MASNsports.com is your online home for the latest Orioles and Nationals news, features, and commentary. And now, you can connect with MASN on every digital level. From web and social media to our new mobile alert service, MASN has got all the bases covered.
Get the latest breaking news direct to your phone with our mobile texting service.
by
If you're roaming around a local shopping mall over the next few weeks and think you've spotted Jayson Werth, it probably is Werth, who has moved the Werth family to the greater Washington area, where he'll be working for the next several years.
It's a pretty big deal, inasmuch as he can obviously afford to live anywhere, and a lot of major league players opt to reside in warmer climes. Werth obviously would have preferred to have enjoyed a more successful first season in a Nationals uniform, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone inside the game who thinks him incapable of returning to pre-2011 production with a healthy lineup around him.
As below-the-norm Werth's season was, it looks that much better when compared to the 2011 campaign posted by ex-Nat Adam Dunn in Chicago. Dunn's season transcended awful, with the big guy batting just .159, and slugging just .277. In his first shot at DHing - he started 36 games in the field, and played bat in 81 - Dunn homered only 11 times with 42 RBIs, while setting a new club mark for strikeouts with 177. He didn't even walk that much, one of his major attributes in years past. Ouch.
Dunn's contract - four years for $56 million - makes him virtually untradeable, and the White Sox already look like also-rans in the American League Central. He has high hopes for 2012, telling MLB.com that he "can't wait" for the season to start. He's lost some weight, which may help him defensively, if new ChiSox skipper Robin Ventura opts to let him play the field.
Would the same thing have happened had Dunn stayed with Washington? No way to know for sure. The Nats were interested, but not for four years. No other club really challenged the Chicago offer, and after years of telling people he really didn't want to play in the American League, there he was.
I hope Dunn returns to form. He's fun to watch, and I enjoyed dealing with him in Washington. Better yet, both Dunn and Werth put up all-star caliber numbers, and we can proclaim 2011 ancient - and aberrant - history.
