Elijah "Super" Dukes Released by Nationals

I bet Im hoping for it, the Nats should have sent him down or something. Well see in a couple of hours when the truth come out

I concur.

Morse in right?

http://masnsports.com/2010/03/nationals-release-elijah-dukes.html
I don’t believe a word of this ^^ My guess is that he was approached about being sent down to AAA and exploded. I can’t think of anything else.

He could be a below average hitter and still help this team.

Dukes did nothing well except hit bombs in batting practice.

I like the move. I feel bad for Dukes because I wanted him to be a star, but I like the move. We will win more because of him being gone.

what Dukes would have given us this year. Both have exceptional gloves. Harris on bases .360-.370 vs rhp and Jmax hits LHP fine.

Dukes was terrible defensively, on the basepaths, and in the club house. Sure he hit 500 foot bombs regularly in batting practice, but not much in games. He does walk aolot, but he also struck out in bunches. I have long term hopes for Dukes to be a very good player, but they are only hopes and dreams. He is useless against breaking balls. Harris and JMax will win more for this team this season for sure and personally I want Jmax and Harris to play everyday.

Ladson says the team is checking out Dye: http://therocket.mlblogs.com/archives/2010/03/nats_release_dukes_may_have_in.html

However Kilgore says otherwise:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/nationalsjournal/2010/03/elijah_dukes_released.html

RZO did say that they will look outside the organization, however.

From Nats Insider (Zuckerman): “(Rizzo) added that while he’ll always look at outside options, he’s content to move forward with his in-house options in right field. Said Jermaine Dye’s name has not come up in any substantive discussions.”

Many lofty expectations and predictions of future greatness but neither player showed that they really “got” the game that they were playing. The Wizards held onto Kwame Brown for too long. He would show occasional flashes of dominance (one play every 4th game) but mostly he played like a perennial backup, not a no. 1 overall draft pick.

Likewise, many people had very high expectations for Dukes, that he could be a 40-40 player (HRs/SBs) and a top defensive OF. He really didn’t show much at all in his time with the Nats except maybe in 2008.

What people have overlooked in recent days is Dukes frailty. Despite being built like an NFL linebacker, Dukes was injured a heck of a lot. I think most people around the team recognized that Dukes could never be a full-time player for a 162-game season. At best, he could play for 100-120 games. Maybe that’s OK for an aging catcher like Pudge Rodriguez but for an OF in his prime years, that’s way too low.

Then there’s the clubhouse chemistry issue. It’s just eerie for the guy to have been around for this long and not have a single real friend on the team. With his past troubles in Tampa, you can bet that he made a lot of his teammates nervous on a daily basis. I’ve been around similar situations at work, with someone you know has the potential to explode, and it does affect the performance of everyone else.

So we have someone who can’t hit curve balls, who gets picked off when he does manage to get on-base, who rarely shows his power in at-bats that count, and who continues to make fielding errors when he’s in his mid 20s. Someone who can never become an everyday player because of his propensity for injury and someone who clouds up the clubhouse with a sullen mysterious attitude and a troubling off-field history.

I don’t see his release as a mistake or a big loss for the team. I don’t think the Nats would have received much of anything in a trade except for a similar player with personal issues and failure to live up to an overabundance of hype. As far as on-field performance goes, this move feels similar to cutting a player like Wily Mo Pena. No big loss. A guy with incredible strength but not really a good ball player. As far as character issues and clubhouse atmosphere, this move would be like cutting someone like a Milton Bradley. Only Dukes offered a lot less on the field and at the plate.

Remember, when Dukes was available a couple years ago, there was hardly any interest in him at all around baseball. There probably still isn’t. Some commentators and probably more than a few GMs felt that he shouldn’t be allowed back into baseball at all after the domestic incidents in Florida.

Instead of comparing Dukes to a platoon of two other players, we should compare a platoon of Dukes and someone else to a different platoon. Dukes would not have played the entire year. He’s never made it through a season without multiple injuries. Why would he do so this year?

I do hope that Dukes can find some peace and a way to deal with the issues that still affect him. But I think the team can be better off without him. He may just remind too many people in the clubhouse of the weird Bowden era, where castoffs from around the league were brought in time and time again. That era is associated with a losing atmosphere and a lot of bizarre distractions and situations, and players with bad attitudes or lingering injuries who never could become full-time players (Felipe Lopez, Paul Lo Duca, John Patterson, Shawn Hill, Lastings Milledge). This move may signal another step in moving on from the Bowden era. Though I wasn’t expecting it either, Dukes’ release makes sense when you look at all angles.