Livo's return thwarted by his own bullpen.

Well, Livan Hernadez returned last night from his 2.5 year hiatus from the Nationals and threw a pretty good game. He went 6.0 innings giving up 5 hits and 2 runs. He walked 2, but struck out 6. It was a damn good performance.

When he left the game, it was tied 2-2, and with the way the offense hit the night before, I could easily see the Nats winning this game. Unfortunately, the bullpen had other fucking plans.

Bergmann came in and threw the 7th, where he gave up the go ahead run, and eventually earned the loss. (Side rant! Why in the shit does Baseball-reference call him Jay Bergmann? I've never heard anyone call him Jay. Has anyone else? I mean, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (I'll just delete your comments, though. This ain't America... it's Section 138, dammit!), but I ain't never heard anyone call him Jay.)

And then, just to make sure the game was thoroughly out of reach, Riggles sent in (NO hip-hip) Jorge Sosa. His line? A complete mess. An almost Steven Shellian .1 IP, 4 Hits, 5 ER, 2 BB performance.

But, it was good to see Livan back out there. It brought back some good memories. I just had no idea how old the memories were. Are we talking about 2005, or 1990?? Just who was throwing last night... Livo? Or Vanilla Ice?


Check out them CHILL shaved eyebrows....

And now...




Safe to say... if there was a problem, yo Livo'll solve it. Now check out this hook while his DJ revolves it.

I'm back. Just in case... you know... anyone cared.

Greetings, puny humans! It is I, Glorph 9, and I have decided to return to your pitiful planet and release the one known as "Section 138." We arrived on this rock last Thursday and attempted to collect the species homo sapiens. We collected what we thought we needed, and ventured back to Zecforgh 69, our home planet. Why are you laughing!? Every time we told you pathetic humans our home planet name, you giggled. What's so funny about the name Zecforgh? Nothing, you say? Well, what about the name 69? Stop the laughter immediately!

We had made it 13 light years when the one called "Section 138" started bugging us. He asked for an inordinate amount of "beer" and demanded to watch something called the "Nationals" on our communication viewing device. We informed him we know not what he speaks of, when he got belligerent. He threatened to throw himself off the ship if he couldn't watch "Wil, The Hammer, Tony Plush, The Non-Human, Goggles, and DOOKS!." He started drawing curly W's on things and chanting, "Free the Bergmann" all the while. The last straw was when he went to our pilot, Hglorgh 7 and starting chanting, "Chase Utley is the devil" while punching, kicking, and spitting on him. We later found out that Hglorgh 7's skin color matches the uniform of some team known as the "Phillies."

We have returned him as he is obviously defective. I'm not sure how things are done on your planet, but back home, on Zecforgh 6... CEASE LAUGHING! Back home, we would take away the things that make our people act the fool. You might want to monitor his "Nationals" and "Beer" intake. We thinks he may over indulge.

Good Riddance, you tiny, smelly, ugly, degenerate humans!

Oh. Can anyone validate my parking?

We all knew it was Mike Rizzo's gig all along. Right?

What a weird few days it's been for "interim" General Manager Mike Rizzo. After being drafted months ago, Rizzo finally signed the Wonder Boy on Monday night, with 77 seconds to spare. (At 11:58:43. Get your t-shirts here.) "Way to go, Mikey," I thought as I went to bed around 1 AM.
Imagine my surprise when I check my Tweets the next morning and they read like this:

tradepolicyguy Report: Dipoto Could Be Next Nats GM http://bit.ly/37IInc #nats

It boggled my mind. As the day wore on, there were a lot more reports about who else might be taking Rizzo's job. The consensus turned out to be some dude from the Arizona Diamondbacks that (get this) took Rizzo's old position after Rizzo left to come to the Nats.

misschatterRT @1067thefandc: cbsports.com writer Danny Knobler is on the Mike Wise Show right now reporting that the Nats have hired Jerry DiPoto #fb

NFA_BrianKnobler blog on Dipoto http://tinyurl.com/nj2gv8 "DiPoto has told friends in Arizona that he plans to accept the job"

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Mike Rizzo had done a great job to turn around the damn mess that the Segway riding, highlights having, bonus stealing Jimmy Bowden had left. I mean... the Dominican was a fucking mess, the bullpen was an even bigger fucking mess, and we had to go into the season with LOLastings "Bend yo' Knees" Milledge as our starting God damn center fielder! To call it a mess would be an insult to actual messes around the world. This was a debacle that only a leather pants wearing man could create.

