The title is just for your reference. The post is about baseball.

It’s been a while since I have even mentioned baseball. So I will start this morning with some thoughts I have. Those of us in DC who follow the Nationals find it a little harder this year because the Washington Post (our former local newspaper) has stopped reporting on the Nats’ spring training. Not that they aren’t covering it as intensely as they used to. They aren’t covering the Nats at all. I don’t know what the case will be when the season starts on the 26th of the month (that is only 9 days away), but they don’t have one reporter in West Palm Beach and I don’t know that they have published one article on the team.

So let me give you a quick fill-in. There is a new manager and a new general manager, and new coaches, and no one knows anything about any of them. There are players from last year (some of whom no one remembers at all) and a bunch of new ones that no one knows at all. Any local newspaper worth its salt would keep local fans up to date. The Washington Post clearly is no longer a local paper, and we have no other. Of course, you can follow the Nats through many websites and I am sure some people use them, but these websites do not include the Post’s  website. If you go to sports today, you will find 10 articles on baseball and none of them are on the Nats. Weird?

It gets worse. Up until this year, the Nats games were on TV on a network owned by the Baltimore Orioles, called MASN. It has been said that all of the Nats games will be streamed on MLB-TV, which costs $100 for the season, but that they will also be on Cable TV on a station yet to be announced, 9 days before the season starts.

Of course, the Nats are not doing too well, and haven’t done well at all since their World Series season in 2019. With new folks in charge, and a very young team, it is expected that 2026 will still be a rebuild year (referred to by some as a rebuild of the failed rebuild). And I know you can’t go by what happens in spring training, but this spring training (to the extent I could follow it, and I didn’t try too hard) has been interesting.

First, of the 15 teams that hold their spring training in Florida (the Grapefruit League), the Nats are in 3rd place. Second, of the 15 teams that have their spring training in Florida, the Nats’ pitchers have the lowest Earned Run Average (that means that their pitchers have pitched better than any other of the teams). Third, of the 15 teams that have their spring training in Florida, the batting averages of the Nats’ hitters is in last place.

Now, all of that is weird enough, but it becomes more weird since, for the last few years, the Nats’ hitters have not done too badly, while their pitching has been, by and large, pitiful. Very hard to understand. Very hard.

And especially hard to understand since it is so hard to read anything beyond these mere statistics.

But wouldn’t you know it? Once I wrote these words, I saw that the Nats scored 12 runs yesterday in beating the Mets. The start of something big? The exception that proves the rule? None of the above?

I also see that Venezuela will be the United States opponent in the finals of the World Baseball Classic tonight. I must say that I don’t really care who wins. No, that’s not really true. I would like Venezuela to win. It’s like Trump says: I am so tired of winning.

I did notice something else of interest. Do you know that everyone on Venezuela’s team has an Hispanic name, and no one (that means no one) on the U.S. has an Hispanic name? That means all of the Hispanic MLB players involved in the WBC decided not to play for the U.S. Take that, Mr. Trump!And there is something else that I find interesting. The U.S. team not only has no Hispanics, it only has one Black player, Byron Buxton of the Twins. I know that African-American players are not over represented throughout the league, but, for example, the Nats have at least 8 Black players on their 40 man roster.

And speaking of statistics, Wordle will tell you that I have a winning streak of 18 days. Why they say this, I don’t know, because by my own statistics, I am about at 103 days. The Wordle app says that I missed a day a few weeks ago, but I think the app is wrong. But….in any event, I just discovered (because it is sort of hidden in the app) that you can go back and play puzzles that you missed (it’s called the Wordle Archive), and I have gone back and played four that they say I missed over the past 8 months. The app tells me that I missed about ten games in July (I guess it is possible) and I will go back and play them.

But even if you go back and play successfully the days that you skipped over, it does not affect your days-in-a-row statistics. But for the record, I would like everyone to know that the last time I actually did not get a Wordle correct was in October of 2024. Now, why I would like everyone to know that, I have no idea. A character fault on my part, I think.