Tireball.com

The Washington Nationals made the shocking decision to release pitcher John Patterson today.

After sitting out since May last year with a variety of shoulder woes he underwent surgery to decompress the radial never in his right elbow in September but had not shown the same velocity on his pitches this spring.

The 30-year-old right hander had allowed seven earned runs in nine innings this spring. He had also allowed 13 hits and struck out seven.

He had spent the last four season with the team but had made just 15 starts in the last two years. His best season came in 2005 when he started 31 games and had a 9-7 record and a 3.13 ERA while posting a career high 198.1 innings and pitching two complete games.

Over a six year career he is 18-25 with a 4.32 ERA.

This winter the team had given him a one year contract worth nearly $1 million dollars.

There figures to be no shortage of teams willing to take a gamble on the talented but injury prone right hander from Orange, TX.

The Nationals are left with a rotation of Shawn Hill, Jason Bergmann, Tim Redding, Odalis Perez and either Matt Chico or John Lannan. They’ll probably need both young lefties initially with Hill likely to open up on the DL.

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There has been an Andy Gonzalez sighting this spring. When I was doing the non-roster invitee reports earlier this spring I was tempted to write about the error prone utility player but remembered those words our parents used to say. If you don’t have anything nice to say then you probably are talking about Andy Gonzalez… or something like that.

Gonzalez is is camp with the Cleveland Indians and apparently he has a little pop in his bat as he hit his fourth homer of the spring today. Mind you he has just six hits for the month. He also hit just .185 with two homers in 189 at-bats for the Chicago White Sox last season.

Sure the guy can play all over the place but as is the case most of the time theres a reason he has to play all over the place. He’s just not very good. The Indians don’t figure to have any room for the 26-year-old on the major league roster and likely will send him to Buffalo in the coming days.