This baseball card just sold for $28,000:

Pssst! Don’t tell anyone, but I want it. I would be willing to trade my wife for it — whaddaya think? Here she is:

I went to the Nats game on Tuesday. They were sloppy, uninterested, forgettable and disappointing. Felipe Lopez failed to cover second and Ryan Langerhans (he’s hitting .188), let a ball slide past him in left. The scorer called it an error and later changed it to a double. It was an error. I was embarrassed for them — I was embarrassed for Manny. Don Sutton is forever praising Manny for his patience, but I think it’s about time he started throwing something around the clubhouse. I understand they’re injured, I understand they’re building, but there’s no excuse for looking like they’ve arrived not ready to play. The crowd around me was sullen, critical, disgusted. In my book, they had every right. The Nats have the lowest batting average in the Majors — it’s time for someone to get upset about it.

The Emerging 8s

It struck me the other night that we’re seeing the blossoming of a new era of great centerfielders — triple-crown contender Josh Hamilton in Texas, rookie phenom Jay Bruce in Cincinnati, heavy-hitting Chris Young in Arizona, the Wahoo’s Grady Sizemore (he’s a veteran, but only 26), and the under-the-radar Adam Jones.

Jones is going to be a terrific player. I saw him clear the bases against the Bosox the other night — and it was a sight. He was the big name in the trade for Eric Bedard, and I wondered at the time whether the O’s got enough, but have since decided they got more than enough. Once Jones starts hitting for average (and he will), the Orioles will put him in the fourth spot for the next fifteen years and just watch him — unless Angelos interferes and does something stupid. Jones will have competition from this guy:

who just gets better and better and better. They talk about his base stealing and his speed (and it’s damned good, no doubt), but it’s his brain and not his legs that need to kick in. I saw him try to steal third twice this year, once for the third out. He hasn’t tried it since, and has been steady at the plate. With Jones in Baltimore and Milledge here … well, it will make the I-95 worth seeing.

The difference between winning and losing to Milwaukee on Monday afternoon (the Nats lost 4-3 in 11 innings) was the inordinate number of strike outs chalked up by the Brewer’s pitching staff. Fifteen times the Nats batters trudged back to the dugout after having whiffed. With a total of 41 at-bats the entire day, the home town team k’d more than a third of the time. Not a stat to be proud of to be sure and one that shows how little help the pitching staff received on the day. Milwaukee wasn’t much better — 12 stike outs in 39 at-bats — but they won.

Both the guys swinging the bat well and those who aren’t all contributed to the high K total today. Harris, Boone, Dukes, Flores, Bergman and Langerhans all had two apiece. And in a key two-inning stretch with the momentum going the Nats way after they tied the score in the bottom of the eighth, Milwaukee reliever Carlos Villanueva recorded five strike outs in his two innings of work. You can’t do much with that.

Another problem with Washington was it’s seeming inability to work the count. For instance, in his two innings of work Viallanueva only threw 27 pitches - 19 for strikes. Thirteen pitches per inning may seem high, but it’s not when you consider the five strike outs. I should also mention that Villanueva had a 6.30 ERA going into today’s game. The Nats made him look like he was a contender for the Cy Young. Milwaukee starter Ben Sheets had an equally easy day. Eighty-six pitches (61 for strikes!) over six innings including six strike outs. I wish I’d counted how many first-pitch swings the Nats had throughout the day. Whatever it was it was too many.

The theme for the day should have been: Take A Pitch!

Diamond Nuggets

Ah, the joys of the conession stand at Nationals Park continue. In the top the of the second inning today I had to get a large-sized drink for my pint-sized daughter because the medium-sized cups didn’t have any lids. Plenty of medium-sized cups. Just no medium-sized lids. Wouldn’t you think you’d order one with the other? How does that happen?

At least a few times at the park today it was announced on the video screen that during the game on June 4 against St. Louis, the Nats will do a cross-promotion to advertise the Discovery Channel’s newest offering, the PlanetGreen channel. A well-placed source tells me the first pitch will feature a green ball and bat. Presumably the team, which has made quite an effort to make the ballpark “green” sees this as a great way to further its reputation in that area. But a green ball and bat?! Maybe I misunderstood and it’ll be a ceremonial first pitch. Stay tuned.

When a hitter is going good, they say he’s “seeing the ball well” — and they say the opposite when he’s not. Thusly: Don Sutton has been saying lately that Austin Kearns is just “not seeing the ball well,” the ostensible reason for his .194 average, two home runs and 11 runs batted in. “Seeing the ball well” is a slippery term, it seems to me, but it beats the hell out of any other explanation: that a hitter is “not in his groove” or that (for some reason) he’s jinxed — “they’re just not falling in.”

