Washington Post sports columnist Thomas Boswell was online Aug. 24, at 2 p.m. ET to take your questions and comments about the Washington Nationals, Major League Baseball and his recent columns.

The transcript follows.

Discussion Archives

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Washington, D.C.: Given Manny Acta's emphasis on fundamentals, etc., why is the team's bunting, particularly by pitchers, and ability to move runners over so pathetic?

Tom Boswell: The Nats are one of the (very) few teams that practice spring training fundamentals DURING the season (before batting practice). I believe they do it one day a week. Certainly once every home stand. It warms my heart to see them covering first base on a 90-degree day, especially when a key in last night's 7-6 win was John Lannan covering first base so quickly that he was able to stretch like a first baseman to complete a 3-6-1 double play to end an inning.

So, the reason they can't bunt is that some of them are lousy bunters. It's the easiest skill in baseball to acquire. But it is still a skill and not everybody picks it up, even veterans. However, when you watch Hill you realize that a fine natural athlete has no problem.

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Washington, D.C.: Bos, did I miss it, or did you not write a column on 756? I was hoping to get your reaction to the whole mess after it happened...

Tom Boswell: I didn't write. I was on vacation. That was my "reaction."

However, I was also on vacation when Ripken and Gwynn went into the Hall and I went to Cooperstown ands wrote that. I guess that's also a "reaction."

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Hartford, Conn.: Not really a question. Melky Cabrera, Robinson Cano, Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, Shelley Duncan. All homegrown Yankees. All 27 or younger. All responsible for bringing the Bombers back from the dead. Just something to remind Yankee haters everywhere when they start their tired complaints.

Tom Boswell: They're back from the dead, but they're still two games behind Seattle -- Seattle! -- for the wild card.

The Yankee rotation is getting entirely too respectable -- Pettitte, Clemens, Wang, Mussina and Hughes. Though Mussina's ERA is now over 5.00 and, in an October start, he could win with poise or do very poorly simply because his stuff is far from what it once was.

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National Cathedral: So did it floor you last week, when Mr. Anglos opened up the cash purse for that catcher...Haven't seen that in a while, was it a blue moon?

Tom Boswell: The decision was desperately needed, especially after so many other teams opened their wallets, too, in the final hours before the new Aug. 15th signing deadline. Besides, if the Nats had signed all 20 of their picks -- including the high-dollar theft of McGeary in the sixth round -- it would have been a big blow to their remaining prestige.

Matt Wieters is very impressive. Don't know how many saw his in-game interview with Palmer-Hunter this week. As mature as you expect after 185 games at Georgia Tech (.359, 35 homers, 198 RBI). He should be a core part of the future.

However, overall, the Nationals had the opportunity for a better draft than almost anybody -- with five picks in the first 75 players taken, plus McGeary, who was thought to be unsignable. And they capitalized on it.

Talking with Kasten last week he was like a kid -- so excited, but also surprised that the team is as far along as he could possibly have hoped, and probably further. However, the Nats are aware that, so far, they probably don't have what one exec called "the player with the core personality on the team." He was referring to the core personality -- like a Frank Robinson on the old Orioles -- who pulls together all the talents like Brooks, Palmer, etc., and sets the tone of the locker room.

Pretty remarkable that the Nats are talking about such "problems" -- finding the great player who takes you over the top and makes you a champion WHEN THEY JUST GOT OUT OF LAST PLACE THIS WEEK. Are they overly enthusiastic, unrealistic? Hard to say. There are a lot of very experienced people in the Washington organization -- including Bob Boone, Bowden, etc. -- and they all see the same thing. Is it the same cheerful delusion? Or a bright future? We'll see. I'd say things are going remarkably well.

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Atlanta: Braves just lost 3 of 4 to the Reds. Are the Braves done? I've watched this team for the last 25 years and think Bobby Cox is the reason for only 1 WS win. The teams and pitching staff they've had over the years should have brought more than 1 championship. The Brave's under Cox get tight and choke w/o fail. The last year they lost to the Yanks they were down by 2 runs in the top of the seventh of the deciding game and the camera panned the Braves bench and that team looked utterly defeated. Am I too hard on Cox?

