Mid-Season report card for top Nationals prospects

The Nationals are No. 1 in this week's WhatIfSports.com MLB power rankings.

Check out how Bryce fares among the league's best hitters with regards to average fastball velocity. Ya think veteran pitchers wanna strike this kid out or what?

This is about why the slot system is broken, but it's also a good reason not to care very much if the Nationals go way over their draft pool to sign Lucas Giolito. (Truth in advertising: this is from my own blog.)

It was a busy morning at FederalBaseball.com as we tried to get all the pine tar off of our computer before tonight's game just in case Joe Maddon tries calling us out. But didn't want you to miss Fangraphs.com's David Laurila's interview with Nats' hitting coach Rick Eckstein: "On plate discipline: "Everybody is an individual when it comes to that. Sometimes you want to go out and be a little more aggressive. Say the pitcher’s secondary is plus, where the deeper you get into counts the more you have to hit a tough split or a hard breaking ball. Sometimes your discipline is to be better earlier in the count, on fastballs. Other times, you’ll have a guy who pitches off his breaking-ball stuff, so you’re more disciplined to wait for something you can handle."