My comment on Nats Journal

I just copied this from Nationals Journal. A lot of the same stuff, but I finally went off on Lopez today. Figured it was long enough to share here:

The team's decision to go for mostly in-house replacements rather than pricey free agents was a smart one, because it's stupid to give guys a ton of money over many years (especially guys that will be 37, 38, etc. when their contracts expire). That being said, we still have issues. Manny keeps batting Milledge 3rd and took way too long dropping FLop from the top 2 slots. I blogged about this the other day at DC Sports Plus (my blog...Google 'DC Sports Plus' and it will be the first link), but this is what I think the lineup should be at this point:

Guzman-SS
Milledge-CF
Flores-C
Young/Boone-1B
Dukes-RF
Casto-3B
Pena-LF
Lopez-2B

Note that Belliard replaces FLop immediately when he returns. Immediately. I don't care if he does absolutely nothing, I'm so sick of seeing Lopez dogging it. Manny Ramirez is good enough to dog it. Felipe Lopez has the talent to be great, but he has never fully tapped into it and likely never will. He's such a frustrating waste of talent. He'll be lucky to get a minor league contract and an invite to spring training next year.

I think the problem lies within Lenny Harris (obviously not an original idea). If Jim Bowden wants to keep his job (which is in jeopardy, according to SI.com's Jon Heyman), he needs to can Lenny and get a hitting coach that gets our bats to improve rather than regress. We really just need Zim/Johnson/Kearns back. Yes, Kearns. He will not be this bad all year, you heard it here.


There's some good conversation going on over there, as NFL has also pointed out. Come join in the fun if you get a chance!