2008 MLB Regular Season

Hot Offseason Action: Washington Nationals

This is one of a series of posts in which we grade each team’s wily hot stove maneuvers and tragic offseason blunders.

Forgive me lord, for I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last UmpBump post.

Now that I have made peace with the almighty (who shall only be referred to as -mpb-mp), let’s talk about them Nationals.

Back in January, I spoke positively of what Washington had done at that point of the off-season. For years, this was a franchise who literally had no idea where they were headed. They learned after 35 years that French Canadians didn’t really like baseball all that much aside from Eric Gagne and Russell Martin. For over four years, they were owned by Major League Baseball, through which the owners of the 29 other franchises - those whose teams were in direct competition with the Expos on the baseball field - had control over the club’s future. They basically became guinea pigs as the new “owners” tested the financial possibilities of having a team in Puerto Rico before finally closing up shop in Montreal and landing in our nation’s capital. It’s like the entire franchise was reenacting the Book of Exodus and Peter Angelos was playing the role of the Red Sea (I’ll stop with the allusions to Judaism now).

I may be a Mets fan, but I’m first and foremost...

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