Tom Boswell: I have agreed in print about Cox in the past. There are wonderful regular-season managers -- including Earl Weaver, Tony LaRussa -- who tighten up in the postseason and pass their tension along to their teams. You can't prove it, but I believe it absolutely because I have been so close to it so often. Cox just looks physically ill as soon as the "spooky music" starts playing in October. You can feel him expecting a bad break. Many would consider this very unfair. Also, the Braves may have spent too much money in '88, '89, 90, trying to be respectable and didn't QUITE have the bucks to finish building some of the early '90's team that might have gone all the way. There was always a missing link -- like having an aging Jeff Reardon in the bullpen.

Still, anybody who now wants to say 10 good things about Cox's HOF career will certainly also be correct.

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Section 108: Hello Tom and welcome back: Back on April 2, you had a great column about the lack of a big bopper in the lineup for the O's and the Nats. Do you think the Nats have finally found one in Willy Mo?

Tom Boswell: No. Pena is an excellent pick up to bat 6th or 7th. He gives some protection to the hitters ahead of him. And he has a fine reputation as a person. But he's not David Ortiz -- who wasn't fully appreciated by Minnesota before the Red Sox got him. At least there's no evidence of it yet. He's a mistake hitter who can be eaten up by quality pitchers in game situations, as Qualls (I believe) dispatched him dismissively two nights ago late in the game. He's got a huge hole-in-his-swing under his hands on hard stuff tailing down-and-in. He'll chase (very) high fastballs. He can't hit a slider or curve low-and-away.

But he still might hit 25 homers next season and be a worthwhile addition. Besides, he's one of those experiments you can try when you don't expect to win big for a couple of years. What if he DID improve! In basketball, you can't teach height. In boxing, you can't really teach the mystery of the really big knockout punch. And you can't teach the kind of power Pena has.

Maybe he'll turn out to be the poor man's Frank Howard! For Emiliano Fruto, that would be a heist.

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Crofton, Md.: Just wondering if you have any further comments on the 30-3 debacle the other night. You mentioned it in passing in your column about Trembley, but I have a feeling you may have more you want to say about it.

Tom Boswell: Watched every pitch. One of the most amazing (and memorable) games I've ever seen in the regular season. MUCH better than seeing the zillionth no-hitter. Most runs scored in 110 years! I was back and forth on the phone with my editor Tracee, saying, "Did you see, it's now 21-3." "No, it's 24-3. Turn the TV on in the office. You won't believe it. They're saving the bullpen for the second game. They're not knocking anybody down or drilling anybody." Etc.

In retrospect -- and, boy, is this a cheap hindsight second guess -- maybe Trembley should have used one of his better relievers (yeah, yeah, I know, which one would that be) to stop the bleeding on the grounds that a 30-3 defeat may do more long-term damage than losing both games of a doubleheader.

The last Ranger out of the ninth inning was almost another two-run homer -- caught in front of the LF fence. All 30 runs were earned! Go to MLB and call up the spray chart of the game -- the entire field is covered with marks for the 29 hits. The O's SS and 2nd both barely missed leaping catches of line drives. Every ball found a hole. One of Saltalamacchia's homers was on a low slider that must have been 5 inches off the ground. It barely looked like he'd hit it into the OF and it went into the LF bullpen.

I'm keeping two tapes so far from this season. Bonds 756 homer, so that I can say that I kept it the rest of my life but never bothered to watch it again, and 30-3.

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Falls Church, Va.: Bos, what are the chances of Manny winning NL Manager of the year? How many more wins do you think he would need? Thanks!

Tom Boswell: He hasn't gotten enough attention early enough in the season. Everybody around the country thinks, "Wait. They still might fall apart." They're not going to fall apart.

Right now, the Nats are ahead of nine teams and barely behind Baltimore. But it's close. They still might only finish ahead of Tampa Bay. If they win 74-75 games and finish ahead of 10 teams, including the Orioles, Acta IS the Manager of the Year and I don't care who technically is handed the award.

The "magic number" is 72 -- more wins than last year's team. They're on pace for 73. The people who enjoy this team are, like me, probably a little baseball-wacko. That's okay. I don't think too many people realize how remarkable it is that Trembley's O's have played over .500 for two months with all the injuries they have had.

Anybody who doesn't think the Orioles have any possibility of a future should repeat this words: Bedard, Guthrie, Loewen and Cabrera. (Okay, whisper "Cabrera.") Good guy, but what a minimization of obvious talent. At 6-9, he just can't repeat his delivery and, just as some pitchers are "sneaky fast," Cabrera is "sneaky slow!" He's so huge with such a big delivery that he speeds up any hitters bat, just as a smaller pitcher with a smooth delivery who throws in the low 90s (Bedard) can blow it past people. Also, Cabrera's fastball is straight as a string. He can't seem to get any movement on it, just as Shawn Hill and Saul Rivera couldn't throw a ball straight if they tried. It's certainly fitting that Cabrera was the starter and loser in 30-3.

