FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2010 BASEBALL Willingham is traded to Athletics
Hard-throwing reliever, minor league outfielder sent to Nats in return
BY ADAM KILGORE The Washington Nationals
traded left fielder Josh Willing- ham to the Oakland Athletics on Thursday for two young pros- pects, swapping a proven, power- hitting left fielder with one year remaining on his contract for a fireballing relieverwholikely will begin the year in the Nationals’ bullpen and an athletic minor league outfielder. In return for Willingham, the
Nationals received right-hander Henry Rodriguez, 23, and out- fielder Corey Brown, 25. Rodri- guez appeared in 29 major league games last season, while Brown reached Class AAA Sacramento. The Nationals have been open
to offers for Willingham all off- season. Willingham, 31, is cur- rently arbitration-eligible and will become eligible for free agen- cy after next season. Willingham hoped to sign a multiyear exten- sion and stay inWashington, but General Manager Mike Rizzo de- cided against a long-term deal with Willingham, who is coming off knee surgery and has a history of back problems. So, before los- ing Willingham next year in free agency, Rizzo decided to trade him.
Rizzo listened to offers on Will-
ingham as early as July’s trade deadline. He received calls from three or four teams, including the Boston Red Sox, at the winter meetings this month, but those discussions never blossomed into formal proposals. Oakland Gen- eral Manager Billy Beane called Rizzo this week, and his offer trumped any Rizzo had heard, dating from last year. “A lot of things went into the decision to trade Josh now, in- stead of waiting through spring training or waiting to the trade deadline,” Rizzo said. “We felt that this was an attractive offer. It was a better package than we got last year at the trade deadline for Josh.” The key piece to the trade was Rodriguez, who possesses one of the most powerful arms in base- ball. His average fastball during
and Rizzo always treated him fairly. He was not expecting to be traded, but he wasn’t surprised, either. “I’m excited, because I think Oakland has a chance to be really good,” Willingham said. “Baseball is a business. Everybody wants to dowhat’s best for them.Washing- ton was a place that I enjoyed. I enjoyed the people and the team- mates like Adam and Zim, every- body. When you’re comfy in a place, you don’t want to leave.” Willingham had said he hoped
JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST
TheNationals have lost some pop to their lineup with the departures of Josh Willingham, left, and Adam Dunn since the offseason began.
major league games last season clocked 98.45 mph, the fourth- fastest average in the majors. He threwone fastball 103.2 mph, the third-fastest pitch of the 2010 major league season. Rodriguez has the ability to
strike out batters but has suffered control problems. In 272/3
major
league innings last season, Rodri- guez went 1-0 with a 4.55ERA.He struck out 33, but also walked 13. “This arm we got has got some
power,”Nationals first base coach Dan Radison, who has managed against Rodriguez in Venezuela, said via e-mail. “When he plays long toss, the coach has to use a fungo [bat] to get it back to him.” Rodriguez also has experience
as a closer. He saved 11 games in Class AAA last season. He is cur- rently pitching in the Venezuelan Winter League, where he has five saves and 27 strikeouts in 201/3 innings over 17 appearances. “From everything we’ve seen,
we believe that Rodriguez is go- ing tomake our big league club in our bullpen,” Rizzo said. “We fore- see him down the road as a guy who has the possibility to pitch in the back end of a game, either set up [Drew] Storen in the eighth inning or pitch in the ninth in- ning.”
