{"id":7463,"date":"2013-08-20T09:35:25","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T13:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com.\/?p=7463"},"modified":"2013-08-22T10:10:20","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T14:10:20","slug":"what-will-shark-fans-do-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=7463","title":{"rendered":"What will Shark fans do now?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bernadina's<\/a>

Bernadina’s Aug2012 catch in Houston remains a franchise highlight. Photo zimbio.com<\/p><\/div>\n

I guess that’s the biggest question mark in the wake of yesterday’s deal, where the Nats released the longest serving member of their franchise\u00a0Roger Bernadina<\/strong> and traded for a decent bench player in\u00a0David DeJesus<\/strong> and at least $2.5M worth of contract obligations for \u00a0PTBNL.<\/p>\n

Update:\u00a0Ken Rosenthal<\/strong> is speculating that the Nats brass may have made this trade because of a “waiver wire mistake<\/a>.” \u00a0DeJesus is apparently already back out on waivers again. \u00a0If this is the case … then I’ll really criticize\u00a0Mike Rizzo<\/strong> here. \u00a0If you put in a claim on a Chicago Cubs guy, a team CLEARLY shedding any and all payroll, you have to think they were going to accept the claim. \u00a0There seems to be more to this story that seems to cast the Nats front office in a questionable light.<\/p>\n

For me, Bernadina was a case study in a guy who was just\u00a0slightly<\/em>\u00a0below a good MLB hitter. \u00a0He wasn’t a 4-A guy; he showed that in spurts he could hit in the majors. \u00a0But when given full time opportunities in 2010 and 2011 he just couldn’t get it done.<\/p>\n

An, in yet another comment that seems to indicate how out of touch\u00a0Davey Johnson<\/strong> is this season, he was quoted by Amanda Comak<\/strong>\u00a0as saying that Bernadina is “still kind of a young player<\/a>”\u00a0<\/em>as part of his explanation for why he just couldn’t get it going this season. \u00a0Really? \u00a0Kind of a \u00a0young player? \u00a0Aged 29. \u00a0Played in the majors parts of 6 seasons, has more than 1300 major league plate appearances to go with another 3300 plate appearances in the minors, and playing professionally in our system for a decade. \u00a0 Sorry Davey, he’s not a young player anymore. \u00a0He is what he is; a streaky hitter who was probably lucky last year and unlucky this year, who had his shots to be the full time CF here and just couldn’t hit enough to stick. \u00a0Great fielder, by all accounts a great guy.<\/p>\n

Why release him instead of DFA him? \u00a0Probably a classy move by the Nats here; by outright releasing him there’s no waiver process, no shenanigans that have been going on related to teams trying to rig the waiver\/DFA process. \u00a0Bernadina was almost guaranteed to be non-tendered this coming off-season anyway, so why not make him a FA now and give him a shot to catch right back on with a team right away?<\/p>\n

ps: useless programming note: this is the 600th post at NationalsArmRace! \u00a0Too bad its on such a down note.<\/p>\n

Update: 2 days after his release, Bernadina has signed with Philadelphia<\/a>\u00a0after receiving calls from “10 teams.” \u00a0Good for him; he should get playing time in Philly and maybe he can parlay that into another MLB gig elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I guess that’s the biggest question mark in the wake of yesterday’s deal, where the Nats released the longest serving member of their franchise\u00a0Roger Bernadina and traded for a decent bench player in\u00a0David DeJesus and at least $2.5M worth of contract obligations for \u00a0PTBNL. Update:\u00a0Ken Rosenthal is speculating that the Nats brass may have made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[137,255,312,129,167],"class_list":["post-7463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-davey-johnson","tag-david-dejesus","tag-ken-rosenthal","tag-mike-rizzo","tag-roger-bernadina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7463"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7474,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7463\/revisions\/7474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}