WASHINGTON, D.C. -- If you thought that Washington Nationals middle infielder Danny Espinosa was going to be just another September callup from the minors, you might now want to think again.

Espinosa, who began the 2010 season at double-A Harrisburg, went on a tear during Sunday afternoon's 13-3 Nationals victory over the New York Mets at Nationals Park.  Washington's third-round selection in the June 2008 First-Year Player Draft -- who played shortstop and batted eighth in Sunday's lineup -- went 4-for-5 at the plate, including a solo home run in the third inning and a grand slam in the sixth, and ended the day with 11 total bases, 2 runs scored and 6 RBI.

Speaking to reporters after the game, Nationals manager Jim Riggleman praised Espinosa's effort.

"That was just a great performance," Riggleman said.  "It was reminiscent of [Ian] Desmond coming up here last year and doing those things in September."

"It was a great compliment to our scouting and player development," Riggleman said, "to bring those two guys along the way they have and get them ready to play here."

If Espinosa -- who was playing his first major-league game before the home fans and just his fifth ever -- was affected by the way his achievements were piling up through the afternoon, he wasn't letting on, according to his manager.

"He's a pro," Riggleman said. "He's just playing hard and trying to have a good at-bat and make plays."

"All that athleticism every now and then," Riggleman said, "for these guys, it's just all gonna come out there and display it all in one day -- running, throwing, hitting.  We saw [Desmond] do it last year in September, and he's showing us the quality of player he is."

"To be able to go find that talent like the scouts do, and cultivate it the way our player development does, says a lot about the organization," Riggleman said.

Riggleman didn't seem overly fazed by the apparent early breakout of Espinosa, whom many have seen as on track for another year of minor-league development before eventual promotion to a full-time major-league job.

"I wouldn't take anything for granted," Riggleman said.  "He was a guy we were bringing up here to get a look at, and that's what we're doing.  There's a lot of games left to play and he's gonna play a lot of baseball here."

Riggleman emphasized the organization's broad long-term perspective on Espinosa's development.

"Whether he hits or has big days," Riggleman said, "is not gonna be the criteria that we're gonna use as to whether he's ready."

"His athleticism and his ability to play defense," Riggleman said, "is a nice thing for the future of the organization."

Riggleman concluded his assessment with another note of praise for both Espinosa and Desmond.

"It's encouraging to know," Riggleman said, "that two good athletes [are] there [in the middle infield] that could play for a while."

      

If the Washington Nationals were looking at a 67-70 record right now, they might be positively giddy considering the dreary results they've turned in the last few seasons.

For the New York Mets, though, three games below .500 -- even though that's five wins better than where they were at this point last season -- is nowhere near where they'd like to be, especially considering that the team was a playoff contender as recently as 2008.  The Gothamites will be visiting Nationals Park this week for a three-game series, two games of which will be under the sunshine thanks in part to the Labor Day holiday.

Washington will send two unfamiliar faces and one familiar one, all right-handers, to the hill this week against New York.  On Monday afternoon, Jordan Zimmermann (0-0 win-loss record, 4.50 ERA) is slated to go for the Nats in just his third start since returning from August 2009 Tommy John surgery.  He'll be hoping for a more satisfying result than that of his previous outing last Wednesday, in which nine strikeouts over six innings of one-hit ball were not enough to earn him a win when his teammates were unable to scratch out even a single run in Florida.

Tuesday evening is anticipated to feature the major-league debut of Cuban free-agent signee Yunesky Maya, who accrued a 1-2 record and 3.38 ERA in five minor-league starts after joining the Nats at the end of July.  He'd be taking the rotation spot of Scott Olsen who, having failed to make it out of the second inning of his Wednesday start in Florida, has been reassigned to the bullpen.

Maya's fellow countryman Livan Hernandez (9-10, 3.81) will be hoping on Wednesday afternoon to continue to haunt the team that jettisoned him in 2009.  Hernandez, whom the Nats signed last week to a contract extension through the 2011 season, has given up just three runs in three 2010 starts against the Mets.

Monday afternoon's announced starter for New York is righty Mike Pelfrey (13-8, 3.72) who, while he can often gobble the innings, was touched for nine hits and four runs over just five frames in the Mets' Wednesday loss to Atlanta.  While left-hander Johan Santana (11-9, 2.98) is in line for the Tuesday start, he only made it through five innings in Atlanta on Thursday before departing with shoulder discomfort; the team won't make a decision about whether to use Santana until after his bullpen session on Monday.  Ace right-handed knuckleballer R. A. Dickey (9-6, 2.91), who surrendered seven runs over six innings in Chicago on Friday, should get the call for Wednesday afternoon's getaway contest.

