Mike MacDougal took the mound last night to slam the door on what turned out to be the Washington Nationals third shutout of the season.

When MacDougal is on, he will come to the mound and electrify you. He throws straight gas, the cheese, the dead heat. He has one pitch and he utilizes it well. His fastball races to the plate at speeds from 94-98 MPH with movement.

That movement is important. For every Inch a fastball moves baseball experts say the batter perceives and extra five miles per hour to the pitch because of the adjustment time necessary.

Why do you think Mariano Rivera has been so unhittable throughout his career ladies and gentleman?

Yet, clearly, anyone who looks at a Mike MacDougal baseball card can see his career has not gone the way of a Mariano Rivera…or even a B.J Ryan for that matter. This is because while MacDougal has incredible stuff he is marred by incredible inconsistency. His one pitch is great, when its on.

What’s so fascinating about MacDougal however is that unlike most streaky pitchers, it isn’t a matter of the closer being on one night and off the next. For MacDougal when he is on he is one of the more dominant bullpen pitchers in baseball, when he’s not, he’s a borderline AAA reliever.

Right now he is one what I at first glance thought must have been the best streak of his career. In the month of August he has an MLB leading six saves, and has looked unhittable. But after looking back into his career, this isn’t even close to his best streak.

• 2009: August 2^nd-present, 6 IP, 5K/4BB, 6 Saves, 0 blown saves.
  
• 2005: June 29^th-July 22, 11 IP, 9K/4BB, 7 Saves, 0 blown saves.
  
• 2003: May 31^st-April 20, 9 IP, 8K/6BB,  7 Saves, 0 blown saves.
  
• 2003: June 18^th-July 13, 11 IP, 8K/5BB, 10 Saves, 0 blown saves.
  

As you can see one thing remains constant, his walk rate. It seems MacDougal doesn’t get into that much trouble unless his fastball straightens out, or the batter gets a good read on it. It’s like the old adage says, if it comes in hard it leaves hard.

These streaks are the reason MacDougal has stuck around so long as a potential closer in the majors. They’ve made him the kind of guy every team will take a last chance on, as the Nationals did this year. They are also however, the reason he has never been able to keep a closer job.

While Garret Mock wasn’t perfect Friday night against the Reds, he was damn good.

The rookie righty pitched six strong innings against Cincinnati, leading the charge that led to the eventual team shutout. Mock allowed only six hits and struck out six Reds batters. He also let up an unsettling four walks. 

Jorge Sosa, Sean Burnett, Jason Bergmann and Mike MacDougal combined for three innings of two hit, no run, pitching out of the bullpen. MacDougal earned his 12^th save of the year, and his MLB leading sixth save of the month.

The Nationals bats combined for only six hits and five walks, but converted two runs on solo shots by unusual suspects Ronnie Belliard and Wil Nieves.

Adam Dunn was 0-1 in the game with three walks against his former team. While a Cincinnati Red, Dunn received much criticism for his high strikeout rate. Dunn has yet to whiff this series.

It appears Josh Willingham has come back down to earth after unbelievable months of June and July which saw him bat .368/.415/.526 and .330/.415/.648. In August he is batting .286/.400/,524.

Ryan Zimmerman’s hit streak ended as the third baseman went  0-4 with 2 k’s. Cristian Guzman went hitless in his second consecutive game. This marked the first time he had gone hitless in consecutive games since late July where he had a brutal 0-17 slump.

Perhaps Scripps should rethink the location of their annual National Spelling Bee competition.

The Washington Redskins first pre-season game found starting running back Ladell Betts(due to Clinton Portis not playing) wearing a jersey with his name spelled wrong. Instead, the jersey dawned the name Bettis, the last name of a future hall of fame running back.
  

This of course marks the second huge blunder for a Washington D.C team regarding misspellings on uniforms. The first coming earlier this year when the Washington Nationals misspelled their team name as “Natinals,” back in early April.
  

The Nationals received a ton of flack for this, with the Redskins it has just been shrugged off. That just goes to show you the difference between an average team and an awful team. 

Red Sox assistant GM is one of three finalists for the Nationals GM job…and he is DASHING.(Boston Globe)

The Nationals are tired of trying to get Washingtonians to games, look to tourists.(BizJournal)

A look across the Washington Nationals affiliates.(NatsFarm)

Nyjer Morgan wants to be a better base stealer, must have read TNB. (MLB)

ESPN’s Jayson Stark weighs in on the Stephen Strasburg deadline by looking at top executives opinions’. (ESPN)

This actually makes me feel better as a Nationals fan.

