FBB 2016 Nationals coverage: Please allow me to introduce myself...

Greetings Federal Baseball denizens. Some of you might remember me as Dave from District Sports Page, your voice of doom and gloom. If you haven’t heard yet (or even if you have), I announced the retirement of that site today, and through Patrick’s good graces I will be joining Federal Baseball full time to cover the Nationals this season.

I’m looking forward to contributing to Federal Baseball this season and interacting with everyone in this already well-established community. This is a great site, and I hope I can live up to the quality reputation it so richly deserves.

For those of you that don’t know me, I have covered the Nats since they came to town. I’ve been a credentialed member of the media since 2010, the first year the Nats extended credentials to independent media.

I was in the press conference media room the day Jim Riggleman walked out. I was on the field as part of the media circus before Stephen Strasburg’s debut. I was on the field the night the Nats clinched the playoffs for the first time, and in the clubhouse a few days later when they clinched the division. I stood in the back of the pressbox, disbelieving, when Drew Storen couldn’t find one more strike. I went to spring training seven straight years before moving to the left coast.

Patrick was beside me for most of it.

In fact, with Mark Zuckerman moving on this winter, Patrick and I have written about this team longer than anyone in the market other than Bill Ladson, Tom Boswell and Thom Loverro. I have developed credible sources within the organization and throughout the league, and I use information from those sources, along with statistical analysis and my own experience with the game, to form the basis of my opinions.

In addition, I cover college football, college basketball, MLS and WNBA for the Associated Press, and I am a copy editor at The Spokesman-Review, the second largest daily newspaper in the state of Washington.

I’m not providing this information to try to puff my chest out. It’s to provide you the context of what I write about this team.

You can get the who, what, where and when from a lot of places. But traditional media has to cater to wide audience, the lowest common denominator of sports fans. The great thing about independent media -- the vital thing -- is that they can give you the how and the why. We can help provide context to what you watch with your own eyes.

It’s critical in today’s oversaturated sports media market to be able to separate corporate cross-promotion and marketing directives from real news, analysis and opinion.

That’s the best of independent sports media, and that’s what I’ll try to bring to this site.

Cheers!