Oakland Athletics starting pitcher Gio Gonzalez (47)
courtesy of Keith Allison

According to ESPN’s Keith Law, the Nationals have agreed to terms with the Oakland Athletics to acquire pitcher Gio Gonzalez, and parting with prospects A.J. Cole, Brad Peacock, Tommy Milone and Derek Norris.  Oakland once again goes for a slough of young arms in exchange for a player whose salary will be increasing under arbitration above their affordable level.

The deal, if accurately reported, will really come down to Milone and Peacock for Gonzalez, as Norris was of limited utility be . hind young catcher Wilson Ramos, and Cole is far enough from the majors that he was likely the sort of longterm player A’s GM Billy Beane is willing to take a risk for. Milone’s debut in Washington this year was quite memorable, as he smashed a 3-run homer off the first pitch he saw in the bigs, for my second favorite Nats moment in 2011. Peacock had a successful year in 2011, going 5-1 in AAA Syracuse, with a 3.19 ERA before making the big club and going 2-0 with a 0.75 ERA in 3 starts. Milone put up 5 starts with the Nationals this year, striking out 14 in 26 innings and walking just 4, after going 12-6 with Syracuse with a 3.22 ERA, striking out 155 batters, and walking just 16.

Gio Gonzalez, 25, comes to DC after a 16-12 2011 record, with nearly 200 strikeouts and 91 walks. Gonzalez is arbitration-eligible this year, and would likely see his salary increase to over $4M.  Gonzalez would likely be the #2 or #3 starter, completing a 1-2-3 rotation of Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann and Gio Gonzalez. That’s the sort of rotation that the Nationals are going to need to compete in the NL East over the next few seasons, with a rebuilding team in Miami, and the consistently strong Phillies.

This trade, if completed (and I suspect it will be), would up the ante for the Nationals in the Prince Fielder sweepstakes, as it seems they are betting very strongly on making a playoff push in 2012-2014, and will need Fielder’s power in the middle of the lineup to bolster the results from Ryan Zimmerman and Jayson Werth.

Radio and telelvision personality Big Tigger (who is a big fan of the Cadillac CTS-V Coupe) takes a picture with the Cadillac emblem..
courtesy of DrivingtheNortheast

There are few things worse than being fired on your birthday, but getting fired three days before Christmas AND on your birthday has to be a pretty rough thing. Pour one out for Big Tigger at WPGC, because DCRTV is reporting that’s exactly what happened.

I want to let you know that Tigger will no longer be hosting mornings on WPGC. Tigger has been a huge part of WPGC over the years. He started as an intern at PGC back in 1993 and eventually moved into nights in 1996. He came back later in the 2000s for afternoons and then, most recently, mornings. We wish him all the best in his future endeavors. As we move into the New Year 2012, we will launch a search for the next morning star to pair up with Free, Guy Lambert, and DJ Heat. In the meantime, we will focus on a much more music intensive show.

The host has confirmed through his Twitter account that they’re parting ways:

Best of luck, Tigger.

Amir Khan
courtesy of SportsAngle.com

On a confrence call earlier this afternoon Amir Khan revealed that he feels he was robbed in DC and wants the DC commission, the IBF, and the WBA to make things right. He will settle for a rematch but would prefer for the decision to be overturned outright and for what he feels to still be his titles to be returned to him. Khan feels that the decision being reversed would do a lot to repair the image of DC as a venue for boxing and restoring other boxers’ confidence in fighting in the nation’s capital. Khan and his representatives do have a seven figure offer to Lamont Peterson on the table for a May 19 rematch at the Staples Center.

This is where sports fail. Aside from a knockout or a submission combat sports are going to be decided by the refs and judges. Letting a fight go to the scorecard is begging for controversy. The job of the refs is to keep order and to make sure the participants decide the outcome. Khan feels that Joe Cooper was against him the entire fight and now the outcome will be decided in the court room.

Whatever the decision of the appeal process is there should be a rematch. The first Khan/Peterson fight was too good to not happen again. Controversy is a part of boxing more than it is any other sport, and the holder of the WBA and IBF Light Welterweight titles should be decided in the ring and not a court room.

Oranges and Lemons Health
courtesy of saaleha

When you hear that Councilmember Mary Cheh has introduced a ban on bath salts and plant food later today, you shouldn’t freak out and start hoarding epsom salts and Miracle Grow. The bath salts and plant food in question are slang names for a synthetic stimulant called mephedrone, MDPV and methylone. These aren’t the kind you’d get at Lush or a garden center.  They skirt the existing laws by being sold as bath salts or plant food, hence the name.  Going by product names like Vanilla Sky, or Purple Wave, or Ivory Wave, the drugs carry with them a pretty awful list of effects, including hyperthermia, renal failure, chest pain, hallucination and suicidal tendencies.

The proposed Cheh law mirrors federal scheduling of these substances as illegal for sale.

Nacho #24
courtesy of Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie

Obtaining the complete set of police reports from MPD on police calls to DCPS locations is no small feat, and for that, I salute Sarah Larimer and Andrew Beaujon and his team at TBD for ferreting the information out through a long process of FOIA requests. This past summer, they received a massive PDF which they processed into individual reports and have mined into a database for everyone to use. The individual reports are linkable, and contain information that other organizations could use to spark research, or just to gather demographic data on the crimes that are happening in DC Public Schools, and how the MPD is responding.

There’s a problem here, though, and it seems to be endemic among the Allbritton Company products: as great as the original ideas are, the execution of those ideas is half-assed.  The full listing of crimes is available on their website, but you can’t search it, filter it, or move through it quickly. A giant mass of information is a phenomenal thing, but it’s only useful to the community at large if we can parse it into usable structures. There’s no way to look for individual schools or police districts, or even types of crimes or any kind of follow-up.

As disappointing as this last part is, there’s still a lot of great information here, and for that, we thank Sarah Larimer and Andrew Beaujon.