There's been little doubt that Bryce Harper is the best talent on the board for this coming Monday's First-Year Player Draft.  Guys like Jameson Taillon, Manny Machado and Drew Pomerantz have been shuffling among the top half-dozen, while early-season elbow worries about Anthony Ranaudo may have spooked scouts enough to knock the rangy LSU right-hander -- once a consensus 2-3 selection -- anywhere from five to 25 slots down the board.

But about Harper's rightful position at the top of the list there has been little disagreement -- except from those who have expressed concern about Harper's makeup.

Would the Washington Nationals, holder of next Monday's number-one selection, endanger organizational chemistry by spending that pick on Harper?

If Jim Bowden were still the GM, it'd be right to worry.  Bowden's the guy who seemed never to see a ballplayer he didn't like -- whether it was garrulous, sometimes-contentious Jose Guillen, eccentric Robert Fick, moody Felipe Lopez or baggage-laden Elijah Dukes.  As long as a dude came equipped with tools (and, as Daily News colleague Jeff Bergin reports, Harper projects well in every aspect) he had a chance to make his mark with the Nats.

But with Mike Rizzo in charge, is it enough just to possess the tools? 

Very likely not.  Remember what Rizzo told the Post's Chico Harlan after last season's draft:

[Jim] liked those high-ceiling, toolsy guys. . . . I like them, too. But I like them in a certain round.

One suspects Rizzo did not mean the first or second round, especially from his later elaboration in the same interview about the importance of good makeup.

There's no doubt.  We didn't just start that, either. Since I took over, specifically, we're weeding out the guys we feel don't fit that.  Because you know what?  When we're ready to be really good -- not just be competitive -- but when we're ready to compete for championships, to do that you've got to have good-character people.  They're not all choir boys.  But when the game is on the line, what's gonna happen?  Hustle plays. . . . are the plays that win games. You can't quantify them on a scoresheet. But they win you games . . . . And when you don't do that . . . little things help you lose games.

Which may explain why guys like Dukes, Daniel Cabrera, and Luke Montz are no longer employed by the Nationals.  It may well also indicate what kind of character you can expect from Harper when the Nats make their first-round selection in next week's draft.

If Harper's invited on board, you can be pretty sure that Rizzo and his staff feel that he's a guy whose talents won't be obscured by self-wrought distractions as the organization continues to move forward.  That's a pretty likely prospect from this observer's point of view, considering the positive impression that Rizzo and his staff seem to have brought away from a scouting trip at the beginning of May.

But in the unlikely event that the Nats take a pass on Harper, it's probably right to wish a lot of luck to whatever club does end up selecting him, because they're liable to need as much luck as they can get.

      

Readers of the Washington Post in print and online will be rejoiced to know that the Nationals beatwriter position -- which is in the process of being vacated by the departure of Chico Harlan to the Post's East Asia bureau -- will be in good hands.

Adam Kilgore -- a past intern and Orioles beatwriter at the Post who has managed, among other things, to garner a share of a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre -- will be joining the sports desk full time to keep the Post's readers up to date on all things Nats.

Kilgore sounds like he's pretty charged about his new gig, so if his new colleague Tom Sietsema might have had reason to worry for the safety of his job over the past year or so, that estimable critic can probably breathe a sigh of relief.

If that last bit sounded like a dig on Harlan, it was intended to be.  Harlan's mea culpa after the Washingtonian kerfuffle never particularly resonated at this Hutch.  And while Harlan is a fine writer, it's a shame that he had to save some of his finest and most insightful writing for his valedictory blog entry Friday evening in the Post's "Nationals Journal."

In any event, if you, as we, miss Barry Svrluga on the Nats beat, you'll miss him a little less; Kilgore is capable of producing not only prize-winning copy but also a Svrlugesque turn of phrase.

Expect top-notch Nats coverage from 15th and L this season.  Welcome back to town, Mr. Kilgore.

      

The Washington Post's Nationals beat writer, Chico Harlan, will join the paper's foreign staff in March and move to Japan in June to serve as the paper's Asia correspondent.

Harlan covered the team for two seasons before revealing last month that he would be leaving the beat.

Excerpted from an internal memo at the Post obtained by FishbowlDC.

With the world's second largest economy, and a new government that is proving troublesome to the United States, Japan alone will give Chico a lot to write about. But we expect that Chico will also roam widely, to North and South Korea, Indonesia, the Phillipines and Vietnam, among other stops, to capture the rapid changes underway in an extraordinarily dynamic region, as China and the United States battle for influence.