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D.C.: Is the reason that no one has scored 30 runs in a game in over 100 years because in previous circumstances the manager of the winning team has had enough class to stop the carnage before it got that far...?....

Tom Boswell: The Rangers sometimes stopped at third base when they could have scored. Also, they took out their No. 3 hitter for defense, but it didn't help -- the guy who replaced him in the eighth inning ended up with four RBI. And Brad Wilkerson, usually a starter, didn't play. Finally, "it all happened so fast" -- 10 runs in the eighth and six in the ninth.

Still, not very classy, no matter how it happened.

Last thought, could the O's have brought in an outfielder (or anybody) to pitch when it got to 21-3. Once one team waves the red flag by using a non-pitcher you seldom see the score go much higher.

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Edge of my seat...:...will Teddy win the race on his Bobblehead night?

Tom Boswell: Are you kidding? And ruin the whole gig?

Teddy will never win until the Nats move into the new ballpark -- no, not the new park in '08, the one that will be suspended in midair over the city in 2058.

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Catonsville, Md.: Do you think this is just a career year for Bedard, or do the orioles have a legit No. 1 starter for the next 3-4 years?

Tom Boswell: Bedard is one of the best pitchers in the game. And he's gotten better. Had a 6.00+ ERA in April. However, he is strikeout crazy. Can't blame him much. But he throws a LOT of curveballs and that will shorten anybody's prime. Over the next 2-3 years, I hope he uses his changeup more and cuts his fastball for easy ground balls. Lots of guys would be delighted just to put the ball in play against him. "Pitching to contact" isn't as easy as it sounds. But Palmer and Mike Flanagan, who had stuff as good as Bedard, only went for strikeouts when the game situation dictated.

Still, I plan to enjoy the quest for 275 K's.

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Section 34: Do you have any memories of Wild Bill Hagy you'd like to share with us?

Tom Boswell: What was unique was the whole scene. All of us who covered those teams used to sit up in Section 34 from time to time, just for the feel of it. That crowd could change a game as well as any you ever saw. It really was a "People's Park." And a cab driver should have been the one to lead the cheers.

The two absolute ends of the spectrum: Old Memorial Stadium vs. The New Nationals Park with its $400 seats. Or is it $1,000 right behind home plate? I forget.

No, I didn't really "miss" Memorial Stadium (for long) and I suspect I'll get over RFK pretty fast. Even though it was the greatest thing that ever happened to a 12-year-old when it opened in my neighborhood and I could ride my bike to Senators games. Sappy, but hard to forget.

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Waiting for Godot:"...the one that will be suspended in midair over the city in 2058. "

will that also be the time when the Nats get ownership of their TV broadcasts?

Tom Boswell: Oh, no. The Nats will be up to 33 per cent by 2048, at least.

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30 Run Statistical Comparison to the NBA and NFL:

Boz,

A good friend of mine is a statistics guy and I don't just mean baseball stats. Here's what he came up with yesterday to put into perspective what a 30 run game would equate to an NFL or NBA game.

To put the 30 runs in a statistical perspective, we should look at how many standard deviations away from the mean is the 30 runs. I went to MLB.com, nfl.com and nba.com to get some recent stats for average points per game. I used the mlb stats for up to this point of the season and last season's football and bball.

Ave runs/pts St Deviation

MLB 4.9 0.5

NBA (06) 98.7 4.0

NFL (06) 20.6 4.2

So, the Rangers 30 runs scored yesterday is 50.2 standard deviations above the 4.9 mean runs scored by a team. It also turns out that Texas' average runs per game is the same as the league average to date of 4.9. Using this figure (50.2), this would be statistically equivalent to an NBA team scoring 299.5 pts and an NFL team scoring 231 pts.

Tom Boswell: Thanks. (And how is your "quant fund" doing in the sub-prime meltdown.)

I appreciate the effort. But, regardless of the math, 30 runs in a baseball game is probably more equivalent to 100 points in an NFL game. Certainly not 231 points. As recently as 1955 two MLB teams came with a couple of runs of 30. So, 30 isn't all that remote IN REALITY as opposed to "in theory." In theory, all those collateralized debt obligations weren't supposed to default.

