District Daily: Nats News 3/24
By Pablo Roa
Mar 23, 2014; Port St. Lucie, FL, USA; Washington Nationals left fielder
Bryce Harper(34) tries to make a leaping catch at the wall off the bat of New York Mets center fielder
Chris Young(not pictured) at Tradition Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brad Barr-USA TODAY Sports
Start off your week with some great Washington Nationals articles from around the web:
Williams doesn’t want to stop Harper’s aggressiveness
VIERA, Fla. — In the eighth inning of Saturday’s game against the Marlins,Bryce Harper collected a Donovan Solano double not far from the left-field warning track at Space Coast Stadium and unleashed a majestic throw toward home. It was an impressive display of arm strength, but it still was too late to get the runner at the plate and allowed Solano to move up to third.
What was the reaction of Nationals manager Matt Williams?
“Wow,” Williams said. “Wrong move, but wow.” Read full article here.
Washington Nationals must find their identity, and Manager Matt Williams is key to it
(Thomas Boswell, Washington Post)
You can’t talk a team’s competitive identity into existence. It has to be created in actions, not words. That seasoning process takes time and, as the Washington Nationals have discovered, it can be measured in years of delayed satisfaction. When a team knows it is good, but realizes it is not yet great, the idle hours of spring training are spent talking about how to make that jump. The Nats keep their comments brief, their intentions clear.
“It’s time to grow up. This is the year to graduate,” Jayson Werth said Friday.
“There’s a difference between a good team and a championship team,” reliever Tyler Clippard said. “I came up in a Yankee organization [for five years] that exuded that feeling every year. Now I feel it here. We’re there. We’re ready now.”
The Nats, burned so badly by specific expectations last year, wouldn’t make a prediction this year if you gave them a hot foot with a blowtorch. But the words “intensity, focus and urgency” come up repeatedly. Read full article here.
Washington Nationals: Could Tyler Moore Be Pushed Back To The Minors?
As Spring Training comes to an end, smaller scale roster battles begin to fully reveal themselves. This is no different for the Washington Nationals, who now have two relatively small scale battles going on. One is the battle to round out the rotation, which is all down to Taylor Jordan, and the battle for the final bench spot. The final three players remaining contending for that spot are Jamey Carroll, Tyler Moore and Jeff Kobernus, and all bring different skills to the table.
If Davey Johnson was still managing this team, then it would barely be a competition, as Johnson prefers to have big, strong players on the bench who can come up and put the ball in the seats late in a game to get his team ahead. Alas, Johnson is no longer managing this team, and Matt Williams seems to want to have versatile players who can provide a complete skill set. Of course, we know Moore well and his power potential, but he struggled coming off the bench in 2013, which led to a demotion, and upon his recall, we all saw the true potential of his bat. That power is really all he can provide, and unfortunately, that could work to his detriment. Read full article here.