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Bryce Harper Embarks on Old College Try

By Jeff Fletcher 2/01/2010 8:30 PM ET

Bryce Harper
HENDERSON, Nev. -- As an athletic director/baseball coach at a junior college, Tim Chambers had his hands full even before "the kid" showed up on his doorstep.

Now that Chambers' job includes handling Bryce Harper, the coach at the College of Southern Nevada has gotten even more frazzled, dealing with scouts and the media, wondering about every strange face he sees around the ballpark.

"It's already been mayhem, but it's going to get worse," Chambers told FanHouse. "Everybody in America wants to see him."
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Prospects Next in Line for Top 100

By Frankie Piliere 1/27/2010 4:30 PM ET

Many players who have the talent to be considered Top 100 prospects just don't quite have the seasoning or experience to crack the list. These players certainly have the talent to make such a list in the near future, however.

So, who might we see on the Top 100 list in 2011, or even 2012? Many of those players are yet to be drafted or signed, but some are waiting right now in the low levels of the minor leagues. We'll take a look at a handful of young stars who could find themselves high up on future Top 100 lists.
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Riggleman Hoping Pudge Can Have Similar Impact as Griffey

By John Hickey 1/07/2010 2:45 PM ET

Jim RigglemanFrom Washington State to Washington, D.C., things haven't changed much for Jim Riggleman.

At least not yet.

In Seattle in 2008, Riggleman inherited a Mariner team mid-season that was en route to 100 losses. In Washington in 2009, Riggleman also went from the coaching staff to the manager's office of a team that would lose in triple figures.

A year after Riggleman left the Mariners, they posted a winning record in part due to the Griffey Factor -- Ken Griffey Jr. came in and turned a losing clubhouse into a great place to be, and that translated into wins on the field even though Griffey didn't have the kind of offensive production he would have liked.
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Jason Marquis to Sign With Nationals

By Matt Snyder 12/21/2009 3:30 PM ET

Jason MarquisAccording to multiple reports from the D.C.-area, free agent starting pitcher Jason Marquis is on the verge of signing a two-year contract with the Nationals. The 31-year-old Marquis is coming off arguably the best season of his career. He made the All-Star team for the first time, set a career high in innings pitched and posted a 4.04 ERA. He also matched his career high with 15 wins.

For Washington, signing Marquis gives them an established veteran to throw atop their rotation while the promising youngsters look to grow into bona fide major leaguers. With Stephen Strasburg, John Lannan and Jordan Zimmermann (who will, unfortunately, miss most or all of 2010 after having Tommy John surgery), the Nationals have a potentially dominant threesome. Marquis has, in the past week, told reporters he'd love the chance to work with a group of young hurlers. It appears he wasn't lying, should the reports of his contract signing Monday prove to be true.
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Winter Meetings Wrap: NL East

By Ed Price 12/10/2009 2:00 PM ET

Dan UgglaINDIANAPOLIS -- This was one of the busiest divisions in baseball before the Winter Meetings, with the additions of Placido Polanco, Billy Wagner and Takashi Saito.

Yet there's still plenty to do. The Mets came to Indianapolis to add, the Marlins to subtract and the Braves to do both -- and none of the three made a great deal of headway.

Atlanta got sidetracked when reliever Rafael Soriano accepted its arbitration offer. The Mets are flirting with the major free agents, but no one knows if it's just a tease to New York fans. And the Marlins shed arbitration-eligible reliever Matt Lindstrom but not the bigger name, second baseman Dan Uggla.

And who added a potential Hall of Famer? The Nationals, with catcher Ivan Rodriguez.
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Nationals, Ivan Rodriguez Agree to Two-Year Deal

By Ed Price 12/08/2009 12:47 AM ET

INDIANAPOLIS -- The worst team in baseball has added a potential Hall of Famer, as the Nationals have agreed in principle to sign catcher Ivan Rodriguez to a two-year deal worth $2.5-3 million per season, according to a major-league source.