We expect Chico to start on the foreign staff on or about March 1, once he hands over responsibility for the Nationals. (Pitchers and catchers report Feb. 18.) He'll move to Japan in June, after taking some time to learn a little Japanese and to begin to school himself about Asia.

The Post hasn't yet announced who will be taking over the Nationals beat.

      

Whatever you think about the Washington Nationals' acquisition of veteran free-agent catcher Iván Rodríguez, your opinion probably has lots of adherents — and opponents.

To set the tone, let's see what the Washington Post's Chico Harlan has to say about it:

Rodríguez, a 13-time Gold Glove winner, remains one of the game's top defensive catchers.  He's ideal to guide a young pitching staff.  If Washington's promising 25-year-old catcher, Jesús Flores, fully recovers from right shoulder surgery by spring training, Rodríguez can mentor and start two or three games per week.  If Flores suffers a setback, Rodríguez can hold down the full-time job.

Not so fast, opines one reader of this Hutch:

. . . anyone with a brain, and anyone that actually watched Pudge play last season (which I doubt many commentators and blog commentors did) saw clearly that he does not call a good game, does not hit well at all. Essentially, he is a glorified Henry Blanco - who actually hit better, handled a pitching staff full of question marks, and is better defensively.

But another NationalsPride.com reader sees it differently and offered these thoughts via email:

I think I’m for it.  Look, the Nats have made clear that Jesus Flores is the catcher of the future, assuming that he is healthy.  And I assume that his recovery may be slow, but it will become full.  And Josh Bard and Wil Nieves for a full season is not a tenable solution.  Plus, assuming Flores gets healthy and plays regularly, Pudge is a nice trading chip – for much of the last decade, he’s been a rent-a-player for a team looking to make a playoff run.  It’s a role he knows.  And this is different than the [Paul] Lo Duca signing - Lo Duca was taking AB’s from Flores – Rodriguez is holding Flores’s coat waiting for him to return.

And there's this online observation from Nationals Enquirer:

Scott Boras talked about the Pudge Rodriguez deal yesterday- what he forgot to mention is that [Nats general manager Mike] Rizzo owed him one for [Nats 2009 first-round draftee and Boras client Stephen] Strasburg, the real reason for that second year.

From slightly outside the Natmosphere comes this evaluation from a commenter at FanGraphs:

. . . The placeholder for Bryce Harper.

(Presuming, of course, that the Nats intend to draft Harper and that Flores isn't destined to be that placeholder.)  Anyhow, what do you think?

      

ESPN.com's Jerry Crasnick reports, via "a baseball source," that the Nationals have come to terms with Scott Olsen on a contract under which the lefty starter, to whom the Nats had not offered salary arbitration, will earn a base salary of $1 million, and almost $4 million if Olsen makes 33 starts for the team.  More as we learn it.

UPDATED 12/13/09 10:13 pm: The deal has been confirmed by Mark Zuckerman at the Times and by Chico Harlan at the Post...

UPDATED 12/13/09 10:30 pm: Bill Ladson has the full story at MLB.com...

ANALYSIS 12/13/09 10:35 pm:  What's not to like? In an internet writers' teleconference last month, Nats manager Jim Riggleman reported that Olsen had "progressed very well" and was "ahead of schedule," and that the Nats "expect[ed] him to be healthy in the spring."  That said, shoulder surgery is still a major hurdle to clear, so it seems right that the Nats and Olsen have reached a deal that's more flexible, and probably more fair to all involved, than what they would have had to arrive at via arbitration.

      

Word of the official announcement that Nationals starting LHP Scott Olsen and relief RHP Mike MacDougal will not be tendered arbitration for the 2010 season has just come from the Post's Chico Harlan.  More news and analysis as we have it.

UPDATED 12/12/09 7:35 pm:  Mark Zuckerman at the Times has also reported the story, and adds...

Washington did tender contracts to its six other arbitration-eligible players: outfielder Josh Willingham, catchers Jesus Flores and Wil Nieves and relievers Sean Burnett, Jason Bergmann and recently acquired Brian Bruney.

UPDATED 12/12/09 10:15 pm:  Harlan's updated post hits the relevant points well...

Olsen, acquired in a trade with Florida last November, was coming off a year marred by uneven performance (2-4, 6.03 ERA in 11 starts) and subsequent left labrum surgery. Though Olsen is fully rehabilitated from the surgery, his salary -- $2.8 million in 2009 -- necessitated this move. Had Olsen been tendered a contract, he would have made a comparable salary in 2010 via arbitration.

