Introducing our Nationals guest blogger lineup for 2016

Back in 2005, when the Nationals arrived from Montreal, they filled a tremendous void in Washington, D.C. Generations of fans who had not had a team to call their own suddenly did, parents could take their children to games and a new crop of baseball fans was born.

So was a new kind of fan - those with keyboards at their disposal and opinions that flowed like frosty beer at the Red Porch. Fervent Nationals fans descended upon the blogosphere in numbers that made other baseball towns envious. Even though some of those bloggers have gone the way of Henry Mateo and Matt White, new blogs have sprouted up in their place. Yes, the Natosphere, as it's come to be known, is a unique and special place.

In 2011, MASNsports.com introduced the concept of integrating the opinions of guest bloggers into our daily in-season coverage. And we're happy to introduce the guest bloggers whose diamond thoughts and ruminations will appear on our pages beginning April 4, when the Nats visit the Braves in Atlanta.

Some are familiar faces, but we've added a couple of new voices just to freshen things up and show off another sector of the Natosphere.

Batting leadoff will be veteran Marty Niland of D.C. Baseball History, with newcomer Steve Mears of Talk Nats manning Tuesdays. Another recent addition to the roster, Charlie Fliegel of The Nationals Review will write on Wednesdays, followed by holdovers David Huzzard of Citizens of Natstown on Thursdays and Patrick Reddington of Federal Baseball on Fridays.

We hope you'll read what these talented bloggers have to say about the Nationals and baseball in D.C. But don't just read them - visit their blogs, search out the varied opinions on the Nationals that appear across the Internet, listen to the many voices that have an opinion on the Nats.

We're proud to have opened our little corner of cyberspace to these dedicated bloggers for the past five seasons, and hope there are more discussions, opinions and analysis yet to come. Nobody wants a world where there's only one voice - Baskin Robbins would infinitely less interesting if there was only vanilla, right? - and the more opportunities more voices have takes our already in-depth coverage of the Nationals to a whole, new level.