Throughout the course of a season, there is always a handful of players like Mike Morse that become available on waivers (Morse in fact passed through waivers himself in April 2009).  The Nationals had traded outfielder Ryan Langerhans, another replacement type outfielder, to the Mariners last season for Morse and during September of last season he batted .262/.311/.524 in 45 PA for the Nationals.  That line gained Morse the attention of many D.C. fans and his line this spring has augmented that attention.  The question is, though, what is Morse's value to the Nationals?

So far this spring training Morse is 6 for 21 with a double and two home runs.  He has been one of the few Nationals hitters to come out of the gates hot, but spring training numbers are less than reliable.  During spring training 2008 for the Mariners, Morse put on a monster showing, but failed to carry it into the regular season before getting injured on a fielding play (more on this later).  While his ST numbers are most likely a fluke right now, they do back up comments made by coaches that Morse stays in baseball shape nearly the whole year, always a plus, and provides one example of a reason why a player may excel in spring training.  Expect his numbers to drop as spring progresses into summer.

At the plate, Morse is a pretty good hitter with average power.  He does not take walks very often and his OBP (.355) for his major league career seems to be a bit too high compared to his minor league OBP (.329), which consists of nearly nine times as many plate appearances.  He does not have much speed on the base paths (4 stolen bases in his career) and, if he was regular, would be a type of guy that batted towards the bottom of the lineup.

Stephen Strasburg made his long awaited debut for the Washington Nationals this afternoon in Viera. The young right-handed starter hurled two innings, allowed two softly-hit singles, and struck out two batters with a total of 27 pitches on the day. He flashed a high 90's fastball and a devastating curve, and a lot of other things happened which you can read about in many other blogs and reports. So instead of writing your typical 'Stephen Strasburg Debut' post, I'm going to break down what today meant for me, a Nats fan.

Being a Nationals fan has always been about believing despite your own reasonible sensabilities. D.C. is a city deeply intrenched in logic, realism, and yes, synicism, and being a Natinoals fan means that you are going to sniff out the crap that a certain former GM fed you, and that you're going to have to try and be ok with it. Because despite our minds telling us that we should not put up with the garbage that has been put on the field in front of us, our hearts know all too well what it is like to have no baseball at all. Therefor, our choice is simple, bad baseball over no baseball.

To continue our tour across the bloggosphere, we stopped to chat with Eric from one of the best Mets blogs on the internet, Amazin' Avenue. The Amazin' Avenue has been quite busy this offseason preparing their own Amazin' Avenue Annual, check it out.

The Nats Blog: The Mets have gone from very confident in 2006, to unlucky in 2007 and 2008, to crises mode in 2009 and 2010. What happened? With a young core of talent, can the club turn it around?

Amazin' Avenue: The 2009 Mets were long on injuries and short on backup plans, and even some of those backup plans wound up getting hurt along the way. They probably weren't a playoff team even if we forgive the health problems, but they probably would have won 85 games or so and I doubt we'd be talking about how 2010 is "do or die" for the core (or whatever). For a team with one of the highest payrolls in the National League, the Mets have a lot of mediocre (or just risky) players at starting positions. First base (Daniel Murphy, for now) and second base (Luis Castillo) are iffy, and the upside in right field (Jeff Francoeur) and at catcher (Henry Blanco/Rod Barajas) is probably league average production.

In the rotation, Johan Santana missed the end of last season after having bone chips removed from his throwing elbow. Mike Pelfrey had a tough luck season last year, and while I'm bullish on his future he's no sure thing. The final three spots are even more tenuous, with John Maine and Oliver Perez big question marks and the fifth spot up for grabs in spring training.

TNB: I haven't been to the new stadium  yet, what do you think of it?

When we last left him, Bryce Harper was batting .356/.451/.712 with four homers and 42 total bases through 16 games. Since then the 17-year-old super prospect has picked up 17 more total bases, including two home runs, in just four games. Harper is now batting a team-leading .408/.500/.831 with six homers and 20 RBI in a total of 20 games.

Harper seems to be picking up steam as his season reaches its halfway point. The slugging catcher has gone seven for his last eight, with two doubles and two homers in that frame.

Bryce Harper with a great at bat

Versatility

While Harper is known mostly as a catcher, he is an outstanding athlete with the ability to play almost anywhere on the field. This is an important note for the Nationals to consider when drafting him. This is for two reasons, first the Nationals have prospects in Jesus Flores and Derek Norris at the catching position already, and second, catchers have shorter careers than everyone else. Harper is no one-trick pony though, so far this season he has appeared at catcher in 13 games, third base in six games, centerfield in five games, and right field in one. That's at the age of 17, in college. Think about that one for a minute.

