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Another odd date. If you add the year and the month you end up with the day. Now that that bit of craziness is out of the way here is some more. Catcher Derek Norris hit an RBI triple yesterday. Whatever happened to catcher speed. --Robert Emrich from mlb.com
Obviously the big news yesterday was Rizzo's promotion. In some ways I think stability is slightly underrated in sports. --Dave Nichols at natsnewsnetwork.com
Mike Rizzo started out as the assistant GM in charge of scouting and player development with the Nationals and even thensome wanted him to be the GM. It seems like it has been a long time since that day and Rizzo has come a long way. --Ben Goessling from masnsports.com
Looking back at the 2010 season our Nats fan vision clouds our ability to make a decent judgment. the fact is the team improved by ten games, but it still felt like a dreadful season. Was it really as bad as it feels, or are we as Nats fans too close to see the true picture. Reverse Monet effect? --Harper from natsbaseball.com
And as if to prove my point that the outside world is more optimistic about the Nats direction. A look at how the Nationals could contend in 2012. --platoonadvantage.com
Light news day for the Nats other than the Rizzo story. Harper makes his debut tonight, but the best story I read on that was on this site. No use to link to that when you are already here. Playoff news and the dumbing down of America after the jump.
Around the NL East
Wait. What? I don't believe it. There are just some things it is too hard to imagine a beautiful woman doing and one of them is rooting for the Phillies. Everyone knows there fans are all fat loudmouths that puke on each other. --Amy Rosenberg at philly.com
On the other hand I can imagine beautiful women cheering onthe Giants as Cody Ross has yet another RBI and Matt Cain pitches a wonderful game to beat the Phillies. --sfgate.com
General Baseball
Cliff Lee is to pitching what Joe Posnanski is to writing. This is truly some great writing here. If I ever do go back to school and get my Masters and PHD my dissertation will be on the greatness of Posnanski. Seriously the way he transposed the images of Lee striking out Yankees with his early career struggles was Steinbeckian. --Joe Posnanski at si.com
I think this story can be boiled down to this. The casual sports fan is more likely to tune to ESPN instead of TBS. I mean seriously, I have to look up what channel TBS is every October. I mean I used to really enjoy Saved by the Bell reruns, but you can only stand Zack and the gang for so long. --Barry Petchesky from deadspin.com
Even though I wasn't alive at this time the first lines of this article made me feel a little bit of anger. But I am still happy that the Rangers are up 3-1on the Yankees, but remember, remember the Indians of '07. --Tim Cowlishaw at dallasnews.com
In a weird way it will be nice when baseball is over and the off-season starts heating up. I think we all are getting tired of debating the questions, and want to start finding out some answers.