Sweetspotting the Nats

...and the Marquis trade value slide begins. On the flip side Nix's value is holding quite nicely. Oh well, the Nats were due for a "market correction". Let's hope it's light and brief.

Some fun diversions

Expansion Draft

The guys over at The Platoon Advantage did an fake expansion draft asking us various Sweetspot bloggers to come up with protected lists for our teams. It was an interesting exercise especially because I don't focus too much on minor leaguers, but I gave it my best. Here's who I lost.

1st round - Mike Morse : Whoops. In my defense when I first made the list Morse was just coming out of his funk and Adam LaRoche was still starting at first. Of course that wasn't when I submitted the list (a couple weeks later) so I had time to correct this after Morse heated up and LaRoche went down for the season. It's not a terrible loss, certainly not in the long run. Morse will be 30 next year and has limited major league stats to back up his success. Still if I had to do it again, I wouldn't have left him out there.

What I probably should have done is left Werth hanging out there. While it would have been a psychological blow if he was grabbed, that contract is so bad that I can't imagine either one of these teams would take it - even if they wanted a name player to draw in fans.

2nd round - Ross Detwiler : I'm fine with this. He's been pitching better lately but the Nats have better and younger pitching prospects and with Straburg and ZNN inked in to the rotation for the immediate future, I don't see Ross as anything more than a back of the rotation guy. Older prospects are what you hope to lose in these things.

3rd round - Jesus Flores : Also doesn't bother me. I do think he'll get back to hitting better, but the Nats don't have a need for him. Again on the older side for a "prospect"

Take a look at the draft here:
Round 1
Round 2 & 3
Protected Lists


Trading for CF

I contacted a few Sweetspotters about trade possibilities concerning CFs (since that seemed to be of most interest to the "maybe, possibly we win now" crowd) and hashed things out with a couple.

Nick over at Nick's Twins Blog said that a Span trade is a non-starter. Not because the Twins wouldn't trade Span in theory. It's possible with Ben Revere developing that Span could be considered expendable (though they'd rather deal the bad fielding, sooner to FA Delmon Young) But with the Twins surging and Denard out with a concussion, there are too many unknowns to make a sensible deal. If they collapse and Span can come back then it's worth discussing. There's not a lot of time for that to happen though. One thing he did note is the twins are interested in power when it comes to offensive players and that is something the Nats don't have a lot of themselves.

Logan at Blake Street Bulletin was really open to a Dexter Fowler deal and if you look at his 2011 stats you can see why. Fowler is all promise. He was so impressive in the minors and so fairly blah in two years in the majors before being terrible this year. This season he started bad, got jerked around, and now seems like he might never put it together. It's like he already played CF for the Nats! Given his current state Fowler could be had cheaper than most other options but still not cheap. We agreed on Tom Milone for Fowler, which of course is meaningless nonsense, (unless proposition 304 passes, and we all pray it does) but I wouldn't be surprised if that's about the price. A Top 10ish Nats prospect that projects into the majors sooner rather than later. They like Milone because control matters in Coors. I don't mind giving him up because if you like the way Peacock's progressing, Milone starts to get squeezed out of a future rotation.