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Bryce Harper is making progress. Nationals fans should be paying attention to Josh Hamilton, who’s had a relatively simple return from his similar thumb surgery. Hamilton has made it through this process normally and not much is ever normal for Hamilton. News today from Dan Kolko of MASN was very positive, with Harper progressing to soft toss and two-handed swings. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a big step. 

Most clearly it shows that Harper is advancing quickly after surgery. He’s able to grip the bat, meaning he’s been able to keep muscle tone and that his thumb is healing well. Assuming all goes well over the next few days and no setbacks for the thumb, Harper will likely progress to batting practice and live hitting quickly.

That could put him on track for a rehab assignment within the next 10 days. He shouldn’t need much time there, just enough to get his confidence back and show Nats officials that he’s ready to be back in the bigs. The key is bat control.

For any hand injury, a loss of grip strength and fine muscle control will often lead to more swing-and-misses. Hamilton’s done well with this, so there’s a chance that Harper can as well, especially if there’s been some change in the rehab process. (No, I don’t think PlayStation is that change.) 

Look for Harper to start at a low level, but for the Nats to show less restraint with him than they have with others. Harper is tougher to hold back, and the team knows that his bat can be a difference-maker. They will have some questions regarding what happens with Ryan Zimmerman once Harper is back, but no one’s going to hold Harper back because Zimmerman’s looked decent in the outfield. Once Harper shows any signs of power, get him back in your lineup if not before.

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Ryan Zimmerman did not show up this spring planning to vacate third base. Did you start the year expecting to give up the job you love? Volunteer to move to a new cubicle? Wistfully admit you’re just not the same?

Things change. Days pass. They become years.

If you’re lucky, you find the ability to adapt with the times and continue to thrive.

“The last couple years have been tough,” Zimmerman was telling me the other day. “But I’ve always been honest with myself.

“People who can’t be honest with themselves, it’s going to be tougher for them to give things up.”

After 1,119 games and one Gold Glove (2009) at third base, Zimmerman borrowed teammate Jayson Werth’s glove and moved out to left field last Tuesday.

And the Nationals, now in prime position to make a move in the NL East, are better for it.

“What’s been wrong with the Nationals?” you ask.

Well, for starters, Zimmerman missed two months with a fractured right thumb, and outfielder Bryce Harper, catcher Wilson Ramos, first baseman Adam LaRoche and starting pitchers Doug Fister and Gio Gonzalez all missed significant time in the season’s first two months. New skipper Matt Williams mostly was managing with roughly half of his lineup gone.

All but Gonzalez, who is on an injury rehab assignment, and Harper are back now. The lineup is much stronger, evidenced by the Nationals’ 8-2 run over the past several days. The rotation is much stronger, evidenced by Fister’s 5-1 record and 2.68 ERA over seven starts since joining the rotation May 9.

And, impossible as it would have been to believe just a couple of years ago, the defense is much stronger with Anthony Rendon, 24, at third base instead of Zimmerman.

“I look at the way Anthony’s playing third base,” Zimmerman says. “He’s obviously a great young player who’s going to be in this league for a long time. And, honestly, I think he’s playing a better third base than I play right now. This helps us right now.”

Before the Nationals invented Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper, they designed Zimmerman. He was the young cornerstone player of the franchise. A first-round pick (fourth overall) in 2005 out of the University of Virginia, Zimmerman joined the Nats when they stunk, and together they dreamed of better days.

He was as automatic as an ATM back then, both in terms of being in the lineup every day and in making every play at third. In 2006, he played in 157 games. In ’07, he played in all 162.

But an abdominal strain kept him to 101 games in ’11; then came the sore right shoulder in ’12. He underwent arthroscopic surgery after the season. After committing 19 errors in 145 games in 2012, he committed 21 in 147 last year.

Watching him throw suddenly became a hold-your-breath experience. Was it his shoulder? Was it the yips?

“Maybe they both kind of coincided with each other. I don’t know,” Zimmerman says. “If I knew, then I wouldn’t have it.