It was reported late last night that Aaron Crow turned down the Kansas City Royals latest offer of $3 million.

Crow was Washington’s top pick in last year’s first-year-player draft, and was lauded to be the future of the club. Of course, as we all remember, the Nationals and Crow couldn’t come to a deal and the deadline passed. Crow was forced to play independent ball for the 2009 season and re-enter the draft.

Last year negotiations between the two sides were so far off there was hardly any chance for the deal. The Nationals offered as much as $3.5 million at the first rounder, but the lowest number his agents threw out was $4.4 million.

Partly it is understandable that for saving face’s sake Aaron Crow wouldn’t want to sign for less than $3.5 million after taking the whole year off just because he felt he could make more. But come on, there comes a point where a kid just has to WANT to play baseball.

Really Aaron Crow? Really? 500,000-900,000 dollars is what’s keeping you from your supposed dream of signing with a Major League Baseball team? In the long run that is chump change to a pitcher that has potential ace talent. Would you rather sit out another season, wait until you are 24 without having thrown a pitch in the minors, and then try and become a superstar pitcher in the majors?

Good luck with that, Crow.

Just play baseball. They’re offering you more money than 99 percent of people will ever see, they are offering it to you in a recession, and they are offering it to a player who only really pitched one inning last year in independent ball.

The Nationals may have messed up by not signing Crow last season, but from what I can see, I’m much happier with Drew Storen.

Federal Baseball had a point, the quick signers have succeeded for the Nationals, the wait and see-ers have not. 

Washington D.C had to endure the Washington Wizards earn the second worst record in the NBA in 2008-2009 without the reward of even a lottery pick.

The city has now had to deal with one of the worst baseball seasons in history with the Washington Nationals in 2009, and they may not sign their first overall pick for the second consecutive year.

All I can say at a time like this is, thank god for football!

The Skins matched up in their own battle of the beltway tonight as they faced up against our neighbors to the north, the Baltimore Ravens, in a preseason match-up. The Skins lost 23-0, but at least football was back.

Albert Hayneswort, the $100 million man, made his debut in the pre-season game tonight against the Baltimore Ravens. 

Starting quarterback Jason Campbell did not look up to season form as he struggled Thursday night, completing three out of six passes for 38 yards.

The Redskins first round draft pick, Brian Orakpo, made his debut Thursday night after holding out for the first part of training camp.

Head coach Jim Zorn stood on the sidelines and watched his team fall apart in the clubs first time together in competition in 2009. Like Acta, Zorn will have a lot of pressure to improve off of last year. Could you imagine how long Acta would have lasted if Washington was a baseball town? 

Oh yeah! The Nats played last night too!

Not long after talking about his use of questionable substances, Bronson Arroyo showed that they work as he walked all over the Nationals last night, two hitting them in a Reds victory.

Arroyo pitched a complete game shutout against the Nats, who's only two hits came from who else? Ryan Zimmerman and Adam Dunn.

While the Nationals only had two hits, they also only struck out three times all night. They simply couldn't find the holes, and couldn't make decent contact. 

On the other side of the plate Cincinnati outfielder Johnny Gomes single handedly destroyed the Nationals by going three for four with three homers and five RBI.

With the loss the Nationals have followed a eight game win streak with a three game losing streak. Cristian Guzman's hit streak ends at 17 and Ryan Zimmerman's extended to 16.
 

The Washington Post’s Chico Harlan reports:

“By Monday, at midnight, the Nationals will know: Either they'll have signed the most heralded pitching prospect to the richest contract in amateur history, or they'll have to explain why the deal didn't happen... But in the meantime, the Nationals, according to industry observers familiar with Scott Boras negotiations, are stuck in a holding pattern. The countdown clock ticks away, but the real action must wait. Executives who have dealt with Boras in the past say he strategically holds off all serious negotiating until the 11th hour. "That's his strategy," one executive said. "He's got his timetable. That's his M.O."

As devious as Boras’s plan may be, it's brilliant. The Nationals will be pinned in a position late Monday night where they will either have to match Strasburgs demands or let him walk, there simply wont be enough time for negotiation.

