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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As we promoted before with the Stephen Strasburg debate, Around The Horn Baseball is hosting a series of baseball debates within the Bloguin network. It's been great so far, and has really showcased the talented baseball writers around Bloguin. For this weeks installment, I was asked to debate against Matt O'Donnell of Fenway West about whether or not the MLB is better with or without the DH. Here's my intro:

"The year was 1972. The arcade game, Pong, had just revolutionized teenage lifestyle, the price of gas was 55 cents a gallon, and the song Layla was on the top of the charts. Football and baseball teams shared their venues in big, ugly, multi-purpose stadiums, and the stars of the day like Hank Aaron, Billy Williams, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Willie Stargel and Johnny Bench were all in the National League.

 

Baseball, particularly the American League, was in a crisis of offensive drought at the time. Just three years earlier Major League Baseball had lowered the pitchers mound after the Year of the Pitcher had demolished offense from the game. The American League had only hit .230 and the man they call Yaz had just led the American League in batting with a whopping .301 batting average.

 

Furthermore, American League owners were in a bind..."

To read the rest go to Around The Horn Baseball and weigh in!

Baseball Prospectus released their top 11 (15) Washington Nationals prospects today. Baseball Prospectus handles their prospects list a little bit differently than the rest of the pack. Instead of listing a canned number 10 prospects, they look at the situation more realistically and list the top prospects in the orginization that deserve mention. BP also breaks down these prospects into 5 star (creme of the crop), four star (could be very good MLB players), three star (MLB potential), and two star (have a chance to be productive) prospects.

Overall the Nationals had two five star prospects, three four star, five three star, and one two star. BP is a subscription site so I will be conservative in what I share for each player, but I'll list highlihgts.

1. Stephen Strasburg, 5 Stars:

"The Good: Strasburg's talent is historic. His fastball sits at 95-98 mph, touches triple digits regularly, and features the pinpoint accuracy of a top-notch finesse pitcher. His power breaking ball is a plus-plus offering that can be an absolute wipeout offering when it's on, and even his changeup is above average with excellent depth and fade. He's a big, physical pitcher who maintains his velocity all night...."

I'm sorry for the slight lack of posts this week, it's been a little hectic at work. But in my absence there has been outstanding coverage of the happenings down in Vierra this year, much better than I remember in the past. Of course we have the new Washington Post beat writer down there, Adam Kilgore, and Bill Ladson as always. Down there now independently is Mark Zuckerman and for a change some of our spring training escapades are making National News.

So here are some links to make up for this week:

Former WaPo beat writer Chico Harlan says his goodbyes in his final Nationals Journal post. Some people gave Chico a lot of flack through the years for some of the things he said, but in the end he was a great writer with a difficult job.

Former Nationals FLop (see what I did there?) Felipe Lopez signed with the Cardinals yesterday for with a one-year $1.75 million deal. Coming into free-agency Lopez expected to make a ton of money after having what was in fact a great year. Many believe it was his behavior and his unusually high BABIP that left him off people's rosters for so long.

Adam Kilgore has a video interview with Riggleman on the start of camp.

The Nationals signed Rafael Martin out of the Mexican League and hope he can someday be a set-up man in front of Drew Storen.

Finally this is a great post from Big League Stew but not Nationals related at all that has clips of Griffey Jr's best commercials. He recently did one for Dicks Sporting Goods that has him racing Torii Hunter. Something tells me at this point in their careers it wouldn't have been this close.

Bill Ladson reported today on his blog that if Nationals starting pitcher Scott Olsen is 100 percent healthy by Opening Day, he will have a spot in the rotation:

"If he is 100 percent healthy by Opening Day, Nationals left-hander Scott Olsen will be a lock in the rotation, according to manager Jim Riggleman.

Olsen is coming off shoulder surgery, and the Nationals are hoping that Olsen can be the pitcher he was with the Marlins -- pitching 200 innings and having double-digit victories."

This may be a ploy by the Nationals to try and help boost Scott Olsen's confidence. I've seen first hand what confidence and the support of both the coaches and administration can do for talented players who have struggled, and in that sense, I feel the Nationals are making the right move. However this of course goes off of the assumption that Olsen has great talent that he can revive. This assumption is one that many of us have held, including me, based on his 2006 season when at the age of 22 Olsen went 12-10 with a 4.04 ERA and 166 strikeouts in 180 innings.

A closer look at his moderate success shows that he may have been more lucky then good, and that when he struggled, it may have been a more accurate representation of his true abilities. Outside of the 4.04 ERA he posted in 2006, and the 4.20 mark he posted in 2008, the rest of his stats paint the picture of an unsuccessfull lefty.

Olsen has posted FIP's of 4.33, 5.33, 5.02, and 5.24 in the last four seasons, indicating that without the benefit of good fielding his ERA's in the low fours would never have happened. This is in large part due to the fact that he forces so few ground balls. Olsen has posted ground ball percentages of 44%, 37%, 37%, 36%, in the last four seasons. To put that in perspective, had he thrown enough innings in 2009, his 36% would have been the fourth worst ground ball  percentage in the National League.

