RULE 5 Draft's Coming...

Did you know that former DC reliever Luis Ayala was a Rule 5 Draft pick? The Expos plucked him out of Arizona's system after the 2002 season. Ayala and DC catcher Jesus Flores are on the "Honorable Mention" list in MLB.com writer Jonathan Mayo's recent article entitled, "Rule 5 Draft uncovers future stars", where Mr. Mayo compiles a list of the Top 10 Rule 5 picks since 1990. Jesus Flores was swiped from the NY Mets' system after the '06 season and he's stayed in DC after playing 79 games in '07 and beating out veterans Paul Lo Duca and Johnny Estrada for the starting spot in '08. Flores is currently competing in the Venezuelan Winter League with the Navegantes del Magallanes, where he's hitting .227 with 4 doubles, 1 HR and 7 RBI's in 21 games and 66 AB's. Which Mets', D-Backs', or Reds' or Indians' prospect will the Nationals' pluck out of obscurity this season?

Did You Know?

 I was going over the list of MLB's Top 50 Prospects that was published in its completed form this past Friday, and after noting that no Nationals' prospects had made the list, I began to wonder if they were actually the only franchise without a representative, so I laboriously listed the 30 MLB teams on an erasable board and clicked through the list...since they don't have a MASTER LIST WITH TEAM NAMES!!.. and checked off each team as I went down...until I was finally left with a list of four teams, The Chicago White Sox, Minnesota Twins, Houston Astros and your Washington Nationals, who did not have a prospect in their system that was ranked as one of the Top 50 in baseball by MLB.com... 

...Of course, after I spent twenty minutes crossing teams off my board, I clicked on the link on MiLB.com that says, "Top 50 Breakdown" which took me Jonathan Mayo's article entitled, "Top 50 Prospects: behind the numbers", which has a neat list of all the teams and the number of prospects each organization has on the Top 50 list...Well, at least I came up with the correct list of four troubled franchises on my own...

...Oh, and the other day, in the first post I wrote about MLB.com's Top 50 Prospects list, I jokingly noted, after mentioning that they had counted down 29 players without mentioning a Nationals' prospects' name, that there wasn't any reason to worry, because, "I'm sure one of DC's guys was #51..." Well, actually, Mr. Mayo includes the list of #'s 51-60, and it turns out that the Nationals don't  have a prospect in the Top 60 in baseball according to MLB.com...and the White Sox and Twins do...so only DC's Nationals and the Astros are absent completely from the Top 60 list...

We'll see where you put Strasburg on that list next year, Mr. Mayo.

UPDATE on the FEDERALBASEBALL.com Mystery...

Wikipedia is not wrong? How could they not be wrong? I found this today, at Pressbox.mlb.com, it's a pdf of RFK Stadium Facts...which includes a list of "RFK Stadium - Senators' Lasts", which has Dave Nelson listed as having scored the last Senators' run in RFK Stadium? How is this possible? Here is the box score again, courtesy of baseball-reference.com...9/30/71 Yankees at Senators....which clearly has Senators' second baseman Tom Ragland scoring on a sacrifice fly in the eighth before the game is called in the ninth...and not only that, in a "NOTE" below the list of Senators' lasts, it states, by way of qualifying, "All 'lasts' occured during the 9/30/71 game unless otherwise noted," and it's not otherwise noted on Dave Nelson's last run...What happened to Tom Ragland's run?

(ed. note - "I sent a question to baseball-reference.com, maybe they'll know the answer...")

The Winter Meetings start Monday...