Photo used under a Creative Commons license with MissChatter.

Some baseball news to whet your appetite before today’s postseason doubleheader: the Washington Nationals have announced that Mike Rizzo, the team’s general manager who successfully signed phenoms Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper, has been signed to a five-year contract extension. Rizzo was also given a promotion to “Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations,” and he will reportedly be assuming some of the duties left by former team president Stan Kasten, who resigned in September. It’ll be difficult to find someone who wouldn’t approve of the move — Rizzo has rejuvenated the team’s farm system and has been rather successful with what many would argue is a hardly glamorous position. Rizzo’s made some solid moves — picking up Matt Capps on the cheap, then trading him for highly-thought-of catching prospect Wilson Ramos, for example.

Although it has to be said — we did find the way that this line from the team’s press release was worded exemplary of baseball’s ability to quantify most anything, even if it’s based on random scheduling produced before the season starts: “Washington’s 10-game improvement tied for the fourth-best in MLB this season and trailed only San Diego (+15), Cincinnati (+13) and Tampa Bay (+12), all three of which either qualified for the post-season or played games with post-season implications on the final day of the season.” Hey, maybe next season, Rizzo will assemble a team who has the good fortune to experience the coincidence in which they are involved in a game on the final day of the season which has “post-season implications”! One can only hope.