Washington
Do Washington Nationals Have Reason To Be Concerned About Young Infielder?
The 2024 MLB season can be regarded as a success in some ways for the Washington Nationals.
They are on pace to blow away preseason expectations, as they are projected to have one of the bigger win totals over what was expected coming into the season. Despite missing the playoffs for the fifth straight year, things are heading in the right direction.
There is a lot of young talent that has emerged on the roster. Some, such as outfielder James Wood, were highly touted prospects big things were expected from.
Others, such as center fielder Jacob Young and second baseman Luis Garcia Jr., were unheralded but now look to be parts of the team’s core moving forward.
Another high-upside part of that foundation is shortstop C.J. Abrams. The team’s lone All-Star representative this summer, he had an incredible first half, realizing the talent that made him a top prospect and key piece of the return package from the San Diego Padres in the Juan Soto blockbuster.
Through the first 3-4 months of the season, he was easily the team’s MVP. Not only was he productive with the bat, but he also showcased elite glovework in the field.
However, that production has been nowhere to be seen in the second half. In the opinion of Bradford Doolittle of ESPN, Abrams’ falloff has been the biggest failure for the team.
“Second-half CJ Abrams? Drawing conclusions by splitting half-seasons is a dubious practice, but nevertheless, Abrams’ falloff has been perplexing. Early in the season, it looked like Abrams had arrived as a right-now star. He had a .831 OPS with 15 homers and 15 steals at the All-Star break. Since then, he’s hit .182 with a .541 OPS. The Nationals would feel a lot better about this if Abrams were to finish strong,” Doolittle wrote in his stock watch for the league.
A swoon this extreme will raise some eyebrows. As the ESPN writer noted, breaking things down into half-seasons is a tough exercise. But, when the differences are this glaring, people will take notice.
The All-Star is going to record several career highs; doubles, home runs, RBI and walks an is close on several others.
That is certainly a plus. Second-half numbers like Abrams has produced would normally result in a player being sent down or putting up career-low production.
And, it goes to show just how elite his production was in the early going. One poor second-half performance shouldn’t change the franchise’s perception of him.
Trinity Rodman signs record deal with Washington Spirit
USWNT forward Trinity Rodman signed a three-year deal with the NWSL’s Washington Spirit. The deal makes Rodman the highest-paid female footballer in the world.
unbranded – Sport
Washington Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury has announced that she and her husband Matt are expecting a baby in July.
The couple made the announcement in a video on the Spirit’s social media channels, holding a baby goalkeeper jersey on the pitch at Audi Field.
Kingsbury becomes the most recent Spirit star to go on maternity leave, following defender Casey Krueger, midfielder Andi Sullivan and forward Ashley Hatch.
Sullivan gave birth to daughter Millie in July, while Hatch welcomed her son Leo in January.
Krueger announced she was pregnant with her second child in October.
Kingsbury has served as the Spirit’s starting goalkeeper since 2018, and has been named the NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year twice (2019 and 2021).
The 34-year-old has two caps with the U.S. women’s national team, and was named to the 2023 World Cup roster.
The club captain will leave a major void for the Spirit, who have finished as NWSL runner-up in back-to-back seasons.
Sandy MacIver and Kaylie Collins are expected to compete for the starting role while Kingsbury is on maternity leave.
The Spirit kick off their 2026 campaign on March 13 against the Portland Thorns.
YAKIMA, Wash. — Yakima could soon take a major step toward redesigning Sixth Avenue after the Washington State Public Works Board awarded the city a $985,600 loan.
The loan was approved for the design engineering phase of the Sixth Avenue project. The funding can also be used along Sixth Avenue for utility replacement and updated ADA use.
The Yakima City Council must decide whether to accept the award. If the council accepts it, the city’s engineering work will move forward with the design of Sixth Avenue.
The cost of installing trolley lines is excluded from the plan. The historic trolleys would need to raise the funds required to add trolley lines.
The award is scheduled to be discussed during next week’s City Council meeting.
Microsoft will ramp up its investment in the University of Washington.
Brad Smith, the company’s president, made the announcement at a press conference with University of Washington President Robert Jones on Tuesday.
That means hiring more UW graduates as interns at Microsoft, he said.
And he said all students, faculty, and researchers should have access to free, or at least deeply-discounted, AI.
“ Some of it is compute that Microsoft is donating, and some of it is pursuant to an agreement where, believe me, we give the University of Washington probably the best pricing that anybody’s gonna find anywhere,” Smith said. He assured the small group of reporters present that it would be “many millions of dollars of additional computational resources.”
The announcement today didn’t include any specific numbers.
But Smith said Microsoft has already invested $165 million in the UW over several decades.
He pointed to Jones’ vision to spur “radical collaborations with businesses and communities to advance positive change,” and eliminate “any artificial barriers between the university and the communities it serves.”
Microsoft’s goal is for AI to help UW researchers solve some of the world’s biggest problems without introducing new ones.
At Tuesday’s announcement, several research students were present to demonstrate how AI supports their work.
Amelia Keyser-Gibson is an environmental scientist at the UW. She’s using AI to analyze photographs of vines, to find which adapt best to climate change.
It’s a paradox: AI produces carbon emissions. At the same time, it’s also a new tool to help reduce them.
So how do those things square for Keyser-Gibson?
“ That’s a great question, and honestly, I don’t know the answer to that,” she said. “I’m highly aware that there’s a lot of environmental impact of using AI, but what I can say is that this has allowed us to make research innovations that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.”
“If we had had to manually annotate every single image that would’ve been an undergrad doing that for hours,” Keyser-Gibson continued. “And we didn’t have the budget. We didn’t have the manpower to do that.”
“AI exists. If we don’t use it as researchers, we’re gonna fall behind.”
Microsoft reports on its own carbon emissions. But like most AI companies, it doesn’t reveal everything.
That’s one reason another UW student named Zhihan Zhang is using AI to estimate how much energy AI is using.
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