“I think it was a combination of maybe trying to play a little banged up and then creating some bad habits. And then maybe having the surgery and not getting away from those bad habits while trying to get back to the form I used to be in.

“So many things going on at the same time. You can call it whatever you want to call it. At the end of the day it happened and you try and learn from it and move on.”

So here he is in left field, which, with Harper out until July with a thumb injury, is perfect. It is a place that allows the Nationals to insert Zimmerman’s bat back into the lineup without the potential train wreck of misfired throws or another injury at third base.

Coach Tony Tarasco hits him fly ball after fly ball in the afternoons. And then, if all goes right, Zimmerman (.275, .338 on-base percentage, two homers and 10 RBI in 19 games) hits line drive after line drive in the evenings.

What is Williams’ fair expectation from Zimmerman in left?

“My fair expectation is that he needs to hit in the middle of our lineup,” the skipper quips. “And catch what he can catch.”

Williams says we will see Zimmerman again at third base at some point. And the Nationals are only about a month or so away from a major decision regarding that: When Harper returns, the Nationals will have a Dodgers-like math problem, four outfielders for three positions. Werth is in right, Denard Span in center and Zimmerman in left.

Will Harper’s return push Zimmerman back to third, Rendon, the Nats’ first-round (sixth overall) pick in ’11, over to second base and Danny Espinosa out of the lineup?

Rendon is making all the plays while hitting .272 with nine homers and 34 RBI. Espinosa is hitting .226 with six homers and 17 RBI…and key stat: 72 strikeouts, ranking fifth in the NL. So that’s an option.

Another: Harper’s return could push Span to the bench (or to the trade market) while the Nats keep Rendon at third, Zimmerman in left and Werth in right.

But Span’s 24 extra-base hits currently lead all big league leadoff men.

Zimmerman is 29 and playing under a six-year, $100 million deal that takes him through 2019. He has a blanket no-trade clause that kicked in this year. He has seen the Nationals at their worst (59-103 in ’09) and at their best (98-64 in ’12).

He would like to see October again.

“The more I play out there, the more comfortable I get,” he says. “And it’s fun. It’s fun again.

“It hasn’t been as tough as third has been the last few years, making so many errors. Nobody wants to hurt the team like that.”

Least of all Zimmerman, who looked straight into the mirror and was stone-cold honest with himself.

It’s something all of us should do, but so many of us wind up choosing another option instead.

“He wants to do what he can to help the team win,” says Williams, whose Nationals again are on the move, 8-2, since their Z-man returned. “That’s a fantastic trait to have.”

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. He has over two decades of experience covering MLB, including 14 years as a national baseball columnist at CBSSports.com.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball here.

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The Washington Nationals have lost Gio Gonzalez for the next few weeks. The Cy Young contender has what the Nationals are calling soreness and inflammation in his pitching shoulder and will give him time to let that calm down, according to Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post.

Gonzalez was diagnosed after having an “enhanced MRI.” This is another term for a contrast MRI, which is a normal tool for orthopaedists. A dye is injected into the joint, allowing for a clearer view of the structures, as the video here shows. The Nats said there was no structural damage seen on the enhanced MRI.

So we know what it’s not, but pain and inflammation don’t just happen. Gonzalez has something wrong inside his pitching shoulder, and absent a structural cause, the usual diagnosis is either impingement or bursitis. Bursitis could be easily seen on a contrast MRI, so it’s safe to assume that the Nats aren’t playing word games with us. 

Add in another piece of evidence, in that Gonzalez told the Washington Post that he was having trouble finding a consistent arm slot, the lean would be to impingement. That indicates a generalized inflammation that is causing some of the structures inside the shoulder to be restricted from their normal movement or even squeezed inside the shoulder.

With Gonzalez on the disabled list, the Nats will go to work trying to remove the inflammation. Rest and treatment should get him more comfortable and at the point where he can get back on the mound; the hope is that his arm will comfortably go back to its natural position. Oddly, comparing his last two starts, it appears that Gonzalez was actually raising his release point, which is opposite of what a pitcher normally does when his shoulder is sore.