. . . MacDougal has a history of shaky control and inconsistency. He relies on one pitch, a fastball, and has a worrisome strikeout-to-walk ratio. Also, he finished the season on a down note, with a 9.53 ERA in September, and in early October he had arthroscopic surgery on his right hip.

ANALYSIS 12/13/09 10:00 am: Each of the eight, in eight words each...

• Olsen: Right move here; he may be back anyhow.
• MacDougal: Too exciting for the Nats; good luck elsewhere.
• Willingham: Good clubhouse guy who hits the ball hard.
• Flores: Shoulders are tricky, per Riggles; good upside though.
• Nieves: With catchers in short supply, a smart offer.
• Burnett: Versatile left-handed godsend to Nats middle relief.
• Bergmann: Enigmatic righty's option status makes this a puzzlement.
• Bruney: '10 closer; Storen will be his setup man.

      

The news out of the Washington Times' newsroom Wednesday was grim.

Positioned as a reorganization to slim down its money-hemorrhaging print operation in favor of a less costly online presence, Times employees were told to expect layoffs of at least 40 percent of the existing 370-person staff in the next 60 days.

I'm told that the expectation among many in the newsroom is that the sports section might simply be eliminated and its staff laid off as the Times refocuses on conservative commentary.

Though the Times' print circulation and web traffic pale in comparison to those of the Washington Post, neither particularly matter in a climate where a single story posted online can quickly spark a series of piggy-backing catch-up stories in other news outlets.

The quality of the coverage matters more than the number of its readers, and that's why Nationals fans are simply better off with the Washington Times in the pressbox.

The Times has not one, but two very capable reporters covering the Nationals, Mark Zuckerman and Ben Goessling, as well as its entertainingly skeptical columnist, Thom Loverro.

With Tim Lemke, the Times has also preserved the sports business beat abandoned by the Post a few years ago when it moved Thomas Heath into the business section.

The Post's beat writer, Chico Harlan, infamously told Washingtonian magazine in March that he was "embarrassed" to be a sports writer and last month revealed he was leaving the Nationals beat. A replacement hasn't been hired yet and the paper's off-season Nationals coverage has wandered somewhat aimlessly (and embarrassingly) as a result.

The unofficial running tally of coverage we keep here on NationalsPride says the Times has published nearly 25 percent more Nationals stories in 2009 than the Post has. (Both still trail far behind MLB-owned Nationals.com.)

When you factor in how little attention and original reporting the Nationals get from local TV news, it becomes clear that a real coverage hole is opening up here.

So much about quality journalism is just asking the right questions, and the more people who are asking questions, the more likely it is that someone will get to the real story.

With the Times out of the pressbox and its writers likely out of work even before pitchers and catchers report, far fewer questions are going to be asked of a franchise very much in need of questioning.

Adding complexity to the issue is the impending launch of an online-only local DC news site by the company behind Politico and WJLA-TV, Allbritton Communications. The still-unnamed site is dubbed "PostKiller.com" by City Paper because it is being built to directly challenge the Post's stranglehold on local news coverage here in Washington. We don't yet know what it's got planned for sports coverage, but as Jack Shafer astutely pointed out in a piece on Slate.com, the site would be wise to invest in it.

And so we're left with more questions.

Will PostKiller.com staff the Nationals? Will the Nationals credential it? Will the Post try to hire Zuckerman or Goessling, or both? Will PostKiller.com make a run at them?

One way or another, 2010 will clearly be a transformational year for news coverage of Washington's struggling baseball franchise. But it almost certainly won't be better.

      

FishbowlDC, echoing multiple sources, has posted the text of an alleged Washington Post memo informing its audience that their Nationals beatwriter, Chico Harlan, is moving on to another position (perhaps food critic?).

Applications for the vacancy, it would appear, are being solicited.

UPDATE 7:30 pm 11/19/09:  Now-interim beatwriter Harlan confirmed the story today.

      

During an internet writers' question-and-answer session a couple of weeks ago at Nationals Park, Nats assistant director of player development Mark Scialabba filled in the assembled bloggers on the state of various Nats present and future and on the direction of the system as a whole.

Scialabba's encyclopedic knowledge of the system and its minor-league players make him a valuable and informative resource to the hardcore Nats fan as well as to the front office, including presumably player-development director Bobby Williams and PD vice president and assistant GM Bob Boone.

That said, we wondered the other weekend, idly and silently, why Scialabba is so often the spokesperson for the PD department, and why it was he and not Williams whom the Nats designated to participate in the recent Q&A.