      

After a three-game series in Florida that featured the dismissal of television commentator Rob Dibble as well as continued mayhem and controversy revolving around center fielder Nyjer Morgan, the Washington Nationals -- enriched by the additions of catcher Wilson Ramos and infielder Danny Espinosa to the September major-league roster -- conclude this week's road swing with what they must be hoping will be a more peaceful three-game set at Pittsburgh's PNC Park.

Veteran right-hander Livan Hernandez (9-9 win-loss record, 3.49 ERA), who logged a win last Saturday night against St. Louis despite yielding five earned runs over six and a third innings, is scheduled to start the Friday evening series opener.  Lefty John Lannan (6-6, 4.95) will follow on Saturday evening after going 7 2/3 on Sunday to pick up a win against the Cardinals.  On Sunday afternoon, right-hander Jason Marquis (1-7, 8.13) will be going for a second consecutive win after hanging on for the Tuesday night victory in Florida.

The host Pirates are slated to send out left-handers Zach Duke (6-12, 5.17) on Friday evening and Paul Maholm (7-13, 5.18) on Saturday evening.  Sunday's announced starter for the Bucs will be righty Charlie Morton (1-10, 10.03).

      

While it may sound kind of obvious considering where you're reading this, I have to say that one of the great pleasures of Major League Baseball's return to D.C. has been the ability to follow the Nationals' progress and the variety of Nats information and opinion that's available -- and continually updated around the clock -- on the internet.

The sheer volume of information and the frequency with which it is refreshed is a marked change from the daily newspaper and TV / radio coverage of a couple of decades ago. And both old and new sources have helped fulfill fans' hunger for information by exploring teams' player-development organizations and keeping readers up to date on their activities.

One of the finest such sources, Nationals Farm Authority, made its debut in 2005 at about the same time as Nationals Daily News (then NationalsPride). Over the past six seasons, NFA editor Brian Oliver has maintained a commitment to keeping his readers up to date on the goings-on of the Nats' minor-league system.

That's not all he's been doing. Like most of the rest of us, he's also been holding down a day job. And, on the side, he's been going to school to obtain his certification as a high-school mathematics teacher.

Having fulfilled the latter goal, Brian has sadly -- if probably wisely -- concluded that there's not enough time in the day for classroom teaching and NFA, and has therefore announced that he's shutting down the site. While he does point his readers to other Nats farm-system websites, Brian's reports and insights as well as the Big Board and other good things at NFA will be awfully hard to replace.

We wish Brian success and fulfillment as he embarks on his new journey.

      

I made an appearance late Monday evening on Bill Ivie's I-70 Baseball Radio program.  We reviewed St. Louis' just-completed series at Nationals Park and pondered the future of right-hander Stephen Strasburg after his upcoming Tommy John surgery.

You can access the recording of the show via this link.

      

After a week of good news (the introduction of Bryce Harper) and bad news (the probable loss of Stephen Strasburg to Tommy John ligament-reconstruction surgery), the Washington Nationals hit the road on Monday for a pair of three-game sets against Florida and Pittsburgh.

If the Nationals are looking to make the news balance come out positive, they can be consoled not only by their just-completed series victory over St. Louis -- the first time in the month of August that the club has won three games in a four-game stretch -- but also by some past and approaching milestones.

• On Sunday the Nats won their 56th game of the season.  They didn't manage to do that in 2009 until October 1.


• The club needs just four wins to improve on its record from both 2008 and 2009.


• It's still mathematically possible for the Nats, who have lost 75 games, to finish at or above the .500 mark this season.  Granted, that would require a 25-6 finish -- but it's still a possibility, one from which the 2009 Nats had eliminated themselves by August 26.

Another consolation of sorts is that all three of this week's Washington pitchers have successfully recovered from stints on the disabled list at some point this season.

In Florida on Monday evening, right-hander Jason Marquis (0-7 win-loss record, 8.79 ERA) will be looking to continue his steady, if bumpy, improvement since his return from the disabled list on August 8.  Tuesday's starter will be righty fireballer Jordan Zimmermann (0-0, 11.25) in just his second start since his August 26 return from rehabilitation for Tommy John surgery.  He'll be followed on Wednesday evening by left-hander Scott Olsen (3-7. 4.91) whose shoulder, surgically repaired in the 2009-10 offseason and tweaky enough earlier this season to send him to the DL, was sufficiently strong on Friday to let him turn in a first-rate six-inning performance in a tough-luck loss to the Cardinals.