Brown was the 59th overall
pick in 2007. He reached Class AAAthis season after dominating most of the year in Class AA, but he struggled once he arrived. Brown hit .283 with an on-base percentage of .370 and a slugging percentage of .466 between AA and AAA with 15 home runs, 11
triples and 22 stolen bases. He struck out 129 times in 534 plate appearances. Brown’s splits between AA
Midland and AAA Sacramento were large. In 90 games at Mid- land, he hit .320/.415/.502. In 36 games in Sacramento, he hit .193/ .253/.378. Rizzo said he has ob- served Brown start slow at every newlevel. Rizzo said trading Willingham
“was not based on his salary or money whatsoever.” In salary ar- bitration, Willingham will likely be granted a salary of roughly $6 million for the 2011 season. Last year, he earned $4.6 million in arbitration. Willingham was a viable mid- dle-of-the-order threat last year before a knee injury derailed his season. He was hitting .281/.411/ .502 with 15 home runs in 281 at-bats through the all-star break. Shortly thereafter, he started feel- ing sharp pain in his left knee.He missed the final six weeks of the season after undergoing surgery to repair a torn meniscus.He has since fully healed. Intwoyears with theNationals
since arriving in an offseason trade from the Florida Marlins, Willingham hit .263 with a .377 on-base percentage and a .479 slugging percentage. Willingham blasted 40 home runs, surpassed among the Nationals only by Ryan Zimmerman and Adam Dunn over that time span. Willingham harbored no ill
feelings toward the Nationals. In a phone conversation Thursday evening, he said the front office
HIGH SCHOOLS Wise’s Francois is making up for lost time
Limited to five games in senior season, he’s
generating interest again BY JOSH BARR
Giovani Francois has been on
the phone quite a bit recently. Assistant coaches fromCincinna- ti, Louisville and Tennessee, among other schools, have called this week. Michigan State also has reached out to him, as have Maryland andMarshall. For a football player who
missed nearly all of his senior season, getting back under the watchful eye of college recruiters has been welcome. “I’ve been talking to different
schools every day,” said Francois, a 6-foot-2, 230-pound defensive end, who will play for the Wash- ington team in Saturday’s Crab Bowl all-star game at Bowie State. “The coach fromCincinna- ti said he sawfilmfrommy junior year and wants me to play out- side linebacker.He said theway I play and the way I’m built re- minded him of Shawne Merri- man.” Merriman, the former Doug-
lassHigh andUniversity ofMary- land standout, goes by the nick- name “LightsOut.” And formuch of this season, the lightswere out on Francois’s football career. Until two months ago, Fran-
cois had been attending an alter- native school in Bradenton, Fla. He had been a standout on the football team at Southeast High in Bradenton for his first three years of high school, but was removed fromthe school in Janu- ary after he was charged with rape in juvenile court. The charges subsequently
were dropped, refiled as lesser charges in adult court, sent to juvenile court and eventually dis- missed over the state’s objection when a judge found that Francois had been denied his right to a speedy trial. Though he was cleared in
court, Francois was not allowed to return to Southeast,which still upsets the player. Unable to play football and attending a school where students do their work on computers and have little inter-
andParrishwas quick to send out highlight tapes, hoping to stir interest among college recruiters who might have forgotten about Francois or not known that he had moved to Maryland. Al- though Francois had attended a series of combines and college camps this past summer, he had been unable to satisfy the one thingmost recruiters wanted. “Everybody wanted film of my
senior year, but there was noth- ing I could do,” Francois said. “I came up here, and it was great. This is what I was waiting for. But I was shocked with the cold.” Francois, who had never seen
snow before a trip to Pittsburgh lastweekend, laughed at the idea of school closing early Thursday because of snow. In Florida, he noted, there were hurricane days. “It’s been crazy, going from
DOUG KAPUSTIN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Giovani Francois, wrapping up Broadneck’s JamesMullis, overcame legal problems in Florida to earn a spot on the Wise football team.
action with other people, Fran- cois in mid-October decided to leave Bradenton and move to Upper Marlboro, where he lives with his godmother, Valeria Tom- lin, and her four children. Because Francois did not turn
18 untilNov. 20, Tomlin, a lawyer, became the legal guardian for Francois so that he could attend school locally. (Her ex-husband, Eddie, is the older brother of Pittsburgh Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin.) The Tomlins’ oldest child,
Maya, is a junior at Wise, so it made sense for Francois to enroll there. But there was no guaran- tee he would be able to play football at the school, which has a successful team that played for theMaryland 4Atitle thismonth.
