Opinion

Well, well; take a couple of weeks off and look what happens to the Washington Nationals.

I hope they don't expect me to clean up the mess.

Two weeks into the season and the Washington Nationals are in last place in the National League East. That's not unexpected. Their record is 2-10.

That's crazy.

But wait a minute. Before we write the team off as a "laughing stock" as so many national journalists and sports reporters already have, let's look a little deeper into all those layers of statistics that makes following baseball so much fun.

On Saturday, April 4, the Boston Red Sox defeated the New York Mets 9-3 in the second and final exhibition in Citi Field.  Not only this, but I received my first opportunity to check out the ballpark, which at about nine months ago I praised as the best of the two New York ballparks.  Was I correct? Let’s take a look, report card style.

Ballpark Exterior: A

Time has a way of stripping us of everything we love. It lures away our youth, diminishes our health, and steals our innocence. Sometimes, the latter of these is the hardest to take.

As Kevin Costner’s character Billy Chapel, of the Detroit Tigers, walked to the mound at Yankee Stadium during the ninth inning of the 1999 classic “For Love of the Gamem,” he stared at his baseball as if to ask for help.

Being 40 years of age and having played over 19 seasons, his youth was far from gone, his health was in question, and his innocence compromised.

Forget about those old fashioned procedures such as Tommy John elbow surgery, torn MCL's and ACL's in the knees and the labrum surgeries in the throwing shoulders.

The new surgery appears to be the repairing of the labrum in the hips, an injury that has received severe media coverage since Alex Rodriguez had his labrum repaired in March.

It’s still early, but the Los Angeles Dodgers started the 2009 baseball campaign by answering some of the preliminary questions about the youth and inexperience of their roster.

The Manny Ramirez contract negotiations, and eventual re-signing, captured the national headlines. But many seemed to wonder, outside of the aging $45 million fan favorite, if the roster had anything left to offer for a legitimate pennant chase.

Last week, with the help of “Captain Clutch Robert Curci” (look it up, that’s actually his full name), I had a chance to check out the New York Mets’ new digs for the first time. And boy, was it not Shea Stadium.

There were a lot of different elements that played into my review of the park, so I broke the review down into down into several different categories. Each element has a one to ten score, with ten being the highest. We will average these out and get the final grade for Citi Field.

On December 17, 2007, Senator George Mitchell published his 20-month study on Major League Baseball players that used anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (HGH).

Eighty-nine current and former players were named in the Mitchell Report, but there were many unmentioned players that have used performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs).

The report signaled that the MLB was not yet making an attempt to get over the steroid era.

When asked who is most responsible for the Mets bullpen revamping, the names that first come to mind are the obvious K-Rod and J.J. Putz. The two-headed combination of K-Rod and Putz has provided an unrivaled eighth and ninth inning relief combination for the 2009 Mets.

After living through the worst season of baseball in his young life, Jeff Francoeur decided that he would dedicate this past offseason to changing his approach at the plate. Only 12 games into this young season, he leads the Braves in at-bats and is hitting .333 with a team-high 10 RBI.

How does a player that put up such an abysmal line (11 HR, 71 RBI, 111 SO, and a .239 AVG) just one year ago turn around to become the best offensive player on the team?

For Francoeur, the answer was only 800 miles away, via Texas hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo.

It goes without saying that the New York Mets' Achillies heel last season was the bullpen. Locking down the wins in the eighth and ninth inning was very difficult for a makeshift bullpen, which lost Bill Wagner late last year and never found the right formula of relievers for getting the win.