Meanwhile, the Nats will be seeking to arrest the winning skeins of three Florida right-handers, each of whom has won his two most recent starts: rookie Alex Sanabia (3-1, 3.62) on Monday, Anibal Sanchez (11-8, 3.29) on Tuesday and Chris Volstad (8-9, 4.61) on Wednesday. 

      

As the Washington Nationals approach the end of yet another also-ran season, they haven't forgotten the contributions made by pitcher Livan Hernandez.  The team announced Sunday afternoon that the right-handed starter has been signed through the 2011 season.

Hernandez, 35, who threw both the first pitch in Nationals history after the franchise's relocation from Montreal (at Philadelphia on April 4, 2005) and the team's first pitch in RFK Stadium, has logged a 9-9 record and 3.49 ERA this season in 175 1/3 innings over 27 starts.  Originally acquired by Montreal in a 2003 preseason trade with San Francisco, Hernandez has pitched all or part of six seasons in the Expos / Nationals organization, accruing a 61-56 record and 3.89 ERA over 162 games.

While terms of Hernandez' 2011 contract were not disclosed by the team, MLB.com's Bill Ladson tweets that the deal includes a base salary of $1 million plus incentive bonuses.  Hernandez was signed as a free agent to a one-year, $900,000 contract before the beginning of the 2010 season.

      

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- If you were paying attention at all on Saturday night -- or at least closer attention than Washington Nationals center fielder Nyjer Morgan was -- you couldn't have failed to notice that, in the middle of the Nationals' big six-run eighth inning against the Cardinals, Morgan failed to touch home plate after a Willie Harris double sent him around the base paths from first.

Catcher Ivan Rodriguez didn't fail to notice: having scored his own run, he pushed Morgan back toward the plate, which nullified any chance of Morgan's run counting.

Nor did Nationals manager Jim Riggleman fail to notice either Morgan's missing the plate, or Morgan's apparent need along the way to vent frustration on St. Louis catcher Bryan Anderson, whom Morgan elbow-blocked at the end of his detour away from home.

When asked before today's game at Nationals Park about his decision to omit Morgan from the Sunday lineup, Riggleman at first didn't have much to say about it:  "Just a manager's decision to go a different way today. I think Nyjer's playing fine."

It didn't take long, though, for Riggleman to reveal his true feelings about the incident.

"I think it was just a culmination of Nyjer's anger from not hitting first," Riggleman said. "[He] did an unprofessional thing. He went after the catcher. I certainly don't condone that."

"That's not Nyjer's style of play to do something like that," Riggleman said, while revealing that Morgan was unhappy about being moved to the eighth position in Saturday's lineup.  Morgan has batted leadoff in almost all of the 113 games he has played for the Nationals this season.

"I called him in and told him I was gonna hit him eighth instead of leadoff," Riggleman said. "I think [Morgan's frustration] just was building up all day. I think he thought I was wearing that [catcher's] equipment there at home plate."

"I'm sorry it happened," Riggleman said. "I apologized to [St. Louis manager] Tony [La Russa] and I apologized to Bryan Anderson," Riggleman added, indicating that the apologies were accepted.

Even so, inserting Morgan into Sunday's lineup at any position could have been hazardous.

"I can't minimize [the incident], because if I take the approach that there's nothing wrong with it, we're gonna get people hurt on the field," Riggleman said. "There's gotta be retaliation."

"If Nyjer was playing today, he'd get hit [by a pitch]," Riggleman said. "If an opposing player did that to my catcher and came to the plate, he'd get hit."

Riggleman expressed confidence that the incident was an isolated one.

"You've never seen that before [from Morgan]," Riggleman said. "You'll never see it again."

      

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- If, as a Washington Nationals fan, you think it was tough watching Stephen Strasburg depart suddenly from last Saturday evening's game in Philadelphia with symptoms of what turned out to be a career-derailing elbow ligament tear, imagine how it must have felt to his teammates.

Such as, for instance, catcher Wil Nieves.

"Scary, you know?" Nieves said Saturday when asked to describe his feelings at the time the event occurred a week before. "You're hoping it's nothing serious.  He's been throwing so good, his velocity was there.  It's just scary to see one of your pitchers come out from a game."

The worst news -- that Strasburg would need Tommy John ligament reconstruction surgery -- was yet to come.  Nieves tried to remain philosophical about this latest setback to the Nationals' rotation-building plans.

"We just gotta keep going," Nieves said. "Obviously we lost a great pitcher. But we're just gonna keep battling."