I am by no means an expert in this topic, but from some things I've been reading around the internet it seems that Nationals prospect Stephen Strasburg may be headed for serious arm trouble. As far as the analysis of mechanics go, I will leave that to ChrisOLeary.com.

"Arm Action: I don't like it. He starts his arm action with a pendulum swing, but has a bad "grab" as he tenses up his wrist and takes his elbow well beyond his acromial line in an attempt to "load" his scapula in a forced manner. He actually reminds me a lot of Mark Prior (gasp!)."

If you don't believe in mechanical analysis, we can also go to the statistics. I wont go into a scientific study of the following claims, but I will do a couple of quick cases.

First, some claim that pitchers who share the mechanics of Strasburg, such as Mark Prior, really get injured because they are frail. The second claim is that pitchers such as Prior don't get injured because they have bad mechanics, or because they are frail, but because they were overworked early in their careers. Let's see how these claims hold up.

With the first claim we face the difficulty of defining what frail means. Here frail certainly cannot mean its dictionary definition because I do not think at 6'5, 225 anybody would consider Mark Prior frail--I doubt any Major League pitcher in his mid-20s would fit anyone's definition of frail. So perhaps it has something to do with the pitcher's bone structure, his make-up, or something intangible. At the very least it is not something easily defined, and thus has weak predictive ability.

That said, for the sake of argument, let's assume Mark Prior is frail and that frail means someone of a body type similar to Mark Prior. Mark Prior's long string of injuries first began after throwing 5,426 pitches in the Major Leagues. Dan Haren has never spent an extended stint on the DL despite throwing over 19,000 pithces in his career. Dan Haren, at 6'5, 215, is perhaps more frail than Mark Prior. So what can explain the difference between the two? Perhaps we have picked the wrong measurement of frailty or perhaps it is because Mark Prior faced a heavy workload in the beginning of his career while Haren did not. We now investigate the second claim.

Mark Prior's Major League career began when he was 21. By the time he was 23 he had thrown 5,426 pitches. Mark Buehrle's career began when he was 21. After being 23 for several months, Mark Buehrle had thrown over 6,000 pitches. Mark Prior career has been riddled with injuries. Buehrle has never been on the DL for an extended period of time. It seems that Prior's injuries cannot simply be explained by the fact that he was overworked when he was young. We have eliminated frailty as well. Could the answer possibly lie in Prior's mechanics?

As I have said, the above does not constitute a scientific study. You could argue I cherry-picked Haren and Buerhle since they are two especially durable pitchers. But even then, the explanations of frailty and being overworked do not explain these cases while the mechanical analysis does. (You could argue I cherry-picked Prior too. Again, though, the explanations fail.) All of this is not to say that some pitchers are not too frail to play in the Majors or that overworking young players is detrimental to their health. I am arguing, however, that mechanics can provide far better explanations for the injuries pitchers face.

So keep this in mind, Nats fans, when partaking in Strasburg-mania. Whether we rush him or not, Strasburg's mechanics point to an injury-riddled career. Let's hope he's not frail to boot.

Spring Training 2010 is young but one thing has made itself evident; Ian Desmond is killing the ball. So far this March he is four for seven with seven RBI, one run, and one home run. While it's only been three games, it seems it's enough to light a spark in the Nationals fan base and perhaps lead them to believe that Desmond, the savior at shortstop, is here to stay.

It's times like these however that we need to remind ourselves that spring training means relatively nothing in relation to performance in the season, and that we really shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. Don't get me wrong, I am hoping, scratch that, praying that Ian Desmond busts out this year and takes over Guzman's spot as the everyday shortstop, and I think he can, we just can't use this super small sample size that is coming at the beginning of spring. If it does have any indication on performance for the 2010 season, then the Nationals are in serious trouble getting clobbered in all four of their games.

I decided to take a look back and see if a Desmond hot spring has indicated anything throughout his career, this is what i found:

2005 Spring, Age 19: .306, 36AB, 6 R
2005 Regular Season: .250/.306/.355, 7 HR, 33 SB (A/A+)

2006 Spring, Age 20: .267, 15 AB, 3 R 
2006 Regular Season : .228/.289/.346, 9 HR, 18 SB (A+/AA)

2007 Spring, Age 21: .000. 1 AB
2007 Regular Season: .264/.357/.402, 13 HR, 27 SB (A+)

2008 Spring, Age 22: .200, 5 AB
2008 Regular Season: .256/.321/. 408, 12 HR, 15 SB (RK/ AA)

2009 Spring, Age 23: .357, 14 AB, 6 TB
2009 Regular Season: 330/.401/.477, 7 HR, 21 SB (AA/AAA)

2010 Spring, Age 24: 571, 7 AB, 7 RBI
2010 Regular Season: ????

Not much here. So to be honest, his hot streak this spring may just be that, a hot streak. But Nats fans are hoping its the sign of a rising star.