When the Tomlins and Francois approached Pumas Coach DaLa- wn Parrish, he was skeptical but willing to listen. “You look at themand it’s like,
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, everybody tells me they’re good,’ ” Parrish said. “I looked online and I saw every- thing, saw the situation he was talking about. “I called down to his coach, got
background about his character and nobody had anything nega- tive to say.” Francois joined the team for
its final regular season game and started at defensive end as Wise advanced to the Maryland 4A championship game. In five games, he had 32 tackles and five sacks and forced three fumbles. Opposing coaches took note
being in a cell [for a weekend while waiting for a court hear- ing] to playing in front of thou- sands of fans and bonding with teammates,” he said. “Having a chance to go to prom, having teachers with homework. I never thought Iwould be happy to have homework again.”
barrj@washpost.com
The Crab Bowl What: Maryland high school football all-star game, with a team of seniors from theWashington area facing their counterparts from the Baltimore area. When: Tomorrow, noon. Where: Bowie State University. Tickets: $15.
to stay withWashington and sign a contract extension. But he un- derstood the Nationals’ position, and he hopes he can strike a multiyear deal with the A’s. “Am I upset that it never hap-
pened? No, I’m not upset,” Will- ingham said. “If it was meant to be, then it would have happened. You never know what’s going to happen with the A’s. Maybe I’ll sign a two-year deal with them. We’ll just go with whatever goes.” With Willingham leaving a
hole in left field, “the easy an- swer” would be a platoon with Roger Bernadina and Michael Morse, Rizzo said. “We feel pro- ductivity offensively should be consistent with what we’ve had there in the past,” he said. Bernadina, 26, hastremendous
rawability and athleticism, but in his first full season last year he hit .246/.307/.384 with 11 home runs in 414
at-bats.Morse had a break- through season in limited playing time, hitting .289/.352/.519 in 293 plate appearances. In his career, Morse has played only 12 games in left field, as opposed to 88 in right field. “That’s not to say we’re fin-
ished this winter doing what we’re trying to do,” Rizzo said. Nationals note: The team re-
signed right-handed starter Chien-Ming Wang, taking a sec- ond gamble on an accomplished pitcher who hasn’t thrown an official pitch since midway through 2009. Wang signed for a guaranteed
$1 million, and he could make as much as $5 million in incentives. The Nationals signedWang, who finished second in Cy Young vot- ing with the Yankees in 2006, for $2 million, only to watch him not throw a single pitch while recov- ering from major shoulder sur- gery.
kilgorea@washpost.com
KLMNO
EZ SU COLLEGE BASKETBALL ROUNDUP
Stanford, coach denied by DePaul
FROM NEWS SERVICES KeishaHampton scored 23 of
her 27 points in the second half, Felicia Chester had a career- high 24 points and No. 22 DeP- aul routedNo. 3 Stanford, 91-71, Thursday night in Chicago, de- nying Cardinal Coach Tara VanDerveer her 800th career victory. VanDerveer—799-196 in her
32nd season as a head coach — had hoped to join Pat Summitt, Jody Conradt, C. Vivian String- er and Sylvia Hatchell as wom- en’s college coaches with 800 wins. That milestone will have to wait until at least Sunday, when the Cardinal faces Sum- mitt and Tennessee. After leading by only two
points at the half, DePaul broke away in the second with a 17-2 run and by hitting seven three- pointers. The Blue Demons (13-1) have
won 10 straight. Jeanette Pohlen led Stanford
(6-1) with 23 points. The Cardinal played without
senior Kayla Pedersen, who was kept out because of a head injury. Pedersen, the No. 10 scorer
and No. 4 rebounder in Stan- ford history, bumped her head while taking a charge in the first half of Sunday’s game against Fresno State and did not return. When Pedersen didn’t take
the floor Thursday night, it ended a string of 121 straight starts dating to the 2007-08 opener. The 6-foot-4 senior is averag-
ing 11.5 points and 6.5 re- bounds. Joslyn Tinkle started in her place. DePaul’s win was especially pleasing for Coach Doug Bruno. Both Stringer and Summitt picked up their 800th victories against DePaul. l ST. FRANCIS (PA.) 67,
HOWARD 55: Four players scored in double figures for Howard, but the Bison lost to the visiting Red Flash at Burr Gymnasium. Adelle Walton scored 17
points to lead the Bison (3-8), who have lost six of seven. Alexandra Williams scored 22 points for St. Francis (5-4).