Kearns had two solid hits Thursday night against the Bucs, nominal evidence that he is finally hitting his way out of his latest “funk” (another one of those slippery terms), one of them a single in the eighth that scored the game-winning run. You could see the relief in Kearns’ face when he jogged out to right for the top of the ninth. But to say that Kearns is “not seeing the ball well” is a bit of an understatement: true only if you can claim he hasn’t seen the ball well since he arrived from Cincinnati in July of 2006.Back then, some in the Nats’ front office hailed Kearns as the second coming of Vlad Guerrero, who slipped away from the Expos, back in 2003. Guerrero was then (and still may be) the best hitter in baseball (well, if you don’t count this guy). But if Kearns was ever going to be Guerrero then, it seemed to me, it was highly unlikely that the Reds would part with him, no matter how desperate they were for pitching. For us Nats fans, it would be just fine if “country” (there is a growing coterie of Kearns partisans out in right field who call him this) would regularly hit .289 with 25 or so home runs — rather than struggling to breach the Mendoza line. By the way: Vlad “sees the ball well.”

The closest I ever came to really understanding what people mean when they say that a player “sees the ball well” came in the middle of the 1982 season. The summer of 1982 was fascinating. There was a good race in the American League, with the then-California Angels being led by third baseman Doug DeCinces, their newest acquisition. DeCinces had come over during the winter in a trade with Baltimore for Dan “Disco Dan” Ford — one of the greatest trades in Angels’ history. The Halos had a murderer’s row of hitters: Boone, Carew, Grich, Lynn, Jackson and Baylor. DeCinces was the throw-in, the on-base guy from Baltimore with the okay-glove who had never quite lived up to the billing he had received after being drafted in the third round of the 1970 draft. He was the highly touted replacement for the legendary Brooks Robinson.

Of course, DeCinces could never really replace Robinson and while the Baltimore fans understood that, Baltimore’s announcers were forever mentioning that DeCinces’ glove could never equal Robinson’s. “Robinson would have had that one,” they would say. And so DeCinces was shipped west. (The guy who replaced DeCinces was an anonymous character from Havre de Grace, Maryland by the name of Cal Ripken.) Anyway …. for a time in the summer of 1982, long about mid-July to mid-August if I recall, Doug DeCinces suddenly became the best hitter in baseball. People noticed. I remember tuning in to the Game of the Week just to see him, and checking the papers every day to see what he had done. Other players talked about what he was doing in hushed tones and the likes of Baylor and Jackson and Carew would stand and watch him during batting practice. He hit fricking everything. Even Reggie was in awe. 

For a time there wasn’t anything DeCinces couldn’t hit, and a player who had wracked up a fairly average home run total of 4, 11, 11, 19, 28, 16, 16 and 13 home runs over the course of his eight-year career was suddenly putting them out with incredible regularity. He hit thirty that year, most of them in the hottest weeks of California’s deep summer. I remember someone (Vin Scully I think) interviewed him after one of his more prodigious shots in Anaheim. What was his secret? And DeCinces shrugged: he said he was just seeing the ball well. And Scully asked what that meant. And DeCinces answer was priceless: “When it comes up there,” he said, “it looks like a watermelon.”

But nothing lasts forever. By September, DeCinces had cooled off, Milwaukee triumphed in the playoffs (California was the better team), and St. Louis beat the Brewers in seven games in one of the most exciting World Series ever played. DeCinces played for four more years before heading to Japan and then was out of baseball. But for a time, in the summer of 1982, Doug DeCinces “saw the ball” better than any baseball player at the time. We might wish the same for Austin Kearns.

It is a rare sight so far this year so if you weren’t in the ballpark or didn’t watch it on t.v. you should go to the box score to witness Thursday’s pounding of the Mets. In a come from behind win the Nats slammed out 13 hits and 10 runs in as even an attack as you’re likely to see this season. The number 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8 hitters in the line up had two hits apiece and were led by Felipe Lopez who had six RBI on a single and his sixth inning grand slam which put the game out of reach. It would appear that Senor Lopez is comfortable with his role as a starter and made a strong point that, for the time being at least, his days as a platoon player should be over.

Michael O’Connor came on in the sixth to pitch his first inning of the year, gave up one hit and no runs, and was rewarded with the win. In his second start of the season Sean Hill struck out five while giving up six hits and two earned runs in his five respectable innings of work. Rivera, Ayala and Rauch mopped up with an inning of work apiece.