The 30-3 game was what some call a "Black Swan" event. It's a statistical outlier that isn't supposed to happen. Until it does. (For a long time, all observed swans on earth were white. Then, I think near Australia, they found black swans. Suddenly, they weren't "impossible" or "nearly impossible" any more.

However, IMO, don't waste the money on Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book "The Black Swan." It reaches hysterical conclusions. Sorry for the digression.

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Some historical perspective: Bos: It really intrigues me to see the similarities between the Nats and their arrival in DC and the Orioles and their arrival in Baltimore back in the 50's. Both teams were stripped of talent when they arrived and focused on building up the farm system. In the meantime, the Orioles got by with vets and journeymen (Hoyt Wilhelm, Gene Woodling, Bob Nieman, later Robin Roberts). The Nats are heading down that path now (D. Young, Belliard, Redding). One thing to keep in mind: you can get to .500 (or close to it) with these kind of guys but you want to keep it real and be ready to dump them when the real talent shows up. In '66, the O's had Davey Johnson, Andy Etchebarren, Jim Palmer, Curt Blefary and Paul Blair as key players on their roster, all in their first or second year in the bigs. And they won the World Series. We'll know when the Nats are ready for that kind of move when they have their own group of young studs taking over spots on the field.

Tom Boswell: Excellent. Thanks. Lots of good questions today.

The Nats want to give a chance to everybody. You never know who may develop a whole level better than you think. For example, Matt Chico and John Lannan are both 22. They may get better. But how much better? Neither throws 90. Will one of them learn a great changeup or simply grow into a great "feel" for pitching like lots of soft-tossing LHers in the past.

But the hard throwing LH kids like Detwiler, Smoker and McGeary are already on the way up. They "project." But, until they arrive, the Lannans and Chicos have a chance to prove that they can be better than their "stuff."

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Baltimore: Bos, did you notice they BLEW the second game of the double-header? They could easily have won, which would have meant a split DH and their winning the series. And then to lose to Boof Bonser last night, he of the great name but winless in his last 13 starts? I'm one of the crazies who attends every game (I live within walking distance of OPACY) and fully expect them to beat Santana tonight. Okay, okay, dream on, but is that any more improbable than losing 30-3?

Tom Boswell: Yes, I'm hopeless. I watched the whole second game. Thought they'd pulled it out at 7-6. But then the bullpen door swung open. They ought to play some sort of "Tales From The Crypt" music when an Oriole reliever enters.

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Ann Arbor, Mich.: The Tigers. Sigh. Please give me a reason to hope?

Tom Boswell: Wait 'Til Last Year.

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Anonymous: Tom,why you hate the Yanks so much?

Tom Boswell: You may have seen "Damn Yankees." I grew up living it.

Actually, there are few things that are as much fun as PRETENDING to hate the Yankees because Yankee fans take themselves so seriously they don't know you're laughing.

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D.C.: The Red Sox score about zero runs a game when Dice-K pitches. Same thing happened with Clemens and the Astros last year. Any theories on this phenomenon?

Tom Boswell: Dice-K's 3.76 ERA falls between Pettitte and Blanton in the A.L. (a very nice but not spectacular 16th) and his 13-10 record is typical of his ERA ranking. He's done well, but his record is about what it should b e. He got lots of runs early in the year.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Welcome back!

How much money is the Lerner family putting toward construction at the new stadium? I have heard as much as $40 million to as little as $4 or $5 million.

Is there any chance the Nats can buy their way out of the MASN deal with Angelos? It's great having them on TV everyday, but the second class status on MASN is tough to take as a Nats fan.

Tom Boswell: It may turn out to be close to $50 million.

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Glen Burnie, Md.: One of the Baltimore Sun's columnists has opined that Wednesday's 30-3 blowout of the O's by the Rangers will turn out to be the signature game for them of this decade. While a bit miffed at first, I started thinking and hey, the decade is nearing its end, so he may well be right. Is there any hope at all that this team will ever get it right while Angelos is the owner? I thought hiring MacPhail and extending Trembley's contract were steps in the right direction, but I've been wrong about this so many times I'm ready to take up body surfing or crochet to get my mind off the team.

Tom Boswell: If MacPhail can't do it, nobody can.

But, when you go around the country, where people view the O's with a thousand miles of dispassion, it is simply assumed that this is a cursed franchise where Nothing Can Really Go Right until ownership changes.

(Will the Raiders ever get back to the Super Bowl w Al Davis?)

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Tom Boswell: See you in two weeks. The races are just heating up!

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