Olsen's 22% line drive percentage would have ranked fourth worst in the National Leauge, and his fly ball percentage would have ranked in the top 10.

What does this all mean? Olsen gets hit a lot and he gets hit hard. His strikeout rate which used to rank at 8.27 per nine innings is dropping fast and his walk rate is still below average. Olsen's real problem is that his best pitch is his slider. That's the pitch he relies on to get batters to swing and miss and earn strike outs. However, his fastball, which only sits in the high 80's is so ineffective that it was rated a -17.8 in 2009 which would have rated as the second worst fastball in the National League this year. The problem is that Olsen cant set up a solid strikeout pitch like his slider with a horrendous, flat, easy to bash fastball like the one he has.

How long will he last in the rotation? It really depends on Wang, Strasburg and Stammen. I just hope he proves me wrong.

They say you can't beat a dead horse, then that must mean that workhorse Livan Hernandez is alive and well as the Nationals inked him to yet another one-year minor league deal Wednesday.

Hernandez has long been a workhouse, not just for the Nationals, but for a multitude of teams across the National League. In fact, the Washington Post's new Nats beat writer Adam Kilgore tweeted today that Livan threw more innings in the 2000's, 2201, than any other pitcher in baseball. While Livan was never a fireballer he came into the league with average velocity on all his pitches, however as most Nationals fans can attest, they've seen his pitches become slower and slower. Not that it matters much, Livan has transformed himself into a junkball pitcher and it works, at least it works $900,000 worth.

After all those innings, I was curious to see where Livan ranked among the slowest pitchers in the Major Leagues. To do this I first looked at Fangraphs pitch type stats to gauge the qualifying league leaders (?) in slowest velocity for each pitch. Then I took the slower pitchers and figured out who had the slowest velocity among all big league starters. Check it out:

Fastball Velocity:

Pitcher - %Thrown - Average Velocity

Jamie Moyer - 59.3% - 81.4 MPH

Livan Hernandez - 65.6% - 84.7 MPH

Doug Davis - 25.4% - 85.1 MPH

Slider Velocity:

Bronson Arroyo - 23% - 74.4 MPH

Jared Weaver - 15.9% - 78.5 MPH

Jarred Washburn - 9.3% - 78.6 MPH

(Livan - 17.8 % - 79.8 MPH)

Curve Velocity:

Livan Hernandez - 6.9% - 66.7 MPH

Randy Wolf - 16.3 % - 67.2 MPH

Jamie Moyer - 6.9% - 68.9 MPH

Doug Davis - 17.0 % - 69.1 MPH

Change Velocity:

Barry Zito - 14% - 73.6 MPH

Jamie Moyer - 18.6% - 74.6 MPH

Livan Hernandez - 9.7 % - 78.3 MPH

Average Pitch Velocity:

Moyer - 78.75 MPH

Davis - 80.36 MPH

Zito - 81.24 MPH

Hernandez - 81.96 MPH

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Baseball America released their top 100 prospects list today. As expected, the Nationals had three prospects in the rankings, coming in at number two (Strasburg), 38 (Norris), and 92 (Storen). All prospects were ranked on a scouts scale from 20-80, with 20 being the worst and 80 being the best.

2. Stephen Strasburg, RHP

Best Tool: Fastball
Baseball America Grade: 80
ETA: Mid-2010

38. Derek Norris, C

Best Tool: Power
Baseball America Grade: 60
ETA: 2012

92. Drew Storen, RHP

Best Tool: Slider
Baseball America Grade: 65
ETA: Mid-2010

Speaking of Strasburg, he threw his second bullpen session of the spring today. The powerful righty worked out with catcher Ivan Rodriguez for 10 minutes today with rave reviews coming from both Rodriguez manager Jim Riggleman.

Rodriguez told Nats Insider's Mark Zuckerman:

"What I see for a minute was great," he said. "The kid is pretty amazing. It's only the first time I catch him. I need to keep catching him. And I'd like to see him in games pitching. But as far as the control, he's right there. Fastball, breaking ball, changeup, they're all for strikes. If he keeps doing what he's doing, he's going to be alright."

Mark is certainly earning his $5,000 dollars down there in Vierra, offering outstanding coverage of the happenings at Space Coast.

According to Yahoo! Sports the Nationals are STILL looking at starting pitcher Kris Benson:

After not playing in the majors for two years, pitcher Kris Benson(notes) returned to the big leagues last year with the Texas Rangers and pitched 21.1 innings, earning himself a 1-1 record and a whopping 8.46 ERA.

But the Washington Nationals are apparently interested in him, according to an interview he gave on Sirius XM yesterday. The two sides are supposedly still talking about bringing him in.

However, the 35-year-old also says he's no rush to actually sign anywhere right now. And that's good, because it doesn't seem like any team -- even the Nats -- are in any rush to sign him.

Meanwhile, I'm looking at his wife, Anna. (Come on I had to do it)

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Closing in on the one year anniversary in which The Nats Blog has been a part of the Bloguin Network, TNB was rewarded with their own state of the art iPhone and Android App. What does that mean for you? If you have an iPhone, iPod touch, or Android phone you can access TNB on the go.

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