The Nats historically have issues keeping their pitchers healthy. While the team was actually in the top 10 for the first time since moving to Washington in terms of injury stats last year, their back in their normal spot early this year. The team has lost about $19.3 million worth of value so far this season. In terms of pure days lost, they’re near the bottom again. (Data from my proprietary Injury Database.)

Losing Gonzalez for a short period of time shouldn’t devastate the Nationals, but their overall problems with health are one reason that they consistently underperform their expectations and talent. 

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Washington Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman is currently on the disabled list with a broken thumb, but when he comes back, he may no longer be “Ryan Zimmerman, Washington Nationals third baseman.”

According to Adam Kilgore of The Washington Post, the Nationals officials and coaches have internally discussed the idea of moving Zimmerman to left field when he returns from the disabled list.

The idea of moving Zimmerman away from third base has been floated around for multiple years now, and with his latest defensive struggles and Anthony Rendon playing strongly at third, it appears the time to do so could be now. And with Zimmerman’s arthritic shoulder, the sooner he can move away from the hot corner, the better.

As Kilgore points out, the Nationals have some confidence in the idea, based on the logic that if Michael Morse can learn left field, the more-defensively solid Zimmerman should have no troubles doing so. Morse was a shortstop coming up through the minors and moved to first base upon reaching the majors. 

Kilgore also brings up the point that the Nationals have no reason to make this idea public just yet. The team is still unsure of when Zimmerman will return from the disabled list, and Zimmerman himself would probably not be fond of worrying about position change speculation during his rehab. The idea is also not set in stone just yet, so the team will likely keep quiet until it is.

The other interesting part of this idea is what becomes of current left fielder Bryce Harper in all of this. Harper, like Zimmerman, is currently on the shelf as he recovers from his own broken thumb that he injured sliding into a base. But when he comes back (most think in early July), there’s no doubt the Nationals will want to get his bat right back into the lineup.

The most likely scenario if Zimmerman does move to left field is sliding Harper over to center. Denard Span is currently manning center field, but he’s posted an unimpressive (though steadily improving) .243 average and .296 on-base percentage to this point. Span is also set to become a free agent after this season, so the Nationals presumably would make taking care of Harper and Zimmerman (both signed through at least 2018) their priority. 

Harper, a converted outfielder in his own right, has had experience in center before. In 2012, he played 92 games at the position and he saw nine more games in 2013. While it may sound like he’d struggle transitioning defensively, Harper has actually posted a higher fielding percentage (.978 as opposed to .971) and UZR (9.8 as opposed to -3.1) in center field than left over the course of his big-league career.

While first base has long seemed like the most likely new position for Zimmerman, current first baseman Adam LaRoche is hitting too well (.319, five home runs, 21 RBIs) to justify benching him in favor of the third baseman. Additionally, locking Zimmerman in as the first baseman of the future would potentially limit the team’s power production from the position down the line; Zimmerman’s bat fits much better out of left field. It’s an idea that we haven’t heard before, but when it’s broken down, it just might make perfect sense.

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The Washington Nationals are 20-9 in Stephen Strasburg’s last 29 starts as a road favorite, which is important to consider when making your MLB picks Tuesday, as they take on the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field.

Sports bettors will find that the Nationals are 10/13 favorites in the pro baseball odds, with the betting total sitting at eight in the market.

Let’s take a closer look at this National League matchup from a betting perspective, while offering up a prediction along the way.

Gambling stats via SBR Forum.

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With nearly a quarter of the 2014 Major League Baseball season expired, the Washington Nationals sit two games over .500 and in second place in the National League East.

The good news, despite trailing the Atlanta Braves, is that the Nationals’ deficit in the division is just 1.5 games. 

Washington has seen the recent effects of losing major contributors to injuries, including a sweep at the hands of the Oakland Athletics and six losses in nine games.

