So we don't obsess over if the Nats are turning a corner and if they are doing it fast enough, why not take a stroll around the majors and see whats up?
NL East - you know what's going on here right? Well maybe not, because while you've been cheering on some good baseball finally coming around, the Phillies have been streaking, winning 9 of their last 12. The NL East no longer has the worst first place team! (Cubs at 31-23) or second place! (plenty of choices). It's like a real grown-up division.
The former Nat you are probably most interested in is Bryce and "how's he doing" isn't straightforward. How's he doing in general? Ok. Hitting for power and walking but striking out a ton and carrying a low average. Better recently (a .304 / .344 / .589 line since bottoming out at .219). Still not a mess in the field - never trust one year statistics (which goes too for Bryce this year if he ends up as "good") How's he doing for that contract? Pretty miserable. He's probably playing like a 10-15 million dollar player and getting paid twice that. The Phillies can afford that but it's a lot of money off the table. Do the Phillies need him regardless? Oh god yes. Even before Herrerra's troubles the 3rd OF OPSs were 64 (Herrera), 47 (Gosselin), 21 (Williams), -17 (Quinn), -64 (Altherr). So he's doing all right and helping the Phillies (and they are winning), but he's not earning his pay (but the winning has kept most boos away)
Ramos is doing ok for the Mets (.256 / .337 / .375) they probably expected more but they also were living with a lot less before him.
Nick Pivetta pitched himself out of the rotation. Blevins (ATL) is at the end of his career.
NL Central - Milwaukee has almost clawed it's way back to the top over the Cubs, while the Cardinals have freefell (free-falled?) going 6-18 in last 24 (last series won? vs the Nats!) to drop to 4th. Pirates and Reds, who are a little snake-bit, maintain their pretty decent for bottom of division status.
Gio has stopped the crazy great pitching but overall is still a positive innings eater the Brewers hoped for. His last start though - 102 pitches over 4 2/3 innings giving up 4 runs... if you want a reminder why it was time for him to go watch that. Roark has settled down and has been dependable. Not sure he can keep that HR rate down as far as it is, but here's not there to dominate.
Albers is ok in the pen for the Brew Crew. Kintzler is still pitching well for the Cubs, a bit homer prone but otherwise strong. Tim Collins is looking strong for them, but in Iowa. Vazquez is having an All-Star closer season. Wieters is annoyingly doing great in his role backing up Molina.
NL West - Dodgers have separated from the Padres/Rockies/D-backs who all sit around .500. Giants are an afterthought.
Murphy had been doing so poorly (OPS down to .572) that you wondered if his career was over but in the past two weeks looks like he has woken up. I still think he can't help but have a decent season in the thin air Colorado but we'll see if it matters at all.
Stammen is doing fine in the pen for the Padres. Greg Holland is looking to join Felipe at the Mid-summer classic. Desmond is still taking the Rockies money for below average play but he was doing worse as well. And they do love him in the clubhouse. Gott was doing well but is hurt now, supposed to be back on Tuesday.
AL East - Yankees and Rays are fighting it out for the top spot, while the Red Sox have expectedly come back into contention. The Blue Jays are just biding time until the trade deadline. The Os are the worst team in baseball
Sandy Leon is still providing poor back-up play for the Red Sox living off that odd 2016. Edwin Jackson's record breaking stint shows you why 13 teams gave up on him. Jimmy Cordero (TOR) is the rare Nats reliever not thriving elsewhere.
AL Central - Minnesota not only still holds their surprising lead but have the best record in baseball. It won't last - they are pushed to these heights by some ridiculous best years ever (See : Schoop Castro Odorizzi) but they probably have enough talent in guys like Sano, Kepler, Berrios to hold on. And for all we know Cleveland, who didn't try this off-season, might just throw in the towel anyway. White Sox are fighting to show they are good enough to land FAs next year. Tigers and Royals are bad.
Lucas Giolito has finally broken out is seems. He's flirted with decent results before but he's now pitched decent in 7 straight outings, and very toog to great in 4 of the last 5. We hadn't seen that before. He's also back up on the radar gun and hitting high 90s when he needs to. This does look like an honest to good ness breakthrough. Now that doesn't mean he's a staff ace, but from what I've seen I'd be surprised if he finished this season with anyone doubting he's a Top 3 in a rotation guy and obviously there is upside. He turns 25 so he's not old either. Easy to forget how young he was.
