) and Nats bench coach Jim Riggleman waiting in the wings as the heir-apparent since the beginning of the year. His last 72 hours on the job were among Acta’s finest: in the face of mounting criticism from on-air analysts Ray Knight and Rob Dibble, Acta defended his team. “It’s a long season. Every one of these guys are going to go through a tough time — offensively and defensively. They are human. That’s why we have to have the patience. It’s very difficult for every one of these guys to be on top of their game for 162 games of the baseball season.” Not surprisingly, Acta was gracious when given the news of his firing, telling ESPN Deportes: “I thank the Nationals for giving me this opportunity, and I’m sorry that things didn’t work out as expected. It’s normal for the manager to pay the price when the team is not doing well.”

The apparent hope in the Nats front office is that replacing Acta with Riggleman will motivate the team. There’s little question: Riggleman is more outspoken, more fiery and more willing to argue with umpires than Acta — and seemingly more willing to confront (as a number of Nats’ commentators have recently described it) the team’s “lazy” and “pathetic” play. But the squad that Riggleman inherits isn’t dead last in the MLB because it lacks desire, but because it lacks talent. The Nats bullpen is virtually non-existent, its defense is last in the league, its situational hitting is “atrocious” (as Ray Knight put it in the wake of the most recent loss to the Astros), and its starting pitching is young and untried. The team is a last place team because it is filled with last place talent. Someone, somewhere was asleep at the switch — but it sure wasn’t Manny Acta.

The Nats had a chance to remedy that during the last off-season: when they might have signed Jon Garland and Orlando Hudson. Garland would have provided a veteran pitching presence among a group of 20-somethings, while Hudson actually wanted to play in D.C. The two would not have worked miracles, but more than 81 games into the 2009 season, the Nats still lack a steady veteran pitching presence and a middle infielder with strong defensive skills. Here’s the simple truth: Cristian Guzman is playing like he wants to be elsewhere, the young starting staff needs more seasoning, Alberto Gonzalez and Anderson Hernandez could both use another year at triple-A, Austin Kearns is a bust, the front office went into the season without an experienced closer and, until recently, the team had no speed. It’s time for Stan Kasten to make it clear: he’s the person responsible for this debacle, not Manny Acta.

A lot of Washington fans will greet Manny Acta’s firing with sighs of relief — believing that his replacement will spell a new beginning for the team. That’s because Washington is a sophisticated football town, where fans know that a new coach means a new set of priorities and a new coaching philosophy. A new coach means a “new scheme,” a new set of offenses and defenses and new ways to make use of them. In football, a new coach can wipe the slate clean, can turn also-rans into champions. That’s not true for baseball, where traditional skills done better are rewarded with wins, where player development that is slow but certain brings championships. Riggle won’t come into the dugout with a new system, he’ll be stuck with the same players that Manny had. It would be very surprising if the results were any different.