Officials from Lee County, Fort Myers and Rockford Construction met yesterday in Washington with Nationals principal owner Mark Lerner to discuss the team's potential move to vacant City of Palms Park for spring training, perhaps as early as the 2015 Grapefruit League season. According to this story in the Fort Myers News-Press, Lee County Manager Roger Desjarlais characterized the meeting as a fact-finding mission but sounded hopeful that progress was made that could result in the Nationals...

The Nationals will open their 2014 season with 15 straight games against division opponents, the first three of which will be in New York against the Mets. After kicking off the season on the road, the Nats will return for their home opener on Friday, April 4, to be played against the Braves. The Nats have an 11-game homestand - their longest of the season - in April, including four games apiece against the Cardinals and Padres, and a three-game interleague series against the Angels. Other...

Five home runs in a 9-0 blowout, and still Gio Gonzalez completely stole the spotlight from Rick Schu's offense. He flirted with history for six innings, taking a no-hitter into the bottom of the seventh. Then one got away. It was so close, so close to being corralled by Adam LaRoche, so close to being foul, but it was a hit. Gonzalez left the mound at the end of the inning muttering to himself, but he finished the game off as a one-hit complete-game shutout. Just that one cheap hit. Gonzalez...

OK, I'll admit it - I'm a bit of a stat nerd. As much as I'd like to, I don't have a scout's eye for the baseball. The numbers help to tell me who's performing well and who isn't and my love of statistics is a big part of the reason I'm obsessed with this game. For instance, Adam Jones' 31-homer, 102-RBI season tells me he's one of the game's best center fielders. No one at his position has more home runs or RBIs by a longshot. Somehow, Jones' offensive outburst in 2013 has been...

It's been a bit of a strange season for Gio Gonzalez. When Gonzalez has been good, he's been really, really good. See: last night's one-hit shutout of the Mets in a 9-0 Nationals win. That was dominance, and it sure looked for a while there like Gonzalez had a legitimate shot at a no-hitter the way he was throwing. But on the rare occasion when Gonzalez has struggled this season, he's really struggled. The left-hander has allowed more than four earned runs in a start five times this...

This is one time the Nationals are happy to beat a Gnat. Low Single-A Hagerstown cruised past Savannah in Game 1 of the South Atlantic League finals 6-1 behind excellent pitching from rookie Jake Johansen and three hits courtesy of Tony Renda. Johansen went five innings, allowing three hits, no runs and two walks while striking out two for the win. Renda and Stephen Perez provided two-run doubles. Perez's hit came with two outs in the eighth. Wander Ramos had two doubles and a run scored....

Over the last 15 years, the Orioles have not won a season series once against the New York Yankees. They lost 13 times and tied the season series twice - going 9-9 last year against New York and 9-9 in 2007. That is a lot of losing to the Yankees over the years. The O's are now 18-12 in their last 30 regular season games against the Yankees, but before that, they went 12-41 over a 53-game stretch. A lot of losing indeed. But if the O's win just one of the three remaining games in this...

So, does anyone have an extra ticket to the Buck Showalter-Joe Girardi steel cage match? Girardi was born on Oct. 14, 1964. He used to be a Libra, but Bobby Dickerson stole his sign. It figures that Showalter and Girardi would exchange words during the first game of a four-game series. There's lots of time left for more bad blood to boil. I wonder whether Showalter will bring out the lineup card before tonight's game instead of bench coach John Russell. He may want to make a statement by...

After the game, Nick Markakis was asked what he was thinking when he saw Buck Showalter charge out of the dugout after the last of the first. "I didn't think it was going to start this early," Markakis said. "But you have two teams battling for the same thing. Any little thing is going to set it off. Two competitive teams out there and things are going to happen but we got a big win and everything worked out good." Markakis was asked if the win was any sweeter coming against CC Sabathia,...

Yankees manager Joe Girardi reluctantly offered his side of the story concerning tonight's on-field exchange with Orioles manager Buck Showalter. What led to the dispute with Showalter? "The one thing that I've done, the whole time that I'm here, and everywhere I've been, is I'm going to protect our players at all lengths. That's what I'm going to do, and there was something that I saw and I'm just going to leave it at that." What was Showalter's objection? "I don't know." Did...