Nats Enquirer

Jim Bowden ranks Harper #1, Norris #49, on his list of baseball's top 50 prospects

 

(Jim Bowden ranks baseball's top 50 prospects. Screengrab via FOXSports.com)

While you're sitting around wondering if Elijah Dukes ever got stoned with the Racing Presidents, here's a little Jim Bowden trivia for you:

Which former Nationals second round draft pick did ex-Nats GM Bowden once describe as having "Barry Bonds-level eyes" and "Vladimir Guerrero-bat speed and power"? No cheating! Link to the answer is below.

And so, while we're on the topic of Jim Bowden and draft picks, it seems like a good time to mention that FOXSports.com has posted Jim Bowden's ranking of the top 50 prospects in baseball. It's a fun read, and two Nats make Jimbo's list: Bryce Harper is #1, Derek Norris #49. Cue up the carnival music, because here's Jimbo, via FoxSports.com, describing Harper and Norris:

Elijah Dukes embarks on rap career, admits to smoking weed before Nats games. Meet Fly Eli?

(Also worth noting: Elijah Dukes admitted to smoking weed before Nats home games? Screengrab via TampaBay Online.)

"Most of the guys carried [their weed] in their little man purses. You know I never did. Most of the guys carried their little man purses. Louis Vuitton, Gucci, you know."
(Elijah Dukes, via TBO.com, 2/12/2011)

This time last year, Elijah Dukes was getting ready to drive from his home outside Tampa to Viera for Spring Training with the Nationals, a starting job in right field seemingly his for the taking. We all know how that ended.

Now, a year later: according to a report by Howard Altman of The Tampa Tribune, Elijah Dukes has reinvented himself as a rapper. Meet Fly Eli:

Fly Eli, who wants to make a name for himself as a rapper, stands in front of the microphone in the little studio off 40th Street and belts out lyrics about women and booze and clubs. ...

"Life is our hook," says Fly Eli, better known as Elijah Dukes to baseball fans and those who knew him when he was a hot shot athlete growing up in Tampa. "What we see is what you get."
(via TBO.com, 2/11/2011)

But the rap career is the least interesting part of the story. Drum roll, please:

He says he was blackballed by baseball after he came forward last year with allegations that fellow ball players were smuggling drugs onto chartered aircraft, using drugs in hotel rooms after flights and how he would sometimes smoke marijuana before home games when he played for the Washington Nationals.
(via TBO.com, 2/11/2011)

So THAT'S why Mike Rizzo released Dukes! Now it all adds up! Smoking pot before Nats home games! Another bizarre, sad chapter in the Elijah Dukes story unfolds...

The videos accompanying the complete Tampa Tribune piece are must-see-TV. So, just who were these Nats players Dukes saw smoking pot and filling their man purses full of cocaine?

"Sometimes I smoked before the home games or whatever, but only in the big leagues," he says. "I was just going along with the motions, started being myself. I was going along with it. Peer pressure. You are looking up to guys and at the same time these guys are saying, 'Hit some of this.'"

"But guys smoke," he says. "That's why they don't test for marijuana.''

Dukes says he saw other ballplayers, whom he will not name, bring drugs, including marijuana and cocaine, onto chartered flights.
(via TBO.com, 2/12/2011)

Fantastic. And to cap it off, a little video of Fly Eli in all his glory, via @kevinreiss:

You probably wouldn't put this one in your spokes.

 

(Strasburg, Harper, and Zimmerman on the same baseball card. Image via The Beckett Blog.)

Keeping up with a recurring theme around here this winter involving Nats on baseball cards that will undoubtedly fetch a pretty penny on eBay: Last week, the Beckett Blog posted preview images from the new Bowman 2011 Platinum set, featuring the above card (which will be quite hard to find). Indeed, this one just might be the Holy Grail of baseball cards for a Nationals fan: Stephen Strasburg, Bryce Harper, and Ryan Zimmerman triple-autograph, on the same baseball card? Yeah.

