How would you rate the Nationals' offseason?

Will the Alfonso Soriano trade turn out to be a positive or a negative for the team?

Will Soriano develop into a serviceable outfielder, or will he continue to mope until he finds a way out of Washington?

Is John Patterson quietly becoming one of baseball's best pitchers? Do the Nationals have enough in the rotation behind him to compete in the NL East with the Braves, Phillies and the vastly improved Mets?

Will rookie 3B Ryan Zimmerman become the superstar most are expecting him to become this season, or will he experience growing pains this year?

Interested in your thoughts. Post them here.

Soriano will win us games at the plate and lose us games in the field. this trade was jim bowden being jim bowden. trying to make a splash at any cost. The moment the Rangers denied him permission to talk to soriano before the trade the whole deal should have been scrapped! He couldn't pay a pitcher to come here and panicked with the soriano deal. Soriano will be out of here as soon as he can.

I'm not sure how quietly Patterson is becoming a good pitcher. I think the word is already out. great year last season and I think more to come this year. i wouldn't be surprised if he won 15-18 games this year.
Rest of the pitching is mediocre at best. Livan will throw his usual 200+ innings and win 15 games. Bullpen is actually pretty good and Cordero is dominant.

Zimmerman will be a stud for the next 10-15 years if healthy. Not sure if he played too many games last year to qualify for R.O.Y. this year but if hes eligable he has a legite shot along with R. Howard, Hermida, Fielder. Nats will win 70-80 games this year. Once we get an owner i think the team will take a huge leap forward

I'm a longtime Reds fan, so I know what you mean about Bowden. I actually like him as a GM, though. He's not afraid to take a few risks, even if they don't all pan out. I think he could be a very good fit for the team once they do get an owner.

The problem he always had in Cincinnati was the money wasn't there. I think if Bowden is in the right situation with ownership that is willing to put out some money (not necessarily huge money), he could help make the Nats into contenders every year. He did it in Cincinnati without a lot of money to spend.

My biggest concern with Soriano would be whether his stock rises or falls with his performance in the outfield, particularly as the trade deadline approaches in July. I would think if the Nats are not in contention, they would have to move him since he apparently has no plans to stay in D.C. after this season. Poor performance - and a poor attitude - could hurt his value on the market.

Then again, you'd think it would hurt his value in the free agent market in the offseason, too. So he would do well to do well, right?


As for Patterson, I think he's got a great year ahead, too. I just don't think a lot of people know about him yet, which is fine. It helped me get him off the waiver wire in my fantasy league last year and in the 11th round of my draft this season.

I wish I'd have known you guys would all start posting here. I emailed the sports deak before football season to see if any of you guys would be interested in joining a yahoo league with some of the readers.
we actually had a prettygood league with the forum members here. Bob was the only one to respond
and it was after we started. baseball would have been great with a couple of you sports guys. would have kept the league competitive and you could have gotten a column out of the readers kicking you guys butts!


Keep up the good writing. Sports and mail call are the only reasons most of us read the H/M. Local crazies and sports that what sells papers

Last year was the first in about 10 years I did not play in a fantasy football league. I just don't get to watch the games nearly as much as I used to and found that I couldn't keep up with all the player movement like before. I guess that's a sign I'm getting old.

I actually just saw your post about openings in a baseball league. I might have taken you up on that one. It's actually much easier for me to keep up with baseball, even though they play so many more games. Most of us in the office are in a league together, so it gets quite heated sometimes as we check boxscores at night. But that's the part that makes it fun for me. Maybe next year a couple of us can get in with you guys.

A few of us started posting in here when we kicked off the Preps Extra site back in November. I enjoy reading the forums. A lot of times, they're good for a few laughs (especially some of the stuff on local politics, McBean, etc.). But there's also a lot of good conversation going on, which is something I think this site has lacked in the past.

Hopefully, our having a presence on here will help with that. And thanks for the kind words on our work in sports, though some would put us in the 'local crazies' category at times.

Keep posting. We love to hear from you all.