The Washington Nationals’ 2010 season perhaps can best be illustrated by two international pitchers who represent the yin and yang — or in this case “Wang” — of another disappointing season.
Livan Hernandez wasn’t even on the Nationals’ roster when the season opened. The veteran hurler had been signed to a minor league contract just as spring training opened and was not added to the major league team until more than a week into the season.
He was considered filler, not essential until the team had need for a fifth starter, and it was thought that — because so-called savior Stephen Strasburg would arrive in Washington with a bunch of other young, promising Nats hurlers — Hernandez would not be on the roster by the end of the year.
All Hernandez has done is save the Nationals’ season, such as it is. A lot of things had to have gone wrong if Hernandez — almost a spare part at the start of the season — is your savior.
Turns out he was far more valuable than a spare part. Even though the starting pitching began falling apart early in the season — $15 million pitcher Jason Marquis was sidelined with elbow problems, John Lannan was stinking up the joint and Strasburg remained in the minors — the Nationals had a winning record, going 13-10 in the month of April. Hernandez, 35, was a big part of that, going 3-1 with a 0.87 ERA in four starts.
On Tuesday night, he turned in one of the most entertaining performances of the season by a Nationals pitcher — shutting out the Braves at home in Atlanta, where they have the best home record in baseball, for eight innings in a 6-0 win and hitting a double and home run to help his cause. He is now 10-11 with a 3.66 ERA for a team that is more than 20 games under .500. It has been a wise international investment.
Not so with Chien-Ming Wang, who it turns out was paid $2 million this season and will never throw a pitch for the Nationals. And though he was coming off shoulder surgery, Wang, the former Yankees hurler, was indeed in the team’s plans — so much so that there were marketing deals with Taiwanese companies tied to Wang’s appearance — and far from an afterthought. As he worked out from parts unknown, Wang’s debut was pushed back from May to June to July to never.
And general manager Mike Rizzo may want him back anyway.
“We don’t know what the plan is,” Rizzo told MLB.com. “We are in communication with his agent. We are going to see if we [can] work something out. We like him. We want him. We want to keep him with the club.”
The Nationals have paid a lot of money to pitchers who didn’t pitch at different points throughout this season and one who didn’t pitch at all. Fortunately for them, they put some dinero in a Cuban stock that has turned out to be money in the bank.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN 980 and espn980.com.