With Bryce Harper, Ryan Zimmerman and, now, Adam LaRoche out of commission, manager Matt Williams is at his wit’s end attempting to put a product on the field that can be competitive despite being shorthanded.

Nevertheless, for all Washington has been through, it’s not all bad, and the brightest days are likely ahead. Although, there are some areas that need to be shored up before the trade deadline to give the Nationals their best chance going forward.

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The Washington Nationals‘ Bryce Harper underwent thumb surgery today and is expected to be out until July. But that didn’t stop him from having a great hair day. Just check out his post-surgery tweet: 

Not only does he get to play baseball for a living, but his hair is perfect. Some guys have all the luck. 

[Bryce Harper, h/t Deadspin]

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Bryce Harper and the Washington Nationals came into the 2014 season showered with predictions of October glory. Before the start of May, plans of National League East dominance have been put on hold for the foreseeable future due to a thumb injury that will keep Harper out until at least early July.

That news, per Keith Law of ESPN.com, takes one of baseball’s brightest stars away from the Nationals until around the All-Star break, adds another injury to a growing list in Washington and changes the narrative in one of the most interesting divisions in the sport.

When spring training began, the Nationals looked poised for a special season. Led by a deep pitching staff, a fresh approach from the managerial seat and all-around stars such as Ian Desmond, Jayson Werth, Ryan Zimmerman and Harper, Washington profiled as a team that could run away with the National League East.

Furthermore, the Atlanta Braves suffered through high-profile starting pitching injuries and teams such as the Philadelphia Phillies, New York Mets and Miami Marlins were either poorly constructed, in the midst of a rebuild or simply a year or two away from serious contention.

As May approaches and Harper exits the spotlight, it’s time to reconsider the Nationals’ place in the NL East hierarchy.

While it would be a fool’s errand to simply hand the division to the red-hot Braves or classify Washington’s entire 2014 season as a lost cause, the Harper injury has the potential to hold back the Nationals for the entire first half of the season—if not longer. 

Despite a slow start (.289/.352/.422, 1 HR, 21 SO), Harper’s talent and potential were key to a quick and steady rise atop the division. Since the then-19-year-old arrived as an April call-up in 2012, Harper has been one of the most valuable outfielders in all of baseball. Typically, Harper’s star power and accolades are put into context with current or former young major league players.

In this case, there’s no need to classify Harper’s peer group as anything but fellow outfielders. The following chart shows how valuable Harper has been to the Nationals. Losing the left-handed slugger for two months is nearly the equivalent of taking Jose Bautista away from the Toronto Blue Jays or Giancarlo Stanton away from Miami. 

Despite a big payroll and win-now roster, don’t expect the Nationals to look for a high-profile replacement for their lost outfielder. Last month, Nationals owner Mark Lerner was asked about payroll flexibility, per Bill Ladson of MLB.com.

“We’re beyond topped out,” Lerner said. “Our payroll, as you know, has skyrocketed to about $140 million. I don’t think we can go much farther with the revenue stream that we have.”

Of course, good teams should be able to overcome injuries without the help of major in-season additions. While the Nationals fall into that category, the team has been dealing with ailments to Zimmerman, catcher Wilson Ramos and starting pitcher Doug Fister. The latter hasn’t thrown an inning yet this season. 

It’s possible that the Nationals could survive and thrive without Harper and complementary players, but one more injury to an impact performer—such as Werth, Stephen Strasburg or Jordan Zimmermann—could hold a formerly loaded roster down for a long period of time.

With the NL East looking better by the day, simply playing .500 baseball through the All-Star break might not be good enough for Washington. 

If Harper’s injury had been sustained during the first few weeks of spring training, the narrative around the Nationals likely wouldn’t have suffered because of a division that looked to have just one team—the perennially competitive Braves—capable of winning more than 85 games. With four weeks of the 2014 season in the books, the story is evolving.