With Jesus Flores coming off shoulder surgery, Washington was seeking a veteran catcher to handle every-day duties for the first month or two of the season, until Flores is fully recovered, and then mentor Flores. And while it took a two-year deal to get Rodriguez to the woeful Nats, the team expects prospect Derek Norris to be ready in 2012.

Rodriguez, 38, last year passed Carlton Fisk for the career record in games caught. He has won 13 Gold Gloves, been to 14 All-Star Games and is a career .299 hitter. Rodriguez, the 1999 AL MVP, is also the all-time leader in games started at catcher and total chances and putouts at the position and is tied with Gary Carter for sixth all-time in home runs as a catcher (298).

Washington catchers last year hit .250 with a .310 on-base percentage and 121 strikeouts.

Odds and Ends From Monday in Indy

By Matt Snyder 12/07/2009 10:30 PM ET

INDIANAPOLIS -- Managers of nine different major league teams each had approximately 30-minutes in interview sessions with the media during baseball's Winter Meetings Monday in the Indianapolis, in addition to the announcement of two new inductees to baseball's Hall of Fame. Here's a sampling of some of the more interesting tidbits from the first full day of the annual meetings.

• Bobby Cox emphatically stated that Billy Wagner is the Braves closer, "no matter what." When asked about the possibility of having both Mike Gonzalez and Rafael Soriano back -- both are closer types and have been offered arbitration -- Cox said we'll know soon enough (the deadline for players to accept arbitration is midnight tonight), but if they both come back, "we'll have the best bullpen ever."

UPDATE: Soriano accepted and will be back, but Gonzalez declined. Still, with Wagner, Soriano and Takashi Saito, the Braves have a pretty stellar back-end.
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Stephen Strasburg's Knee Injury Will Not Require Surgery

By Pat Lackey 11/20/2009 11:14 PM ET

Stephen StrasburgThe Nationals learned Friday that the knee injury suffered by Stephen Strasburg will not require surgery to repair. It's instead been diagnosed as a dislocated knee cap. As painful as that sounds, there's no ligament damage and the Nats' phenom will only require rest and some rehab to get the knee back up to full strength, though he'll still miss Saturday's Arizona Fall League championship game.

Considering those that witnessed the injury firsthand saw Strasburg crumple while playing long toss on Thursday and reported hearing a popping sound (often a telltale sign of ligament damage), this is obviously great news for the Nats. I can't even fathom following up a 103-loss season with a serious knee injury to the highest-paid draft pick in baseball history.
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Footprints in the Snow: Nationals

By Andrew Johnson 11/19/2009 9:00 AM ET

Stephen Strasburg and Ryan ZimmermanFootprints in the Snow is FanHouse's look at the paths to be forged by MLB teams this winter as they look ahead to 2010.

The Nationals bottomed out in 2009. Their season began with the ouster of general manager Jim Bowden in the beginning of March after he was implicated in a bonus-skimming scandal in the Dominican Republic that drew the attention of the FBI. And it ended with 103 losses, giving them 205 losses in the last two seasons.

In between, they fired manager Manny Acta and watched attendance fall by more than 6,000 fans a night in the second year of Nationals Park.

So no, it's not all sunshine and roses on the banks of the Anacostia River, but, then, it's not all doom and gloom either. After all, the Nats managed to lock up phenom Stephen Strasburg in August, and with a stable front office and a permanent manager now in place, they can get to the task of building around him.
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MLB's Economic Rebound Could Be Slow

By Jeff Fletcher 11/12/2009 8:00 AM ET

Matt Holliday / John Lackey / Jason Bay
CHICAGO -- On a day this week when the stock market had one of the encouraging spikes investors have enjoyed more frequently over the past few months, Kenny Williams let out a sarcastic cheer for what it meant to baseball.

"Let's go, let's party," he said. "We've got cash again."

Then, the White Sox general manager quickly returned to reality, at least the version of reality that he and his colleagues have been describing this week at the GM Meetings.

"I don't think it works that way," he said. "We might need to see six months of recovery before we buy into that. We need an advertiser or a sponsor or two to come back to us."
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