Saturday, June 09, 2007

Money Talks

So maybe I was wrong and the Nationals are committed to winning.
The Nationals showed commitment duing this weeks Major League Baseball Draft. Instead of taking guys that were considered easy signs, the Nationals rolled the dice on a couple of top high school pitchers that were considered tough signs: LHP Jack McGeary (above), Massachusetts and LHP Josh Smoker (below), Georgia.
Right now with the Nats set up the way they are, they are not going to be able to go out and spend all kinds of money on a front of the rotation guy, but it appears that Jim Bowden and the rest of the staff has been given the money to spend on highly rated draft picks. With both McGeary and Smoker the Nats will have to buy them out of the their college commitments: McGeary to Stanford and Smoker to Clemson. It will take at least a cool million to get them signed, but you have to think that these Bowden will be given the money to get these deals done. If both of them pan out, it would give the Nats two good left handers at the top of the rotation and as everyone knows, the Nats need pitching.

Overall, this draft appears to have set down the grown work for the Nats to work their way back to respectability.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Paging Brien Taylor and Todd Van Popple

As a baseball fan of team that is terrible, the draft and the Futures Game are one of the only things to get excited about. After reading a mock draft on MLB.com, I suddenly was not looking forward to finding the next Ryan Zimmerman or Chad Cordero. I felt like we would be looking for the next BJ Wallace instead.
One of the people that the Nationals are looking at is Phillipe Aumont, he is from Quebec, yes Canada. There are great baseball players all over the the college game like Todd Frazier, Matt Wieters, and Casey Weathers, why would the Nationals take a guy with a hockey name, easy cause it cheaper to pay a guy from Quebec.