Atlanta has won 17 of 24 games, shrugged off pitching concerns and thrived when it seemed it was likely to fall from the 96-win perch it sat on last season. With young, ascending stars such as Freddie Freeman and Andrelton Simmons leading the way, the Braves should be able to stay in the race all summer long. 

More surprising: Solid starts by the Phillies and Mets, teams that last posted winning records during the same season in 2008. 

With the core of a formerly dominant team—Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Cole Hamels, Carlos Ruiz and Jimmy Rollins—healthy, the Phillies just need solid production from complementary pieces in order to surprise baseball and stay in the race. 

Heading into play on April 29, Mets starters own a 3.46 ERA. That mark is good for ninth in baseball, per ESPN. If that type of stingy pitching continues throughout the summer, competitive baseball could return to Queens, New York, for the first time in six years. 

Although the last-place Marlins look more feisty than competitive, Washington will miss Harper’s .918 career OPS against Miami during three head-to-head games in late May.

Harper’s 2014 season had the potential for greatness. Along the way, the Nationals had the potential to run away and hide in a below-average division. Four weeks and one major injury can’t derail everything once thought, but it’s more than enough to usher in doubt.

Eventually, Harper will return to reprise his role as one of the best young players in the world. When he does, the Nationals will look to make a move in a suddenly competitive division. Over the next two months, anything goes in the NL East.

Agree? Disagree?

Comment, follow me on Twitter or “like” my Facebook page to talk about all things baseball.

Statistics are from Baseball-Reference.com, ESPN and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted. All contract figures courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts. Roster breakdowns via MLBDepthCharts.com.

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The Washington Nationals‘ Bryce Harper was benched for not running out a ground ball in a loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on April 19. The 21-year-old Harper has been criticized for maturity issues in his three years in the majors. Should the Nationals be worried about this latest incident?

Check out Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller break down the latest incident with Bryce Harper and why Nationals fans shouldn’t be worried about their star phenom. 

All stats accurate as of April 24.

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It was rough for a while there, but it looks like our long Nationals nightmare may finally be over.

Yes, Bryce Harper looks like he’s back.

In the event that you’ve been distracted by other things—icky, icky goo on Michael Pineda’s hand, perhaps—Harper woke up in Washington’s three-game sweep of the Miami Marlins this week. The 21-year-old star went 4-for-11 with a walk and four RBI.

Three of those four RBI came on a titanic blast into the upper deck at Nationals Park on Wednesday night. Because it was fun to watch then, let’s watch it again:

In addition to a fun sight, that was a welcome sight after what Harper had gone through in his first five games of 2014. That stretch included just three hits in 21 at-bats (a .143 average) and a Mark Reynolds-esque 10 strikeouts in 22 overall plate appearances. 

The capper was an 0-for-4 night against the Atlanta Braves on April 5 in which Harper struck out twice. One of those punchouts came in the eighth inning, after which Mark Zuckerman of CSN Washington says Harper “slammed his bat and helmet down the dugout tunnel and let out a primal scream.”

Said Harper after the fact, via Zuckerman: “I mean, I’m pretty lost right now, actually. I’m trying to see where my swing’s at, watch video of where my hands are. I’m trying everything right now. We’ll see where I’m at tomorrow. Give pops a call and see what he says, also.”

There’s Explanation No. 1 for Harper’s struggles: He was just plain out of whack.

Here’s another explanation from Washington manager Matt Williams, via James Wagner of The Washington Post:

It’s just a question of him being a little off timing and hitting the pitch that he ordinarily hits. Because he’s got a lot of those and he’s fouling them back. What do you do in that regard? You keep putting him in there because eventually it’s going to turn. And when it does, it’s special. Just keep trying to get him opportunities.

So Explanation No. 2: Harper’s timing was off in his first five games.

As most things in baseball are, these are both testimonies worth looking into. With data! And images! Both moving and still!

We can start with Williams’ point about Harper’s timing being off and about how he was missing pitches he doesn’t usually miss. In no other place was this more evident than in Harper’s performance against fastballs relative to the norm he established in 2012-2013.

