The Washington Nationals worked out a deal on Monday that will be brining Josh Willingham and Scott Olsen to the Nationals. This is just the first step as the Nationals look to revamp their roster and hopefully content in 2009.

The Marlins received second baseman Emilio Bonifacio and two minor leaguers: second baseman Jake Smolinski and right-hander P.J. Dean.

Olsen went 8-11 with a 4.20 ERA in 2008, his third consecutive season with at least 31 starts — he has never been on the disabled list. The left-hander is 31-37 with a 4.63 ERA in the majors. Willingham hit .254 with 15 homers and 51 RBIs this year but also missed 50 games with a herniated disk.

It will be interesting to see what other moves the Nationals pull off this off season.

Nationals Transactions

The Florida Marlins got the best of the Washington Nationals on Wednesday night as they lost by the score of 9-4. It was the first win for the Marlins in their last five games and they pretty much had control of the Nationals all night long.

Tim Redding took the loss after only lasting 2 2/3 innings. Redding was rocked for seven hits and seven runs in the game as he didn’t have it from the beginning of the game. Levale Speigner was also bad in the game as he was charged with three hits and two runs. Not that Speigner’s runs would have matters because Redding sucked it up so bad.

Emilio Bonifacio, Alberto Gonzalez, Pete Orr, and Wil Nieves all had rbi’s for the Nationals but it wasn’t even close to being enough to pull out the victory.

The Nationals can win the series with a victory over the Marlins on Thursday however. I expect them to pull out a win somehow as they play their final game at home for the 2008 season.

Nationals Blog

The Washington Nationals will just want to forget about the game that they played on Thursday night. The New York Mets defeated the Nationals 9-3 as they blew the game wide open in he top of the ninth inning with four big runs. The Nationals had no answer in the bottom of the inning as four runs is just too much for this team to come back from in the the final inning.

Collin Balester was charged with four hits and five runs in six innings of action to take the loss. Balester served up two home runs while walking five batters. Walking that many batters and giving up home runs is never a good combination.  Joel Hanrahan was the pitcher that allowed four runs to score in the top of the ninth inning.

All three of the Nationals runs came in the seventh inning when Pete Orr had a two run triple and then he scored on a infield bunt single by Emilio Bonifacio. Just not enough offense to keep up with the Mets.

Nationals Baseball Blog