Ticket sales are down (The Wash. Times) and Opening Day will not be a sellout again (The Post). Stan Kasten is not worried:

“There’s nothing more important than attendance,” Kasten said. “We wouldn’t have a business without the support of our fans. So sure, that’s important. But we have strong support in Washington. We’ve had it the first two years. and we’re seeing it again this year. We all understand we’re going to have a spike in ’08 in attendance … but we don’t take it for granted, and we’re going to have to keep working hard.”

I can’t help but think that they do. Co-owner Mark Lerner really wants a sellout “like a lot of those Opening Days with the Senators.”

SS Cristian Guzman’s spring has been encouraging (The Wash. Times), so much so that hitting coach Mitchell Page is raving about him:

“I look at the type of at-bats he’s having, and there’s nobody in camp having better at-bats,” the Washington Nationals’ hitting coach said. “I’m telling you right now, I don’t see a better hitter. I mean, every at-bat he has is a quality at-bat. If he carries it over to the season, he’s going to hit .290-plus and be an All-Star shortstop.”

Wouldn’t that be something? With Guzman, I would settle for .250 and taking at least four pitches in every at bat.

More raves for Kory Casto. If it were up to me, he’d be playing first base (instead of “let’s hope he plays well enough to trade Dimitri Young“) with Chris Snelling, Ryan Church and Austin Kearns in the outfield.

The Nats went 4-0 againist the Mets this spring, winning 5-3 (ESPN Boxscore)before 7,554. Jerome Williams didn’t have great stuff but pitched out of a couple of jams. The article also suggests the rotation will be “No. 1 John Patterson, No. 2 Shawn Hill, No. 3 Matt Chico, No. 4 Jason Bergmann and No. 5 Williams.” Between those five there were about three MLB wins last season.

USA Today has a season preview this morning; The Inky had one yesterday.

1B Dimitri Young and LHP Ray King had their contracts purchased (nationals.com) yesterday.