On the other side of the ledger the two Carloses (Beltran and Delgado) were held to one hit in nine at-bats by the Nats’ pitching staff. The one hit was a Beltran dinger off Rivera in the seventh. Ryan Church continued his strong-out-of-the-gate hitting pace for the Mets going two-for-four with a walk and a ribbie. He’s hitting .350 with a .409 OBP and a .463 slugging percentage.

It was a very nice win to finish off the series with the Mets and a great lead-in for the three-game set with the very hot Cubbies who are atop the NL Central. The Cubs have won eight of 10 coming into the weekend. The Nats will face Ryan Dempster tomorrow night who is 3-0 thus far with a taut 3.0 ERA.

Diamond Nuggets

Jumbo presidents Abe and George greeted fans as they exited through the center field concourse in the late innings tonight. Stopping for photos and waves, they provided a nice opportunity to get up close and personal with a couple of the prezes we’ve come to love. . . . A suggestion for the front office folks: it might not be a bad idea to add some regular video games and (horrors!) perhaps go old-school with a few baseball-themed pinball machines in the arcade in the center field concourse. Guitar Hero, the race car video games and other high tech stuff are good for the teens but it leaves the kids still in the single digits with not much to do. . . . Skeevy Screech made an appearance in section 313 tonight. It all started out pleasantly enough with him/her/it mugging for the fans and posing for photos. But it soon went awry when it pantomimed picking its nose and eating it prior to departing. Nice.

Wily Mo (aka “Wily Modesto”) Pena is this year’s Washington Nationals left fielder — exhibit number one that this guy has a hankering for molding the Nats into Cincinnati East. Not great news, considering the senior circuit’s oldest club just hired this destroyer-of-perfectly-good- pitching-arms. But Jimmy never saw a Redleg he didn’t love, and he absolutely loves Wily Mo: “His power works at any stadium,” Bowden said soon after Wily Mo arrived on the scene. “He is a good kid with a big heart. He has got to be driven. You have to stay on top of him. You have to get him to work hard.” At 6-3 and 215, Wily Mo can drive the ball: he hit 26 home runs for the Reds in 2004, with 66 RBIs. The downside? Wily Mo swings through the ball: 118 strikeouts in 336 at bats. You’ve got to get him to work hard?

You’ve got to get him to make contact — that’s what you’ve got to do.

After the next year — after 2005 — the Reds had seen enough of Wily Mo and dealt him to Boston for Bronson Arroyo. The deal looked like a brilliant move for Cincy, and one of the few knuckleheaded moves made by Boston Red Sox (“oh, those dirt dogs”) wunderkind Theo Epstein. Theo had it all figured out. “Pena strikes out on a rate basis more than anyone else in the big leagues,” Epstein said in his usual snooty neo-empiricist meanderings right after the trade. “There is precedent for those (type) players developing a little bit more discipline, increasing their walk rate and becoming better all around hitters as they adjust to the big leagues.” Oh yeah, Theo, like who? We might point out (dearest Theo) that, while with Cincinnati, Pena struck out more times than Arroyo had struck out batters.

Stick that in your “rate basis.”

In 2006, Arroyo was 14-11 with a 3.29 ERA for the Reds while Wily Mo continued to battle the breezes: 94 strikeouts in 289 ABs. We might imagine Theo rethinking this just a tad and looking around the league to see just who would take Wily Mo off his hands. So Pena came to the Nats for a player to be named, who turned out to be 25-year-old first baseman Chris Carter. Not bad really: Wily Mo is a solid citizen, a team player, and has a lot of heart (Jim is right about that, but you can dismiss his other statement — “his power works at any stadium” — really Jim, no shit). Then too, while Wily Mo doesn’t run a lot of sprints, ya gotta luv him. For all of Jim’s talk about how ya gotta stay on him, Wily Mo works hard. I’ve seen him run up the steps onto the field. As our friends at Nats320 point out, he is “big, strong, and incredibly confident.” And yahavtaluvaguy who is modest about what he needs to work on: “I need to work on my defense and my hitting,” he told Nats320. And his baserunning: no one would ever mistake Wily Mo for Willie Mays Hayes.

There’s an upside, which no one who saw him play in RFK last year will forget. Before he arrived the Nats averaged 3.9 runs per game, but with him in the line-up they averaged five runs a game, and his defensive statistics were surprisingly good. He’s quicker with the glove than he looks: no errors in 57 chances. He ate up NL East pitching, hitting .324 with six HRs in 30 games. Which makes him my pick to put one out on Opening Day, against the hated Braves. But the moment I can’t wait for (next year, methinks) is when Wily Mo sticks one in the parking garage and Theo takes out his slide rule, does a few calculations — and tells us “told ya so.”

It’ll be worth the strikeouts.