What would you think if I told you the following: there is a player in the midst of his sixth minor league season - with his second organization - who has played at every level from rookie ball to Triple-A. This player, a left-handed starting pitcher drafted in 2005, has never won more than half of the games he has started in a full season at any of his myriad professional stops and has a career win-loss record of 25-45. He has only once posted an ERA below 3.50 (3.37 in 2007 in High-A ball) and has a lifetime ERA of 4.22 and 1.48 WHIP. His K/BB ratio is just 2.25:1 and in five seasons opponents have hit .310, .270, .266, .323, and .265 against him.

Fast forward to 2010. After being acquired by his second professional organization in a straight-up swap for arguably the team's most attractive trade chip, he began the season and made 11 starts in Double-A. In those appearances he was 2-8 with a 6.87 ERA, a 1.69 WHIP, and opposing teams batted .336 against him. Yet in his lone start in Triple-A earlier in the season, this player recorded a win, lasting five innings and allowing just one run on five hits; however, he soon returned to Double-A.

The player? Washington Nationals' minor leaguer and current Harrisburg Senator Aaron Thompson.

Questions abound with regard to Thompson's career. Why has a player with such unspectacular lifetime numbers continually advanced throughout the minor leagues (though he has yet to make a major league appearance)? Why were the Nationals content with a trade that returned Thompson in exchange for on-base machine Nick Johnson? Why did he make only one Triple-A start when he seemed to perform well?

In his first stop in the Gulf Coast League in 2005, Thompson was 2-4 with a 4.50 ERA and a 1.63 WHIP in eight starts, after which he was promoted to the Marlins' low-A squad. There, while going just 1-2 in five starts, he lowered his ERA to 3.10, though his K/BB ratio decreased by nearly 2.5. The 2006-2007 seasons progressed more logically, when a .500 record and 3.63 ERA in A-ball led to a promotion to High-A where Thompson logged a 4-6 record and 3.37 ERA all while lowering his WHIP over 0.3. Beginning the 2008 season in Double-A, Thompson struggled for the next two seasons. From 2008-2009 (all of which was spent in AA, albeit between the Marlins and Nationals organizations), the lefthander was 7-17 with a 4.54 ERA.

Not surprisingly, Thompson began the 2010 in Harrisburg with the Nationals' Double-A club. After struggling in his first start, Thompson had two superb outings in which he allowed a combined seven hits and four walks while recording eleven strikeouts and holding opponents scoreless over twelve innings. This earned him a promotion to Syracuse where he was fine in one start but quickly returned to Harrisburg. His one start, while impressive compared with his Double-A statistics, is far too little data on which to base a substantive evaluation; however, Thompson's situation remains a very interesting one to monitor for Nats fans and baseball enthusiasts alike. He is scheduled to start Harrisburg's game tonight against Bowie.

Behind stellar efforts from Adam Dunn, Josh Willingham and Livan Hernandez, the Nationals capped off their three-game sweep of the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates by a score of 4-2. Dunn, Willingham and right fielder Mike Morse all connected on solo home runs to propel the Nationals offense behind Livan Hernandez.

Livan had gone six consecutive starts since his last victory on May 9^th. It's not as though Hernandez has pitched poorly, giving up no more than four earned runs in any previous outing. Tonight, Livan tossed 98 pitches in his six innings of work, giving up only two runs on five hits while striking out three and walking two.

Sean Burnett went two innings in relief tonight, allowing two hits and striking out one in his scoreless effort. After Matt Capps recorded back-to-back saves against the Pirates in the first two games of the series, manager Jim Riggleman decided to give him an off night, allowing Tyler Clippard the opportunity in the ninth. Clippard got the first two Bucs out easily in the inning before surrendering a single to catcher Jason Jaramillo. However, Clippard then got former National great Ryan Church to strike out swinging to end the ball game.

The Nationals offense pounded out 10 hits tonight, eight of those coming off Pirates ace Zach Duke. Spot starter in right field Mike Morse propelled the attack with a 3-3 effort, including the insurance solo home run to put the Nats up two in the bottom of the eight. Adam Dunn had two hits and scored two runs to go with his home run, and Pudge Rodriguez went 1-3 in his second game back from the disabled list.

