Nationals Farm Authority

Espinosa must be a beast. He’s the only SS on the team.

Does this reflect a dearth of SS talent in the US or a need to put one National on the team not named Norris as much as Espinosa’s ability? He seems real, real raw to me and his season has been streaky. Still have hope for him to be ready in two to three years, but I hope he can keep this in perspective.

souldrummer :Does this reflect a dearth of SS talent in the US or a need to put one National on the team not named Norris as much as Espinosa’s ability? P>

I know, for a fact, they strongly considered Norris AND Espinosa…but yeah, you’re right…they needed a shortstop (and Danny is not a bad one) to represent the U.S. and a National. It could have been Derek.

Here is a disappointing (but not surprising) comment from kasten during a speech today:

But Kasten also addressed the Dominican issue, post-Smiley. He said, “we still have not developed the pipeline that we need to have. And this, I will tell you — on the player development level, this has been my biggest disappointment so far.” He then recited the basics of the Smiley story, Bowden’s suggested pursuit of this phenom, the Lerners’ approval of a seven-figure bonus, etc. Kasten then said, “We’ve certainly been set back by the missteps… Because this year we’re so heavily weighted in the draft, we know we won’t be able to make our next international push until 2010.”

Why not expand talks with Bucs about Morgan to encompass Ian Snell who knows Dana and Spin well???