Nats Write a Letter to You, Forget to Apologize

The Nats sent out a letter to the fans today, post Acta firing. Here’s the letter in it’s entirety. I was going to addend it and fill it with snarky comments, but that’s probably unecessary. Basically they run through what went wrong, how they’re pissed too, but that there’s still hope for the future, so don’t worry. It’s an interesting, if not entirely necessary or possibly even useful, way to reach out to the fans. I just read it up and down a few times, and didn’t see any apology for the last 2 seasons. That’s probably the one thing that’s missing from here. Oh yeah, and a signature on the dotted line from Strasburg already.

To Fans of the Washington Nationals,

No one is more dissatisfied in the first half of the 2009 Washington Nationals season than we are. Like you, we had hoped that some of our younger players would have matured faster and that the addition of some of our new veterans would have significantly improved our record from a season ago. Our hope was that solid club leadership would emerge on and off the field and that some intangible combinations would begin to click resulting in many winning streaks.

Acta Out, Time to Move On

The Nats finally made good on that rumor that came out weeks ago, they fired manager Manny Acta. It’s not shocking, except for maybe the fact that everyone thought this was gonna happen weeks ago. Why the wait? Just to say rumors aren’t true? Who knows. Anyway, there are reasons, legitimate reasons, for both keeping him and firing him:

Keeping Him

• The bullpen he was given was destined to be awful.
• Starting pitching, other than Lannan, was either very young, very bad, or hurt or some combination of those things.
• This team wasn’t constructed to play much defense.
• They were still able to hit – as late as early June they were still 3rd in the NL in runs scored.
• They would continue to stink enough to snare the number 1 pick again.

Firing Him