Of pitchers with 10 IP or more in the Nats bullpen, Tyler Clippard has the best ERA (1.72) and Tyler Walker has the second worst (3.94). But who is really the worse pitcher?

ERA does a poor job measuring a pitcher's performance. That is because ERA is computed from ER which is determined by many things beyond a pitcher's control such as his team's defense and the stadium he plays in. tERA, however, is a function of events (mostly) under a pitcher's control such as K, BB, and GB%. In this category Clippard has a 2.36 and Walker a 3.48-the two best marks in the bullpen. Things have gotten much closer, but we are not finished.

While tERA is, generally speaking, one of the best single pitching quantifiers around, in this case it is incomplete. If we assume that Clippard can sustain his current tERA, then we're also essentially assuming he can maintain his incredibly low 3.8 HR/FB%, a metric that has been argued to be mostly beyond a pitcher's control, and, more immediately, a rate well below Clippard's career line, amongst other assumptions. When we consider xFIP, which considers HR/FB% as being beyond a pitcher's control, we see that Walker comes out as the superior pitcher with an xFIP of 3.79 versus Clippard's xFIP of 3.96.

Also, because of the small sample size of innings, it is hard to truly tell how well either pitcher is playing. But we can be certain that ERA is misleading. Some other things to consider are Clippard's dangerously low GB% (29.2) and dangerously high FB% (58.4). Will his propensity to give up fly balls turn into a propensity to give up home runs? Then there's Clippard's extraordinarily high LOB% (89.3). Is this something Clippard can control or not? If so, should it be reflected in statistics claiming to measure his worth? In the above categories Walker has numbers much closer to league averages, another reason for believing that he can maintain his current level of success while Clippard cannot. There's also Walker's K/BB rate of 3.86 which is superior to Clippard's (2.71).

The lesson to take away from this is to not let discussions about pitchers end at ERA. If we did, we'd be doing a disservice to all those who want to better understand baseball. Worse, we'd be arguing that Miguel Batista (tERA 5.79, xFIP 5.89, K/BB 0.81) is pitching about as well as Walker-something that should be plain indefensible.

Marlin Maniac discusses how much playing time Florida plans to give Mike Stanton.

With the arrival of Stanton there are limited spots in the Marlin outfield, and Cameron Maybin will likely be the odd man out. You have to feel for Maybin, right when you think he will be a mainstay in the Marlins lineup, the organization feels that he is not ready for the big leagues and needs more time to develop in the minors. Maybin is a player with a lot of raw talent but it has been the same story with him for about three years now. I am sure it has to be wearing on him, especially now that a 20 year old just took his spot on the team. The question now becomes will these trips to the minors be better for his development or worse for his psyche? For someone whose first career home run came off Roger Clemens at the old Yankee Stadium, Maybin is still a work in progress.

Nats 320 looks at Roger Bernadina and his chances of being the everyday right fielder for the Nationals.

Bernadina has already put up some impressive numbers in June batting .360 with a .448 OBP. Roger is a Willy Taveras type player, he wont impress you with his bat but it's the other things he brings to the table that can make him a valuable addition to any team. He is lightning quick and plays the field well (just ask the Mets), Bernadina is always a threat on the base paths and would be a great fit at the top of the Nats lineup. Bernadina deserves a shot to be the "everyday" right fielder, what do the Nats have to lose? If it doesn't work out, they have several other worthy players to plug into the position.

MetsBlog looks into why Mets fans seem to like this group of guys better than the ones from years past.

The difference between the team from this year and the teams from years past is that there is hope with this group of young players, as opposed to previous years where the Mets consisted of aging veterans on the downside of their career. Mike Pelfrey, Ike Davis, and Jon Neise have all given Mets fans something to believe in, they can struggle all they want, like normal young players do, but the difference is that they have all shown us something that makes the fan base optimistic for the future. Also, Mets fans didn't come into 2010 expecting to be playoff contenders like they had the last three years, all of which ended in excruciating disappointment.