Some have speculated it may be wise for the Nationals to publicize a generous offer to the top overall pick. This would at the least save their ass publically, showing that they did more than enough to try and sign the elite prospect. At best it would put public pressure on Boras and Strasburg to be reasonable in their demands.

Although, Scott Boras has never been considered anything near reasonable. 

The Washington Nationals box score tonight was nothing out of the ordinary.

The Nationals had a lot of hits, left a lot of runners on, and quite frankly the team got outscored. Unfortunately another eye-sore which I have seen pop-up all to often in the Nats box score showed up yet again today as Nyjer Morgan got caught stealing for the seventeenth time this season (6^th as a National).

The Nationals have had relatively successful offensive output in some categories this season. They are fifth in the majors in on base percentage (.348), and they are tied for sixth in the league in batting average (.268). Yet the Nationals are only 18^th in runs, and 30^th in wins.

It is clear that the Nationals have been unable to turn their base runners into runs scored and wins.

In fact, the Nationals are arguably the leagues most underperforming team in the standings. The Nationals have a -7.1 Pythagorean O/U, and that’s after an 8 game winning streak. That means that according to the Baseball Pythagorean Theorem the Nats should have seven more wins than they have now based on the runs they have scored and the runs they have allowed. To put that in perspective, the team with the second worst Pyth O/U are the Blue Jays, almost 2 wins below us at -5.6. Only three teams have a -5 Pyth O/U, and none have a -4. To put it simply, the Nats are in a class of their own.

That number might be even higher however if the Nationals just scored runs at the rate they get on base.

This brings me back to the box score.

The Nationals have been caught stealing 32 times this season. That number is good for eighth most in the league, however every team that has more runners caught stealing than the Nationals have significantly more successful steals than the Nats. This is the case for the Tampa Rays, who have 156 steals to 37 failed attempts, and the L.A. Angels who have 114 steals to 44 failed attempts. The Nationals only have 56 stolen bases.

That number 56 is 24^th in the league, and their stolen base percentage is second to last at 63.4 percent. The Cubs, the only team with a worse stolen base percentage, have a 63.1 mark, but they have 23 less attempts.

Those stolen base numbers get even worse when you realize that Nyjer Morgan has considerably raised them in the 36 games he’s been a National. Without Morgan’s 20 steals to six failed attempts, the Nationals would have 36 stolen bases to 25 times caught stealing. That’s an abysmal 59 percent.

That success rate is abnormally high for Morgan as well. In his career before Washington he only stole bases at a 63 percent success rate, as opposed to the 77 percnet rate he has stolen with the Nationals during a hot streak that has seen him bat 63 points above his career average as well.
  

Sabermatricians have long claimed the stolen base and other small ball tactics aren’t efficient means of scoring runs, and that teams that rely on them will never be successful. Essentially they’ve argued that an unsuccessful steal is more discouraging to scoring a run than a successful steal is to promote it.

Essentially, stealing bases help, but getting caught stealing is way worse.

Bill James (the man who invented Sabermetrics) went as far to say in his 1983 Baseball Abstract, “Nobody ever has (won a pennant by stealing bases), nobody ever will. It cannot be done. It is an argument that cannot be won, a position that cannot be defended.”

He made this argument after looking back at teams from 1969 to the date of the books publication and compared them head to head. Teams that had a better slugging percentage vs. teams that had more stolen bases won time after time. He also found that teams finishing higher in steals had an average worse finish than teams finishing higher in any other major offensive category.

These findings of course weren’t necessarily because steals hurt he ball club, but teams that steal many bases, attempt to steal many bases, and therefor get caught more often, stripping them chances to earn a run.

A perfect example of this phenomenon is Rickey Henderson. Baseball Prospectus took a look at the career of the all time leading base stealer in their book, Baseball Between the Numbers, and found that the stolen base king’s steal total did not significantly contribute more wins for his team than any other player in history. This is because the base stealer also holds the record for most times caught stealing.

It seems then that the Nationals are doing themselves a disservice by attempting to swipe so many bags, especially if they are not being successful. The club is built to be successful based on major sabermetric principles. They have a strong on base percentage as a club (.348) , and they have players who can slug for power in Willingham (1.009 OPS), Zimmerman (.906 OPS), and Dunn (.975).