Our wonder has been tweaked by this report from the Harrisburg Patriot-News (H/T to Brian Oliver at Nationals Farm Authority) that the Nats terminated Williams' employment this past Friday.

Having yet to hear any confirmation from the Nationals front office, we're filing this report for now in the Hutch's "unsourced rumors" folder.  We have a call in to the Nats FO seeking clarification and will pass on anything useful that we find out.

UPDATE 11:25 pm Saturday 9/5/09: As cited earlier this evening by Nationals Pride managing editor Ian Koski, Chico Harlan at the Post's "Nationals Journal" reports that Nats general manager Mike Rizzo has confirmed the story.

      

Reports Chico Harlan at the Post's "Nationals Journal":

Rookie starter Craig Stammen, a member of Washington's pitching rotation since May, has been scratched from his start on Friday because of elbow soreness. An MRI, scheduled for Thursday in Washington, D.C., will determine the severity of the injury.

"I don't really know what's going on," Stammen said of his elbow. "It's just painful. It doesn't feel good. It's kind of something that's built up over the course of the whole year. It's something I've pretty much dealt with over the course of the whole season. It's just kind of time to get it checked out right now."

Stammen, with a 4-7 record and a 5.11 ERA in 19 starts, admitted that he had been trying to "gut it out" and finish the season. With rosters expanding in September, though, the Nationals have plenty of freedom to use other pitchers from the 40-man roster in the rotation. In the meantime, Garrett Mock will take Stammen's place in the rotation, starting Friday against Florida and pitching on regular rest because of the upcoming off day.

"We're kind of crossing our fingers that it's nothing to be too concerned about," interim manager Jim Riggleman said. "Being September and we've got extra bodies coming, we're just going to be resting him. Whether he pitches after that, we're not sure."

Stammen's 2009 season with the Nats has exhibited four distinct phases:

• From April 13 to May 15, Stammen logged seven starts for the triple-A Syracuse Chiefs. He went 4-2 in 40 innings, striking out 14, walking eight, and allowing 33 hits and eight earned runs on his way to a 1.80 ERA.
• Stammen's first eight major-league starts for the Nats, from May 21 to June 30, were up-and-down affairs, more often down than up. Over 44 2/3 innings, he accrued a 1-3 record and 5.44 ERA with 22 strikeouts, ten bases on balls and 48 hits.
• Four solid starts in July highlighted Stammen's season, capped by a complete-game win over Houston on July 11. (He accomplished this feat while throwing just 107 pitches, the only major-league start in which Stammen's pitch count has ever exceeded 100.) During this period he enjoyed a 2.15 ERA over 29 1/3 innings, allowing 24 hits and five walks while striking out 12.
• Stammen's last seven starts, beginning on July 27, have been unsightly. Logging just 31 2/3 innings pitched, he has struck out 14 batters, walked nine, and issued 40 hits including eight home runs for an ERA of 7.39 over the span.

Has Stammen been vulnerable to overuse? His professional numbers over the past four seasons don't show it: he's pitched 142 2/3 innings in 2006, 128 2/3 in 2007, 150 2/3 in 2008 and 145 2/3 (105 2/3 at the MLB level) in 2009.

Earlier ramp-ups are a little more worrisome. After pitching fewer than 70 innings in each of the 2003 and 2004 seasons at the University of Dayton, his innings total in 2005 -- during which he was selected by the Nats in the 12th round of the First-Year Player Draft -- vaulted to a career-high 157, of which 106 were pitched at Dayton and 51 at short-season-A Vermont.

The fact that Stammen also pitched in the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League in 2004 may provide little statistical comfort.  While exact numbers aren't available at the moment, if we assume that Stammen went 35 innings that summer -- about par for a starter in the GLSCL -- that would put his approximate innings totals at 58 for 2003, 103 for 2004 and 157 for 2005, representing not one but two significant increases in workload.

What impact those usage spikes have had on Stammen's current situation is something on which we can only speculate. We're pretty sure, though, that if Stammen were four years younger and had been selected in this year's draft with those college usage numbers, he'd have been shut down post haste, or perhaps carefully groomed for the Arizona Fall League as the Nats are now doing with Stephen Strasburg.

But since Stammen doesn't get a do-over of the past half-dozen seasons, all that's left to him now -- as to the Nats and their fans -- is to watch and wait.

UPDATE 7:35 pm Thursday 9/3/09: The 2009 total above has been updated to include Stammen's 40 innings at AAA. Even so, he hasn't been overused this season compared to last.