Spring is in the air.

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One small step for Strasburg, one giant leap for Strasburgkind

(Rejoice, NatsTown: Stephen Strasburg threw a baseball. Photo by Gary Cameron/Reuters.)

Stephen Strasburg has started throwing.

Hey, we asked the question "has Strasburg started throwing yet?" on Tuesday. The Washington Post's Adam Kilgore delivered the answer Thursday.

Guess this news sort of overshadows news of Strasburg arriving to camp with six-pack abs and a beard.

See you in September, kid. Easy does it.

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Jason Marquis gets his jersey retired

 

(Jason Marquis talks on TV back in September. Screengrab via MASNSports.com)

Maybe 2011 is the Year of Jason Marquis? First, he was inducted into the Staten Island Hall of Fame in January. On Tuesday, Marquis had his jersey (#21) retired by his alma mater, Tottenville HS of Staten Island, NY, where he was a highschool legend. Could an induction into the hallowed Ring of Honor at Nationals Park be next? Here's Marquis, via SILive.com:

"When they rip the uniform off my back, this will still be home."
(Jason Marquis, via SILive.com, 2/9/2011)

Here's hoping that doesn't happen until after the 2011 season -- the Nats need all the help they can get until Strasburg returns. But if Marquis starts off 2011 like he did 2010 -- they'll be ripping the uniform off his back AND buying him a one-way bus ticket back to Tottenville.

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Trouble in Hagerstown?

Ho hum. Another day, another report of a Nationals farmhand suspended for violating MLB's drug program.

First, 21 year old catcher Adrian Nieto suspended for 50 games last week after testing positive for PEDs.

Yesterday, another catcher in hot water: 22 year old Hector Taveras (apparently, he made a stop in Hagerstown in 2010). Via Associated Press:

A person familiar with the penalty tells The Associated Press that Washington Nationals minor league catcher Hector Taveras has been suspended 25 games because he was found in possession of an unauthorized syringe. (via AP/ESPN.com, 2/8/2011)

Just last July, Nats minor leaguers Steven Souza and J.R. Higley of (you guessed it!) Hagerstown were suspended 50 games each for testing positive for PEDs.

Good thing Nats GM Mike Rizzo has his Dominican operations under control, because it seems that he might have a little problem on his hands 70 or so miles northwest of Washington. Is there a problem in Hagerstown?

Better find out soon, if that's really where the Nats intend to start Bryce Harper...

 

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Stephen Strasburg homers twice in batting practice...

...last August. In Dodger Stadium. See above.

It'll probably be a while before the opportunity presents itself to type the words "Strasburg" and "batting practice" together, so we decided to make the opportunity present itself. But here's the point: not that we've been marking down the days on the calendar or anything, but back on January 18 the Washington Post's Adam Kilgore reported that Stephen Strasburg was on track to begin throwing a baseball within two or three weeks (with the blessing of his doctors, of course):

I'm saving picking up a baseball for until I start throwing," Strasburg said. "I'm at a yellow softball right now. Hopefully, I'll have a baseball soon."

Within two or three weeks, according to the plan set out by Strasburg's doctors, he will begin tossing a ball again, a significant milepost in his recovery from Tommy John surgery. Until then, the second chapter of his baseball life will continue its tedious churn.
(via Washington Post, 1/18/2011)

A couple of days before Kilgore's story was published, Mike Rizzo threw a bucket of cold water on any talk of Strasburg rushing to throw off a mound:

"Stephen will throw off the mound when the doctors tell him he's going to throw off the mound, and not a moment sooner."
(Mike Rizzo, via MASNSports.com, 1/14/2011)

Okay, but now here we are more than four weeks later. Has Strasburg hit that significant mile-marker in his recovery and started throwing yet? Not off a mound, obviously, but simply tossing a baseball?