The Nationals made their spring debut today with less than positive results. The boys down south split into two squads today, as they often will in spring training, sending one group to Jupiter to play the Marlins, and another to Kissimmee to play the Astros.

Jupiter Squad - Nationals 4, Marlins 10

The game started well enough for the Nationals.

J.D. Martin started the game with two perfect innings throwing 14 of his 19 pitches for strikes. Martin struck out one batter and walked none indicating he was well prepared coming into camp.

Following Martin was the stashed man, Collin Balester, who tossed one scoreless inning in the third before allowing a solo homer to Marlins prospect Bryan Petersen in the fourth. Petersen finished the day 2-4 with three runs and two RBI. Balester also had two walks and two strikeouts in his appearance. Honestly the two walks is a little bit more discouraging than the home run. In spring a major goal for pitchers early is to re-learn how to throw strikes. Often you will see them work more on hitting spots than getting outs.

Elijah Dukes is an enigma more than any other player in camp with the Washington Nationals this spring training.  He has been a top prospect oozing with five tool potential since he was drafted out of high school by Tampa Bay.  Washington expected him to become a big time contributor when they traded Glen Gibson for him in 2008 and while he has shown flashes of brilliance, he has failed to live up to expectations that the team, the media, and the fans have fantasied about.  He has had legal troubles, various controversial on field incidents, and was even sent down to AAA last season for a month to sort out his issues with the bat.  Through it all, though, Dukes still possesses the athletic ability to be a very good player, but the general consensus is that this season will go a long way in determining Dukes' future with the Nationals.

Dukes has very good power and a pretty decent batting eye.  Jim Riggleman mentioned, via Ben Goessling,that pitches which Dukes swings at outside the strike zone are usually breaking balls that he identified too late.  Identifying and hitting breaking balls has been one of Dukes' major flaws throughout his career.  Using MLB data sorted through TexasLeaguers I took a look at Dukes' pitch data from last year in order to examine the problem:

First Stint (6 April - 30 June)

Second Stint (1 August - 4 October)

I split the data in to two separate time frames occurring prior to his excursion in Syracuse and then following his recall to the Nationals.  His splits for the two stints:

STINT #1:  211 PA, 13 2B, 6 HR, 18 BB, 47 SO, .244/.308/.415

STINT #2:  205 PA, 7 2B, 2 HR, 28 BB, 27 SO, .257/.366/.368

Elijah Dukes 2.0 was striking out less and getting on base a whole lot more than Elijah Dukes 1.0.  He did lose a bit of power, though.  Apparently he was working on hitting the breaking ball while in the minors, but he was fouling off more and putting the curve in play less during his second stint.  What changed for Dukes was the amount of fastballs and sliders he was putting in play (at least a +4% for both pitches).  Combine this with research that Jay Eward did in which he found Dukes to have a .107 average against the curveball last season, nearly 100 points lower than the league average.

Now we return to Riggleman's words about Dukes chasing balls outside the zone.  Last season Dukes swung at 51.3% of the pitches thrown to him (league average = 45.2%) and 26.6% of pitches thrown outside the strike zone (league aveage = 25.1%).  Not a drastic difference.  The problem becomes apparent when you look at his contact percentages.  When Dukes swung the bat in 2009 he only hit the ball 73.6% as compared to a league average of 80.5%.  Even more stunning was that he was only able to make contact 46.3% of the time on balls he swung on outside the zone.  The league average is 15.5% higher and I suspect this is the clearest indicator of the words Riggleman spoke.

Now that every MLB has a decent scouting report on Elijah Dukes, he will continue to see pitchers challenge him with the curveball.  If Dukes can continue to hit sliders and fastballs like he did in August and September of last season, then he should still have a spot as a regular on the Nats' big league squad (given he also improves upon other areas like base running and fielding mistakes).  This data is pretty raw without the 2008 data to compare it to, but it indicates what many of us (as well as Elijah himself) already know, Dukes can not hit the curve.  There was a small glimmer of hope at the end of the season, though, in September Dukes put 19% of the curveballs thrown to him in play, a good improvement on his percentages from earlier in the season.  Hopefully this trend continues into 2010.

Phil Naquin is a guest writer for The Nats Blog who will be be appearing weekly with analysis of the Washington Nationals using sabermetrics, pitch f/x tools, and scouting observations.  He also runs a blog, Half Street High Rise

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