Nats Face Post-Soriano Era
Starting Pitching Will Be Focus at Winter Meetings

By Barry Svrluga
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Even with Alfonso Soriano atop their lineup, the Washington Nationals ranked in the bottom half of the National League in every major offensive category -- runs scored, homers, slugging percentage, batting average and on-base plus slugging percentage. Now, with Soriano headed to the Chicago Cubs in a massive eight-year, $136 million deal baseball executives were still grappling with yesterday, club officials can officially digest a state they had come to terms with long ago -- their lineup without Soriano.

"Having 'Fonsie,' it would be nice," incoming manager Manny Acta said yesterday. "Everyone knows that. But to me, it doesn't really make sense right now, considering where we are. We're putting a lot of hard work into patching that rotation together, and there are going to be a lot of opportunities for young guys. It's a good time to be a National if you want to get a chance to play."

The Nationals were the worst offensive team in baseball in 2005, the season before they acquired Soriano in a trade with Texas. But they were competitive that season -- seizing first place in the NL East at the all-star break -- because a pitching staff largely assembled in the previous offseason exceeded expectations.

That staff -- through injury (John Patterson), losses to free agency (Hector Carrasco and Esteban Loaiza) and, eventually, trade (Livan Hernandez) -- is no longer intact. Asked about the club's offseason priorities yesterday, General Manager Jim Bowden refused to address specifics and repeated his oft-cited themes of "an emphasis on pitching and defense."

Starting pitching, then, figures to be the team's chief target when baseball's winter meetings commence Dec. 4. Patterson is the team's only semi-proven starter, and he's coming off elbow surgery, as is lefty Mike O'Connor. The Nationals are most likely to pursue veteran starters unwanted by many other teams and sign them to one- or two-year deals, as they did with Loaiza and Ramon Ortiz in 2005 and '06, respectively.

Whatever the rotation looks like, the lineup will be fundamentally different because of the loss -- however expected it might have been -- of Soriano, who led the team in homers (46), runs scored (119) and slugging percentage (.560).

"He's a great player," first baseman Nick Johnson, one of Soriano's best friends on the team, said late Sunday night. "He can do so much, and we're definitely going to miss him. But it's part of it, the business side."

The Nationals thus must determine who will play left and center field and who will lead off. Asked if the club could fill the spots from within or look to acquire players through a trade or free agency, Bowden declined comment.

Acta said there appear to be four candidates for the two outfield spots -- Ryan Church, Nook Logan, Alex Escobar and Kory Casto, the organization's minor league player of the year the past two seasons. Casto toggled between the infield and the outfield and hit .272 with 20 homers and 80 RBI in 140 games for Class AA Harrisburg last year.

Church, who split his time between Class AAA New Orleans and the Nationals last year, has shown flashes of potential, but has never had more than 268 at-bats in a major league season. He also upset some in the organization by declining to play in winter ball in Mexico, where Bowden felt he could work on hitting breaking pitches, perceived as his weakness in the majors.

Bowden declined yesterday to comment on why Church didn't end up playing in Mexico and wouldn't address whether the decision would affect his standing in the organization. Church didn't return a phone call.

Acta said that the most likely candidate to lead off becomes shortstop Felipe Lopez.

The switch-hitting Logan, who spent all of last season in the Detroit Tigers' minor league system before being acquired in a trade with the Nationals, is speedy and adept at reaching base via the bunt, but he needs to become more consistent hitting left-handed. Lopez posted a career-high .358 on-base percentage last season and has hit first 137 times in his career.