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Nationals Truck Day Truck Fail

We missed Nationals Truck Day or Moving Day (or whatever they're calling it) at Nationals Park Monday afternoon, unfortunately. Indeed, according to the press release from the team, Nats equipment managers today loaded up a truck with some 30,000 pounds of equipment, 600 bats, and 14,000+ baseballs (several dozen recently acquired in the Justin Maxwell trade to the Yankees) and hit the road for Space Coast Stadium in Viera, FL.

An anonymous source provided the above video footage of the Nationals moving truck (apparently overloaded by boxes and boxes of Mike Rizzo's Tommy Bahama shirts) as it attempted to depart and begin the 869 mile trek to Florida. Poor donkey.

Memo to the Nats: if you're looking to borrow offseason "events" like Truck Day from the Red Sox, might we suggest you and MASN get together and lift an event your fans could get behind, like a televised/streamed Town Hall Meeting? Here's another freebie: you could call it: "NatsTown Hall Meeting". Get it? Maybe next year.

Anyway, the Nats' JK Moving & Storage truck is rolling south, expected to arrive on Wednesday. Spring is in the air!

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Pudge Sees The Writing On The Wall

(Your Wilson Ramos Moment of Zen.)

Above, a clip of Wilson Ramos talking to the media back on January 28 before a Tigres de Aragua Venezuelan League playoff game, with the non-Dirty Dancing version of "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" blaring in the background. The music is distracting. Wait: did Ramos just say that he should be the Nationals starting catcher in 2011 over Pudge Rodriguez? Well, even if he didn't, we agree with him.

And it sounds like Pudge agrees, too. MLB.com's Jesse Sanchez reports that Ivan Rodriguez is at least saying he's comfortable with his role in Washington, on the same night he threw out the first pitch of a Caribbean Series game between Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic:

"This isn't a competition. Ramos and Flores are the catchers of the future, and I know that. I've always been the type of person that likes to help my teammates, and that's what I'm going to do with them. I'm happy to do it.  ...

I'm just going to show up ready to play, like I always do. I'm not thinking about playing time, right now. Nobody has said anything to me about that. I'll show up to Spring Training, and we'll see what works best. All I know is that I'm ready and I feel great." (Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez, via MLB.com, 2/4/2011)

Sounds good, but the presumptive future HOFer enter 2011 183 hits shy of 3,000 (he's at 2,817 - check our math); so it figures he'll be looking to get as many ABs this year so he can clear 3,000 hits by the end of 2012 (maybe with Texas, where he started his career all those years ago?), then head off into the sunset. Any takers?

Meanwhile...

The Nats announced a bunch of moves on Friday (via Ben Goessling/MASNSports.com): J.D. Martin (rhp), Carlos Maldonado (c) Kevin Barker (1B) signed minor league deals with invitations to spring training. Matt Chico (lhp), Derek Norris (c), Josh Wilkie (rhp), Jhonatan "can I buy a vowel" Solano (c) get invites to big league camp.

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Sorry, Jayson Werth: Nationals facial hair policy also applies to video games, apparently.

 

(Jayson Werth's soul patch in the MLB 2K11 trailer. Screengrab via 2K11.com)

"The team policy is, facial hair is OK, but it's got to be groomed."
(Mike Rizzo, via Big League Stew, 12/6/2010)

Hey, look: Jayson Werth (in video game form) appears in the "first look" trailer for the upcoming MLB 2K11 from 2K Sports. (That's the game Brian Wilson recently promoted on the George Lopez show while dressed in a Sea Captain's outfit.) Adding a sense of realism, it appears that Nationals facial hair policy also extends to video games: the video game version of Werth has a soul patch, and not the old burly beard from his Phillies heyday.

Speaking of Werth, good stuff (especially in the comments) over at Federal Baseball Thursday on Scott Boras' thoughts about the Werth deal.

A couple more screengrabs of Werth mashing baseballs at Nationals Park in a Nats uni, and the trailer, after the jump: