FanHouse Paul Lo Duca

Just hours after the trade deadline, the Nationals embraced (yet another) youth movement with open arms by releasing 36-year-old Paul Lo Duca and 28-year-old Felipe Lopez.

You'd expect for both players to latch on with another team sometime soon, but the timing of their departure suggests the Nationals tried and failed to recoup any kind of value on the trade market. Now, any interested teams can take a flyer on them without being on the hook for the remainder of their $5 million and $4.9 million salaries, respecitively.

Lo Duca has been especially disappointing this year, hitting just .230 (.582 OPS) without a single home run in 139 at-bats. Sure, injuries have been a factor, but he didn't sound bitter at all about the move. From the Washington Post:

Asked if he was surprised about the moves, Lo Duca said, "I think they're making the right move. Other guys in here need to play and I'm taking up a spot."

As bad as Lo Duca was, Lopez hasn't been much better -- he's hitting .234 (.619 OPS) with two home runs in 325 at-bats. 23-year-old Emilio Bonifacio, acquired from the D'Backs in the Jon Rauch trade, will take over as the everyday second basemen. Bonifacio hasn't done much in two brief cups of coffee with the D'Backs the last two seasons, but he's .314 between Triple-A Tucson and Columbus this year and should be an immediate upgrade. Even though the Nationals didn't make a big move yesterday, they should have a better lineup today than they did yesterday.

With the trade deadline right around the corner, our MLB editor brings you the top five rumors every day until July 31.

- The Braves continue to indicate that they won't move Mark Teixeira in hopes of contending for the NL East title, but if the team struggles over the next week, that could all change. Atlanta is already a bit of a longshot to make the playoffs, but two injuries to key players should push them over the cliff and turn them into sellers. Chipper Jones hurt his hamstring again last night in Florida and staff ace Tim Hudson left his start early with ominous-sounding elbow tightness.


If ever there was an omen that it might be time to let go of this season, wouldn't injuries to the team's best pitcher and hitter on the same night be it? Teixeira is certain to leave this winter and if Atlanta holds on to him all it will get is a pair of early draft picks. They stand to get much better talent in a deadline deal, even considering Teixeira's rental status.

- I got a chance to see A.J. Burnett's rain-shortened start last night in Baltimore. There were plenty of scouts in attendance, though some of them were probably there in hopes of seeing Orioles closer George Sherrill. Burnett has good raw stuff -- a fastball he gets to 95 mph with ease and a tough curveball in the low-80s. Still, Orioles hitters made good contact on him. He's a very good, but fragile No. 2 starter, who could help a number of contenders, but his uncertain contract status continues to make potential suitors cautious. Don't put too much stock into the Roy Halladay rumors, Burnett is still the most likely to get moved of any of Toronto's pitchers.

Paul Lo Duca is a fiery man. This you know. That fire has not always been endearing. More often than not, it's been incredibly annoying, and Lo Duca's proponents -- the kind that believe you need to have "passion" and "swagger" to succeed at baseball -- don't help. Also, dude did steroids. Not cool.

Still, this prolonged outburst is impressive. After the Nationals' Thursday night game, Lo Duca soliloquized the Nationals' situation:

I hope [people listened to my message]. I'm not saying I've got a lot of wisdom, but you know, I've been through a lot of hard times in this game. The last three years of my career have been hell, off and on the field, off the field more than on. But I've straightened my life out, I'm happy, I'm gonna get married again. I went through a bad divorce. I went through all of it. You name it -- and there's not one person in this clubhouse who can say, 'Give me a sob story.' I've been there. So, that's part of life. We've all got skeletons in the closet. But when you come to the ballpark, get here early, get your crap done and get ready to play.

Of course, that's just a tiny piece. There are, like, 900 more words, should you care to read them all. More importantly, I really, really want to make fun of Lo Duca for being such a clown, but it's hard. He clearly cares very much about what he's talking about. That's sort of admirable.

Paul Lo Duca is a gritty player. He's a gutty player. He's the kind of player who you trade and lose your job shortly thereafter, even if you get an All-Star starter in return. Those kinds of intangibles plus steroids used to equal a decent major league player. Minus the juice, however, Lo Duca's game is somewhere south of mediocre which is why the Nationals have to be privately dreading his return from injury.

Lo Duca is set to come off the disabled list this week and he returns to a team that has absolutely no need for him. Jesus Flores, 23 and possessing a future, has the best on-base and slugging percentages on the team. Lo Duca was only around to give him a year to ripen but that's no longer necessary. Lo Duca, who has never really been charmed by Spanish-speaking teammates, has just the right kind of personality to make this a problem in the clubhouse.

Perhaps to avoid that problem, the Nats are coming up with alternate usages for their third catcher. The Washington Post reports that he'll play some left field and first base. Yes, the Nats are actually going to put a guy who had an OPS+ of 80 last season at a corner position. That would be worthy of mockery if it weren't for the fact that the guys they have been playing haven't even mustered that kind of production.

(H/T BBTF)

Paul Lo Duca has been on the DL most of the season with a broken wrist, and isn't going to be back until close to the all-star break. That's too bad, because it means we're not going to hear nearly as many great quotes out of Lo Duca as we normally would. Thank goodness that the Nationals let Lo Duca travel on the road trip to New York (the Nats don't usually let injured players travel, but gave Lo Duca a pass because he lives in NY), or else we probably wouldn't have heard Paul's take on "Cheer-gate" and Nelson Figueroa, courtesy of his appearance on WFAN (through Adam Rubin's Mets blog at the Daily News):

"I don't know. I'm not a big fan of it to be honest with you. I'll be honest with you. You know, we're struggling. Guys are just trying to have a little fun. I think they saw Figueroa getting a little upset, so they amped it up a couple of notches. I do think it's a little bush league. At first it started off as a little fun, until he got mad. I don't agree with it. But, also, Nelson Figueroa has nine wins in the big leagues and he needs to keep his mouth shut."

So I'm confused, it was all right until Figueroa got mad ... but Figueroa shouldn't actually tell anybody he's mad? I see. Sounds like Lo Duca didn't want to take sides and just hate each side of the argument equally.

Speaking of hate, some who formally loved Lo Duca now may hate him because of his appearance in The Mitchell Report, which was more than a mere cameo. Until now, all we've heard from Lo Duca was the prepared apology. While on WFAN, he went into it in a little more detail.

The Washington Nationals have apparently decided to be good neighbors to the rest of the District in their new ballyard. Tongues have been wagging about how the team would handle President Bush's first pitch on Sunday. Their catcher, Paul Lo Duca, was one of the stars of the Mitchell Report and Bush spent a large chunk of his 2004 State of the Union decrying steroids in sports. The sight of Lo Duca grinning and trotting to shake the President's hand after the toss is probably one Bush's team would like to avoid.

The Nats are willing to play ball. Rather than risk embarassing the President, manager Manny Acta will catch the pitch instead and Bush can serve out the rest of his Presidency with his dignity and reputation intact. Er, well, he'll get to serve it out without having a picture of him shaking hands with Paul Lo Duca anyway.

As embarassing as such a snapshot could be, Bush isn't out of the woods just yet. An enterprising photographer could find a way to snap the President listening to Lastings Milledge spin rhymes on his turntables. Or what if Elijah Dukes decides to show Dubya how one sends text messages on a cellphone, dawg? Talk about awkward.

President George W. Bush hates steroids -- he said so himself in the 2004 State of the Union address, which earned him a honorable mention in the Mitchell Report. Pres. Bush is also slated to throw out the ceremonial first pitch for the Washington Nationals, which may result in some awkward pre-game chatter if paired up with Nats starting catcher and Mitchell Report All-Star Paul Lo Duca. From Ken Harmen of the Austin American-Statesman (via Can't Stop the Bleeding):

Lo Duca's name comes up 37 times in the Mitchell Report, which said a former Mets clubhouse assistant who has acknowledged providing substance-enhancing drugs to players "estimated that he engaged in six or more transactions with Lo Duca."

So here's the potential opening-night visual: The president who is concerned about substance abuse in baseball winds up and throws the ceremonial pitch to a catcher linked to substance abuse. It's all smiles and happiness as president and catcher pose for the post-pitch photo.

How can the Nats discreetly avoid this pitfall? Actually, it shouldn't be too hard: as Harmen points out, in three of Bush's five previous ceremonial first pitches, he's thrown to someone other than the starting catcher, so it wouldn't be unusual at all for, say, Manny Acta or (cross your fingers) Dmitri Young to catch the first pitch, which might be nearly as good in terms of unintentional comedy. (And if a Bush-Young battery doesn't happen in real life, there's always hope the Dugout guys can make it happen in our heads...)

We knew that Paul Lo Duca was a tad hurt that his former employer, the New York Mets, never offered him a deal after last season. The only question was if the emotional Lo Duca would let his feelings towards his former employer linger. The answer came yesterday, as he learned that the Mets account of their negotiations (if you can call them that) differed greatly from his.

Lo Duca, who hit .272 last year in his second, and last, season as the Mets' No. 1 catcher, remained calm as he talked about becoming a free agent after the season and drawing no interest from the Mets. Then a reporter told him that Mets General Manager Omar Minaya might have been interested in retaining him had he been willing to take less than a three-year deal.

"Are you kidding me with that?" said Lo Duca, who will turn 36 next month and who, along with (Lastings) Milledge, had not encountered his old team in spring training until Monday. "There was never a phone call. I don't want to throw stones and I don't want to get mixed up in any of this stuff, but that is ridiculous. And that's the bottom line." The bottom line, maybe, but not necessarily the last word. Minaya commented later in the day that Lo Duca's agent had told him his client wanted a contract of three to four years.

Lo Duca, meanwhile, maintained that the Mets went after three catchers - Jorge Posada, Yorvit Torrealba and Brian Schneider - without making an overture toward him. He described it as an odd and frustrating feeling of wanting to stay in New York and not having the sentiment reciprocated.

"Any time in your lifetime when you're not wanted, it's tough," he said. "But that's it. It's on to a new start."

What does it all mean? It means that there's a part of Lo Duca that still holds a torch for his old love while cavorting with the new love. And that torch still burns deep inside him. We can only hope it will simmer to the surface during the season so that he could go publicly insane at a ballpark near you.

Responses to accusations of steroid use have been met with three different types of responses. There's the forthright admission, see Brian Roberts, in which a player admits using performance enhancers, acts contrite and asks for forgiveness. There's also the Clemens/Bonds school of deny, deny, deny until the federal government gets involved.

I'm okay with each of those avenues. The former follows the "honesty is the best policy" approach we all learned from our parents. The latter is the way many of us would react if we were wrongly accused of something. Of course, it doesn't always work out that way and if the opposite turns out to be true, I'm looking at you Rafael Palmeiro, you deserve all the shame and scorn that can possibly be heaped upon the grave of your respectability.

The third route of response is the only one I can't get behind. It's the apologizing for making mistakes without ever admitting what the mistakes were. Paul Lo Duca performed his version over the weekend.

"I apologize to my family, all of my fans and to the entire baseball community for mistakes in judgment I made in the past and for the distraction that has resulted."

Asked for what he was apologizing, Lo Duca said, "Come on, bro. Next question."

I tagged this post PEDs but perhaps that's a mistake. Maybe he's apologizing for blaming Mets teammates for everything that went wrong in Queens last season. Funny how forthright he was when it came to the shortcomings of other people.

Could Jim Bowden's master plan be falling apart before the beginning of February? One of his Washington National acquisitions for the 2008 season was the fiery leader, steroid implicated, aging ... whatever you'd like to call him, Paul Lo Duca. Lo Duca couldn't even get to spring training without an injury.

Washington Nationals catcher Paul Lo Duca injured his left knee during a workout and will travel to Washington next week to be examined by a team doctor.

Lo Duca, who signed a $5 million, one-year deal as a free agent this offseason, was hurt this week and had an MRI exam Friday.

Asked if he could comment on the severity of Lo Duca's injury, Nationals general manager Jim Bowden wrote in an e-mail, "We won't know until test results are back."

Lo Duca, most likely, was not going to set the world on fire behind the dish in Washington. But what he was going to do was provide a bridge to Nats catching prospect Jesus Flores. Now? I guess we really won't know until test results are back, so Jesus should get ready to grow up fast. At least Lo Duca can delay facing the media about that pesky Mitchell Report if he misses significant time.