Bryce played and looked fine. Matt Adams played and looked fine. Scratch those off the "to be placed onto worry lists if they weren't playing by today" lists.
Jorge Castillo from the Post got Martinez' update about Eaton and Murphy and it's not great. But I mean that literally. It's as probably expected. It is not great.
Eaton is still in a middling zone that allows you to worry even though we still have at least 2 weeks of leeway to play with before you should honestly be concerned.
Murphy is still progressing slowly. Now hitting off a tee and doing soft toss hitting, but still not putting any real pressure on that knee. It's a slow ramp up... which is what we expect for a guy that at best had mid-April as a return date.
Nothing new is really happening otherwise
The Phillies are still trying ton convince fans that they need to test out all these "great young arms" rather than sign the 1-2 FAs that would make them a WC contender this year.
The Mets are looking at Steven Matz pull the rare "Oh - this is something in Spring that looks like you should actually worry about" while they too try to put off signing a real picher because of Lugo and Gsellmen and other AAA types.
Meanwhile the Braves and Marlins half-try to put up a team in a year where the Braves see if there's anything here or decide to scrap it before it ever got started and the Marlins start their scorched- Earth rebuilding.
The Nationals then are free to pull their "this is good enough" strategy that has led them to 4 titles (and 2 playoff misses when arguably a little more effort might have made a difference) in 6 seasons.
Yawn. Let's see if Arrieta (or Lynn or Cobb) drop into the NL East and spice this up a bit. The Phillies are ALMOST are interesting. The Mets are ALMOST a threat. But right now it's business as usual for the Washignton Nationals and the also-rans.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
One thing I'll say for the Mets, they seem to have learned there shouldn't be a "Harvey Rule" with regard to letting players dictate their use. They are going pretty slowly with deGrom, for instance.
Robles is hitting .273; cut the bum! .....at least Murphy hit off a tee today
Who is Wander Suero? Does he spend 2018 in AAA to prove last year wasn't a fluke?
Interested to see if Seth Romero ever makes the majors, and if he does, is it with the Nats?
I think the wildcard in the division this year is Harvey for the Mets. If he is truly healthy and that is a BIG if, the Mets could be sneaky good. I don't put much value in spring stats, but he has looked pretty good this spring. Thor, deGrom & a healthy Harvey could make things interesting for the Nats.
I am not sure why people are fretting so much about Eaton and Murphy. There is a much better success rate with the procedure Murph had. It takes time to let the joint surface heal to allow more progressive loading of it. There is nothing pointing to doom there at this stage. He was never going to be ready before opening day. As for Eaton. ACL repairs are pretty much small potatoes in today's world. Add the meniscus tear and high ankle sprain to the original injury and it is easier to see why they are taking it slow. Again, there is no definitive information pointing to something dire going on.
My fear isn't that they won't be able to come back from these injuries; I'm fairly confident they will. But not getting this spring tune-up messes with a lot of players who try to come back later in the year (be it late-April or beyond). Timing in hitting is crucial to your mechanics and that is what this time of the year is about for all these guys. I'd rather them hit the ground running as opposed to adjusting on the fly and getting buried in a .190 hole after a month or so of playing time. Hoping that's not the case.
I was in West Palm on Sunday and watched Eaton take BP in the cages. He looked good. My guess is it's running that is the hold up.
Separately, Suero looked like a beast in striking out the side in his one inning of work.
Anon, I am watching Harvey closely. I wonder whether him entering his FA year is going to give him a kick in the rear end and he delivers say, even a 3.5-3.7 ERA year of 180 innings. I agree that he is bigger than anybody else in the division. You know Thor and DeGrom will be phenomenal. Matz I assume will be hurt or bad. Wheeler you know he won’t be either horrible or elite. Harvey has a gigantic range of outcomes
Bx, those are my thoughts exactly - with him being in a contract year, he has something to prove. Matz/Wheeler will be ineffective or hurt or both. If Harvey gives them anything at all, they could be a potential problem.
Arietta apparently to the Phillies for 3/$75. I think this move makes perfect sense for them in a way it made no sense at all for the Nats: they have huge amounts of money available so some overspending won't hurt them; their young starters are variable enough that he might be better than any of them except Nola (whereas for the Nats he's not likely to be any better than a fifth starter*, and the real reason we'd want him is fan nerves that Gio can't cut it in October despite being better than Arietta in the regular season), and the three-year length means that if he crashes they'll be clean out of it before their good young players start getting expensive.
Personally, I think the relief from the "every overpriced Boras client will end up with the Nats" narrative is worth any damage he does against us during the season--though I won't be at all sorry if his decline continues, of course!
*Do I think Arietta will be better than Cole or Fedde? Yes, I think so, for 2018 at least. Do I think he's $25M+draft picks better than Cole or Fedde? He'd basically have to repeat 2014 if not 2015 for that.
Post a Comment