Nationals Daily Evolutions 8/30/10

The Strasburg news hit last Friday and since I don't do a column over the weekend I missed striking while the iron was hot. I thought about doing one Saturday morning, but I was already running late in getting up to Baltimore and I figured I just need to be consistent. Now I am debating even including the Strasburg stuff. It was still the biggest news over the weekend and will likely remain that way for the rest of this week. My position will always be this, if it is the biggest news out there it has to be included no matter my opinion. So, what do you want first the good news or bad news?

Let's start with the bad news. You want to know how to keep a star pitcher from getting hurt. Don't play them. --Gregg Doyel from sportsline.com

They say misery loves company. If you want to see just how miserable everyone was last Friday here is a look at some collected Tweets from right after the news came down. --Sean Fagan dc.sbnation.com

You can't keep a good man down, and there is just something different about the best athletes in the world. Strasburg still wants to be the best at pitching, but first he wants to be the best at rehabbing. With his mental fortitude I wouldn't be that suprised if he does make a fairly quick recovery. --Adam Kilgore from washingtonpost.com

The loss of Strasburg isn't just bad for the Nationals it is bad for all of baseball. I am wondering if it is just me that has underrated Joel Sherman or if other people do it too. I am pretty sure I have done it because he writes about the New York teams and we hear enough about them anyway, but since I have been doing this I have read some great columns from him. --Joel Sherman at nypost.com 

TJS isn't the end of the world. A good number of players come back and some even come back better. --Alden Gonzalez from mlb.com

One such guy that came back from TJS is Chris Carpenter, who visited Strasburg after the bad news was learned. This is a great move in my opinion. We forget sometimes that a lot of these guys are friends off the field. We want to believe the players on our team hate the players on the other team, but true competitors shake hands afterwards and feel better about themselves when they beat the best. --Bill Ladson from mlb.com 

 For some reason this weekend I was thinking about Opening Weekend of 2009 when I was standing in Dulles Airport and saw on the TV that Angles pitcher Nick Adenhart had died. Then I thought back further and remembered the tragic passing of Darryl Kile. Losing Strasburg to Tommy John's is painful, but the passing last year of Nick Adenhart is 1000x worse. We will never again see him on the mound, and while I am not an Angles fan I felt much worse at hearing that news than I did about Strasburg. All we have to do is wait until 2012 and there will be Strasburg. Yes, this set us back, but the Angles fans are always going to be asking what could have been.   

Boy I went off on a crazy tangent there. The article I was going to link was about worst injuries in DC sports and then I thought of Bias and it led me straight to Adenhart. --Sean Fagan dc.sbnation.com

One more TJS article and then the jump. Braves pitcher Kris Medlen is also recovering from TJS. He shares his exciting adventures in his blog. --Kris Medlen from krismedlen.blogspot.com 

The Nationals played a game yesterday, and a player everyone should like had a big game. Hopefully Lannan can build on this and keep putting good outings together. Lannan is a guy that lives and dies on his control, and earlier in the year the control just wasn't there. I am also of the opinion that people should love guys that aren't that talented and defy common knowledge. I just like to see guys like Lannan succeed, because it is so unexpected. --Ben Goessling from masnsports.com

Another guy everyone should love is returning to the Nats next season. The only thing that troubles me is he twisted his knee Saturday night and that is where all his trouble from before started. Hopefully he can play some racquetball and get that under control. --Bill Ladson from nationals.com

I have never interviewed someone, but I don't think I would try and interview them by starting off with, "Hey you suck, your team sucks, and no one wants to pay you." --Jen Royal interviewing Adam Dunn at masnsports.com

Nyjer Morgan has had a bad week. It started with his suspension. --Keith Law at espn.com

And it ended with Nyjer being sat to avoid getting drilled. Riggleman also had other very interesting things to say about Nyjer. I really wouldn't be suprised if we don't see Nyjer back next year. --Dave Nichols at natsnewsnetwork.com

Wondering who is going to get a call-up in a couple days. A former Nats GM has the scoop. You won't be suprised. It is Espy and Ramos. --Jim Bowden via Twitter

This will be good news for most people. Along with not making this road trip Dibble this morning on his radio show refered to calling games in the past tense. He is most likely done and he has no one to blame but himself, but I take no pleasure in seeing a man lose his job, if that is the case. Still he should have just stopped talking. Look at Brett Farve. He texted illicit pictures of himself to Jenn Sterger and never commented on it. He didn't hang himself. If you ever find yourself being asked about something dumb you said, don't even give yourself the chance to say something dumber, just say, "No Comment." --Bill Ladson from nationals.com

Our best wishes go out to Drew Storen as a family friend of his has passed on. This is a story from earlier in the year about George King's battle with ALS. --Philip Wilson at indy.com 

Around the NL East

If R.A. Dickey pitched for almost any other team I would say he is a great story. Well, he is still a great story, but he is also a Met so I can't really get behind him too much. --Mathew Carruth from fangraphs.com

In wake of leaked documents it is found that the Marlins might have had expenses to the Marlins. --Jeff Passan yahoosports.com

General Baseball

Tony La Russa is a focused individual. So focused that he might not even know the rally he attended this weekend wasn't free of controversy. --Will Leitch from deadspin.com

Whenever people Rizzo and eye for talent I think guys like CarGo will always get a mention. --Alex Remington yahoosports.com

Aroldis Chapman was always thought of as the lefty Strasburg. Can he fill the hype machine's void? --Brian Hickey at deadspin.com

Preception is often times stronger than reality. It might not matter that Adam Dunn is an average defender at first base, or that BJ Upton plays hard. People will believe what they believe for no other reason sometimes than it is what they have always believed. --David Gardner from yahoosports.com

The greatest living baseball writer weighs in with his ranking of the 32 best managers as players. I work with a guy that went to Frostburg State when Riggleman was a senior, and he always talks about how Riggleman was just that much better than everyone else. We often forget that even career minor leaguers were at one point in time the best baseball player at some level. --Joe Posnanski from si.com

I think this might be the most depressing links column ever writen. I am sorry if I ruined anyone's lunch break. Unfortunately the Nats will now take on the Marlins. A team that has had their number worse than any other team in the majors. Marquis takes the mound tonight and maybe after tonigth he can have an ERA under 8.00. Hopefully he can build on his last two outings and next year we will all see the innings eater the Nats were supposed to be getting in the first place.