No. 13Missourimen roll Laurence Bowers scored 17
points as No. 13 Missouri got even for last season’s loss to Oral Roberts with an 81-62 victory in Columbia,Mo. Marcus Denmon added 16
points for the Tigers (9-1), who used an 18-2 run in taking a 13-point halftime lead. Mis- souri held Oral Roberts to 26 percent shooting from the field. The Tigers were without
starting point guard Michael Dixon, who was suspended in- definitely Wednesday after vio- lating an undisclosed team rule. Dominique Morrison led
Oral Roberts (4-6) with 18 points. l MEMPHIS 70, AUSTIN
PEAY 68 (OT): Chris Crawford scored six of his 18 points in overtime and Charles Car- mouche had 16 points and keyed a second-half rally as the No. 18 Tigers won at home. Austin Peay had the ball out
of bounds with 0.7 seconds left in overtime but couldn’t get off a shot. TyShwan Edmondson led the
Governors (6-6) with 22 points and 10 rebounds. Melvin Baker finished with 17 points and 11 rebounds. The teams were tied at 56
after regulation. Austin Peay had the last possession in regu- lation, but Edmondson’s shot on a drive down the left side was blocked by Tarik Black. l NORTHWESTERN 78,
AMERICAN 62: John Shurna scored 28 points and Michael Thompson added 23 as the Wildcats beat the Eagles in Evanston, Ill., to remain unde- feated. Northwestern (7-0) is off to
its best start since 1993-94, when the Wildcats won their first nine. Shurna, a junior, became the 30th Northwestern player to surpass 1,000 points in his career, finishing the night with 1,012. Luka Mirkovic added 11
points and 11 rebounds for the Wildcats. VladMoldoveanu led the Ea-
gles (6-4) with 21 points and a team-high six rebounds. Troy Brewer scored 10 points. Northwestern’s biggest lead
in the second half was 22 points.
Virginia vs.Oregon When: 8 p.m.Where: John Paul Jones Arena,Charlottesville. TV:Comcast SportsNet.Radio:WWXT (92.7 FM),WWXX (94.3FM),WTEM (980AM). Records:Ducks 7-3;Cavaliers6-3. Outlook:Oregon’s starting lineup consists of no player taller than6feet6 and three playerswho stand6-1 or shorter, so theDucks have had to learn quickly howbest to negate their collective lack of size.OnewayOregon has done so thus far inCoachDana Altman’s first season is by employing various and constant forms of pressure
defense.Be it through full-court, three- quarters or first-pass traps, theDucks have abided by one of Altman’s primary principles:Make the opponent uncomfortable. Virginia struggled mightily the last time it faced consistent pressure froma Pacific-10foe (see: 106-63lossNov.22toWashington), but theCavaliers have playedwithmuch greater poise since then. Andwith junior guard Sammy Zeglinski nearing full health in his injured knee, Virginiawill have another experienced ballhandler to contend againstOregon’s press. As senior forwardWill Sherrill continues to recover fromthe fractured fibula he suffered in his right legNov.29 atMinnesota, the development of freshman forwards AkilMitchell andWillRegan—Virginia’s lone available front-court reserves—has become a slightlymore prominent issue. Against a smaller, quicker team,Mitchell’s athleticismmight afford himan opportunity
formoreminutes.Coach TonyBennett saidWednesday hewould like for Mitchell to focusmore on his defensive and rebounding contributions at this point in his career.Mitchell is averaging2.6rebounds in 9.0minutes per game this
season.Bennett implied that, at least at the outset of Friday’s game, hewill stickwith a lineup that includes 7-foot junior center Assane Sene,who in Sherrill’s absence has taken on a larger role—and performed admirably—despite his offensive shortcomings. “Ifwe’re really getting hurt in [one particular] area,we’ll have tomake an adjustment,”Bennett said. “But they also have tomatch upwith you.”
—SteveYanda
D3
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