Then, finally, cooler heads prevailed.

washtimesbbWe've confirmed Rizzo will be named the GM tomorrow--details here: http://bit.ly/r1Ntj #nats #mlb

(Excuse me for a second as I digress here... Many many props to Mark Zuckerman and Ben Goessling over at the Washington Times. They've kicked Chico Harlan's butt in breaking news, and general Nats coverage. Plus, they have a Twitter account that's updated many, many times a day. And I'm not kissing their asses either. If I were, I'd say Ben has a face and voice for T.V. Which he don't. Just watch the MASN pre-game show once or twice, and you'll see I'm right. (And I am right. Love you, Ben!))

You can catch up on all you may have missed over at Ben and Mark's blog post about the very same subject, btw.

(BTW, Many thanks to Twitter and their piece of shit servers. I started this post at 10:00 am, but couldn't grab the Twitter quotes until now cause Twitter kept going down. Dear Twitter, FEED YOUR DAMN HAMSTERS!)

And finally, I ran into Mike Rizzo this morning and chatted with him for a bit. I managed to grab one quick picture that summed up his mood throughout the entire ordeal. Bravo, Mikey Rizz. Bravo.

Nationals sign the "wonder kid," Stephen Strasburg

...And now we begin to wonder.

After a tense night that was spent harking back to last year, I'm happy to say that the Nats have signed that pitching guy who's better at hurling baseballs than Moses. At least that's what Scott Boras was telling us. After early talk of $50 Million fucking dollars, the kid was signed for $15 Million, and some change. Brian Oliver over at the always wonderfully wonderful Nats Farm broke it down for those of you like me who cannot perform math without their fingers.
It looks like this.

• 2009: $2.6 million total ($2.5 million in bonus & $100K in pro-rated salary)
• 2010: $4.5 million total ($2.5 million in bonus & $2 million in salary)
• 2011: $5.0 million total ($2.5 million in bonus & $2.5 million in salary)
• 2012: $3.0 million total (all salary)

So, after the Nats shelled out the largest contract in the history of the draft, I figured I should get to know this kid. I searched the intertubes, and found a picture.


What? That's NOT Stephen Strasburg? Shit... Lemme look again. Ahhh, here we are.



Oh, I see the difference now. This Strasburg fellow has a little bit of hair on his chiny chin chin. My mistake, sir. That gentleman in the first picture is apparently a pugilist of some sort named Joe Lauzon.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm tired from staying up until 1 AM last night to see if the dude signed. Allow me to re-use a picture I took of my cat on draft day.


That's right, lil' man! It's Strasmas! Which is just like Christmas, only Uncle Joe doesn't get obliterated and start hitting on his Niece, while ignoring Aunt Peggy. Good times.

So... just how much will it take to sign Strasburg?

Well, the rumors are out there that the Nats have made an official offer to Stephen Strasburg. The article says

[The Nats] proposed deal is worth more than Mark Prior's $10.5-million contract in 2001 and has been on the table for some time.

It also states that it is more than twice the worth of last year's #1 overall pick, who signed for $6MM. It appears to be in the ballpark of $12-15 MM according to most folks (who I'm too lazy to list).

Harlan also follows that post up with another, this time stating

The record-setting deal that the Washington Nationals have offered to No. 1 draft pick Stephen Strasburg will have to grow if Strasburg is to sign, said a source who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of negotiations.

We all know that I'm not really into posting serious stuff, so let's just cut to the chase...

How much fucking money does a College kid with no professional experience really deserve? Hell, how much could he fucking need!?

Imagine, if you will, that the bald headed fellow below is me (which ain't a stretch). I've racked my brain to come up with another scenario that I could use to explain what Strasburg is doing, but this is the only thing I can equate the rumor of Strasburg turning down ~$15MM to



Seriously, dude. You're pissing some people off. (And by some people I mean everyone but the other non-signed first round guys and Scott Boras.)

So, let's hope that the billionaire agrees to pay the millionaire what he wants. Or, we can pray that they die simultaneously of greedy disease. I don't think that's gonna happen, though, cause if there was such thing as greedy disease the Hamburgler would've died a long time ago.

(Original (and soooo much better done) gif stolen from here. I replaced Fedor with Strasburg. The thrower I left as Dana White cause I'm bald like him. And I'm the laziest dude on the planet.)