"You've got the other guys," Nieves said. "Like [Jordan] Zimmermann and those guys."

Nieves, however, harbors no illusions about the impact of Strasburg's absence from the Nationals' pitching staff.

"When you lose a guy like [Strasburg], it always hurts," Nieves said.  "But this is a team. We've just gotta win without him. And when he comes back, it's gonna be even better."

      

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg spoke to the media this afternoon at Nationals Park and expressed confidence that his forthcoming Tommy John elbow ligament reconstruction surgery, and subsequent rehabilitation, will be successful.

Strasburg admitted that he suffered a jolt upon learning that he would require surgery to replace the torn ligament.

"It was kind of a shock to me," Strasburg said, "because I really didn't feel anything."

Speaking calmly and confidently, Strasburg quickly put his injury and forthcoming surgery into perspective.

"In a way, it's good that it happened now," Strasburg said, "instead of when we're going to the postseason or getting ready for the World Series."

"It's a new challenge," Strasburg said. "I want to be the best at everything.  Right now I'm going to be the best at rehabbing and getting back out here."

Strasburg said that he has had the opportunity to discuss his injury and recovery path with fellow right-handed pitcher Jordan Zimmermann, who returned to the major leagues on Wednesday evening after undergoing Tommy John surgery in August 2009.

"[Zimmermann] was telling me that, especially early on, you're going to be questioning yourself," Strasburg said. "It's going to feel really, really good on some days, and the next day it'll be tight."

Strasburg recognizes that the major leagues are replete with successful returnees from elbow ligament reconstruction, "all the guys in the big leagues who are Cy Young contenders, Hall of Famers who have had this surgery."

Expressing confidence in the skills of orthopedic surgeon Lewis A. Yocum MD -- who also performed the procedure on Zimmermann -- Strasburg said, "It's become such a specialty.  I'm going to the best."

"I know deep down inside," Strasburg said, "that I'm going to work just as hard, if not harder, than any of these guys who had to go through it before."

Strasburg did not immediately consider that the pain he felt after throwing the pitch in Philadelphia that resulted in his removal from Saturday night's game might indicate an elbow issue.

"It felt more like a flexor strain than anything," Strasburg said.  "It felt like my forearm cramped up.  That was about it."

In the opinion of Strasburg's medical team, as stated by team general manager Mike Rizzo at a media teleconference this morning, Strasburg's injury was "an acute injury caused by a single pitch."  Strasburg himself, however, did not seem to think that was the only possibility.

"What happened the other night [on the mound in Philadelphia] was something I'd felt before," Strasburg said, "and nothing was torn then.  I don't know what the doctors think, but I think it might've been more something that happened over time."

Team general manager Mike Rizzo reaffirmed the team's intention, despite Strasburg's setback, to build a credible rotation by all means possible -- "via free agency, trades, or developing our own.  That's always our primary goal."

"We're certainly not going to stop looking for the ultimate starting rotation," Rizzo said.  "A year goes fast, and a year from now [Strasburg] will be toeing the rubber."

"We're going to be ready to take off from there," Rizzo said.

Nationals field manager Jim Riggleman said he learned just before Thursday night's game of the likely need for Strasburg to undergo surgery.

Riggleman did not understate the impact that Strasburg's absence will have on the team.

"When you lose a guy that is this talented, it's hard to replace that," Riggleman said, indicating that it might take one or more pitchers to fill the rotation void left by Strasburg.

"We just want to put a staff together that'll get us through the remainder of this year and the upcoming season," Riggleman said, "to make us as competitive and keep moving forward as we've been trying to do."

Zimmermann's rehabilitation was cited by Riggleman as an experience from which Strasburg could project his own future.

"Whether it's on the surface or subconsciously, it's got to affect Stephen a little bit that he saw the work Zimmermann put in in Viera on his comeback," Riggleman said.  "He saw Zimmermann work and he saw the progress from where he was to where he is now, right there hands-on with him" instead of only hearing of other elbow-reconstruction recoverees, such as John Smoltz, at second hand.

Riggleman talked about the injury risks faced by present-day pitchers.

"When I see these pitchers throw, I'm almost more surprised when they don't end up with surgery," Riggleman said.  "So many of them break down."

"You sense that, if you put twelve names in a hat, three of them are going to need surgery," Riggleman said.  "That's just a fact."

Riggleman spoke confidently of his eventual hope to have Strasburg and Zimmermann working in the same rotation.

"It's still gonna happen," Riggleman said.  "It's just gonna be another year before it happens."