This and that

• I'm officially worried. I'm not a huge Willy Taveras fan. His on-base percentage last season was .308 and his slugging percentage was .296, lowest among players who qualified for the batting title. In 133 games, he batted .251 with 18 of his 120 hits going for extra bases.

I know he had 68 stolen bases, but you can't steal first. Sure he'll get infield hits, but I don't think it'll be enough. You need your leadoff guy to get on base. We all know how pathetic Corey Patterson's numbers were last season. Taveras doesn't get on base much more than Patterson. I don't see how it's really that much of an upgrade.

And then I read this quote from Jocketty:

He could end up being the left fielder if we can't get that RBI man, which might be hard to do at this point.

And this one:

With Bruce and Taveras, we have two of our outfield spots filled.

Uh oh. Do you really expect to compete for the NL Central title with a starting outfield of Willy Taveras, Jay Bruce and Chris Dickerson/Norris Hopper?

I guess you never know. I'll be the first to admit I didn't think Jerry Hairston Jr. would contribute much when we signed him. I'm just not as excited about Ramon Hernandez and Willy Taveras as I would be about J.J. Hardy, Alex Rios, Juan Rivera, Jermaine Dye or some big right-handed bat.

• Also, how many times during one offseason can we read a headline or notebook item along the lines of "Nats' Bowden may be interested in Dunn." This might be 50. As Janeane Garofalo's character says in "Reality Bites," "Would you two just do it and get it over with?" And that is the first and last time I will quote "Reality Bites" on my blog.

• The Lot D's C. Trent has a good Carson Palmer update pertaining to his latest chances of avoiding surgery.

• In his Snap Judgments: Week 17, Don Banks refers on several occasions to the Week 11 tie in Cincinnati while marveling at the Eagles' improbable playoff berth. Hey, at least the Bengals can say they beat or tied (tied, in their case) a playoff team, right? Which is something that Detroit, Kansas City, Oakland, St. Louis, Seattle and San Francisco (which won 7 games) can't say.

How crazy is it, by the way, that Cleveland beat the Giants 35-14 in Week 6. And that St. Louis beat Dallas in Week 7 (ouch). I had forgotten about those until I looked back at the which-teams-had-beaten-playoff-teams deal.

• Nothing like a loss to the Bengals to spur someone to reveal their true feelings about the organization for which they work as Larry Johnson did after Sunday's game.

• Xavier checks in at No. 22 in both the AP Top 25 and the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll. GoXavier.Com has a nice feature today about how important Terrell Holloway is to this team. And they don't exactly have the luxury of waiting until he's ready to lead; it's clear they need him now.

• Non-local link of interest: How's this for bizarre ... David Pratt, a striker for Chippenham, received the fastest ever red card after being sent off just three seconds into a game.