Via Brooks Baseball:

What’s there for four-seamers is alarming across the board, as Harper started the season off fouling them off and swinging through them much more often than he did in 2012 and 2013. It’s no wonder the production wasn’t there.

The numbers for sinkers are less alarming, but only to a degree. Harper was swinging through them in his first five games a lot more often, and his production against them was about as bad as his production against four-seamers.

Bad timing would be a good explanation for this, and you can see bad timing in action if you watch Harper strike out on fastballs from Zack Wheeler at the 10- and 45-second marks here:

Granted, it’s not like Wheeler is some soft-tosser. He throws in the mid-90s. But by Harper standards, those were definitely weak swings.

There’s also the fact that Harper didn’t use the exact same swing mechanics on both pitches. With the first fastball, his timing device was a big leg kick:

With the second fastball, Harper’s timing device was more of a toe tap:

This isn’t entirely out of the ordinary for Harper. The leg kick is his usual timing device, but Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus noted in 2012 that Harper does “occasionally” use the toe tap. Miller’s best guess was that Harper uses it when he’s anticipating offspeed, which is a good guess.

As we’ll see in a moment, it’s plausible that the leg-kick-or-toe-tap conundrum was one of the symptoms of Harper being “lost” in the early goings. James Wagner, however, made a much simpler observation following a Harper single off Marlins starter Henderson Alvarez on Tuesday:

Once again, we can go to some photographic evidence to illustrate the point.

Plucked from the highlights of Julio Teheran’s start against the Nationals from April 5, here’s Harper with the bat on his shoulder as Teheran is preparing to deliver the ball:

And here’s Harper with the bat off his shoulder as Alvarez was prepared to deliver the ball that Harper would line to left field for a single:

Perhaps this is what Ron Harper, he of the wicked cutter, noticed when Harper put in a call to his dad. And even if it’s mental more than physical, little things like this can make a big difference for a hitter.  

Another thing that can make a big difference for a hitter is not trying to pull everything and being willing to use the opposite field.

His monstrous home run to right field aside, TexasLeaguers.com can show that Harper did a much better job of this against the Marlins:

Compared to before:

Between the placement of Harper’s bat before the pitch and the way in which he’s been going the other way, two apparent early-season issues appear to have been solved against Miami.

That just leaves the whole leg-kick-or-toe-tap conundrum and the issue of hitting fastballs, and this article wouldn’t exist if there weren’t positives on both fronts.

The fastball issue definitely wasn’t a problem against the Marlins. Three of the four hits Harper picked up in the series came against fastballs. One was his home run off Brad Hand, and the others were scorching line-drive singles off of Alvarez and Tom Koehler. That, indeed, is more like Harper.

The other hit Harper collected was off a slider thrown by Marlins lefty Dan Jennings. If Miller’s guess about Harper’s toe tap being typical of him anticipating offspeed, it’s a good sign that he was able to hit that slider using his leg kick as his timing mechanism:

For the record, Harper also used the leg kick for his single off Alvarez:

His homer off Hand:

And his single off Koehler:

It’s only a three-game series we’re talking about, and only four hits at that. I’ll admit that it would be a lot easier to make a case for Harper being out of his season-opening slump if he had gone something like 10-for-12 with four jacks or whatever.

However, the process of a hitter getting out of a slump doesn’t need to last as long as the actual slump. Sometimes all it takes is a flip of a couple switches, and said switches can be flipped all at once.

It appears that’s what happened with Harper in the last few days. It’s good enough that he picked up one more hit in three games than he had in five games coming in, and even better that he got them while fixing various issues that played a role in his slow start.

Which is a scary thought for the competition. As things stand now, Harper isn’t one of the five regulars in Washington’s lineup with an OPS over .800. If he’s ready to live up to his enormous talent, trying to get through the Nationals lineup unscathed is going to be like trying to get through a barbwired jungle gym unscathed.

And from the looks of things, Harper is indeed ready.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted/linked.

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