Jefry Rodriguez is maybe hold onto back of a rotation spot good, but you knew that already. Clippard is back and pitching with the Indians and is doing Clippard things (being good but somehow not being appreciated for it). AJ Cole is in Cleveland too and has done ok but 9 innings! I don't buy it! Reynaldo Lopez isn't having the same breakout as Lucas, in fact, he's been pretty bad. So as a guy who always like Lucas more... Ha! Kelvin Herrera has plummented allowing runs in 9 of his last 14 appearance and multiple runs in each of his last 3. ZNN pitched poorly, pitched well, got hurt which about sums up his time in Detroit.
AL West - Houston still dominates. After a slow start Oakland is back up to two and after a hot start Seattle their 6-23 run makes St Louis look like unstoppable juggernauts. I'd say "poor Seattle" but I've found many Seattle fans to be the most insufferable Yankee haters outside of Boston so "whatever Seattle"
Brad Peacock still lives and he's back as a starter for Houston and doing well. Last year he started one game, two years ago 21. But they seem to know what they are doing with him. Speaking of the Gio trade - Milone is pitching with the Mariners and is an ok stop gap. Austin Adams was picked up by Seattle and is doing great. Shwan Kelley (TEX) is also doing serviceable work in the pen. Treinen is not as unhittable as last year but he's still fine. Asdrubal (TEX) probably is at his last stop. The "what the hell is Brian Goodwin doing being good" has been slowly leaking air all month. Numbers are still good but the .240 no power no patience that has been chipping away at his fast start is probably the real Brian.
Probably missed a few but the bullpen thing is striking. Last year the Nats chose to move on from Madson, Kintzler, Kelley, Jefry Rodriguez, Milone, Collins, Holland, Gott, Cordero, Herrera, Cole, Enny Romero, and Austin Adams. That's 13 arms. As of today Kinztler, Kelley, Holland, Gott, and Adams would make up one of the best pens in baseball. Milone, Collins, And Rodriguez, would probably be useful depth. That's an almost 75% miss rate in evaluation. They aren't all OMG what did you do! moves. I can see moving on from Gott, J-Rod, Milone. Time may bring some of them back to Earth. But still when it seems like you were a "trade Doolittle, make Herrera the closer" away from being 100% wrong - that's bad.
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12 comments:
"As of today Kinztler, Kelley, Holland, Gott, and Adams would make up one of the best pens in baseball."
I think that goes to show you how random RP success is. If we entered the season with that collection (plus Doolittle), we would have been blaming Rizzo for not doing more. Of course, this group is better than the guys we have currently (not my point), but it just goes to show you don't need to spend 1/3 of your payroll on RP.
Sometimes it's a question of degrees. Kintzler and Kelley, I think we could have said, "I don't know if they're going to be great, but they'll probably be better than Grace/Miller/Suero/Sipp/Barraclough." Adams and Gott are pretty unpredictable. Holland...obviously, I wish with hindsight that Rizzo had spent the Rosenthal money on Holland instead, but it was a choice of gambles (given that the only reason we had him around to pitch well for us last year was that he stank on ice at the beginning of the year, plus aging, versus the return-from-injury risk for Rosenthal; now, of course, we know better...).
On the other hand, basically every non-Doolittle reliever in the bullpen managed to hit their worst-case projection. Rizzo did not assemble a collection of high-quality studs, but there's no reason why the pitchers we have shouldn't make every game where the lead is less than the number of innings remaining in the game into a gut-wrencher. That goes beyond "bad bullpen construction" and into "luck so bad you wonder if Bryce hired someone to curse us on the way outta town."
I'm also kind of curious why the organization jettisoned Vidal Nuno without giving him a shot.
Yeah, not every reliever is a complete crapshoot and part of building a good bullpen is having enough non-crapshoot arms, coupled with enough depth that you have people to call up when 1 or 2 inevitably blow up.
The Greg Holland one is especially irritating. He pitched OK for the Nats last year, and could have been had for low $. Why not sign that bird in the hand?
Thanks for the rundown. Crazy to think of all the former Nats still in significant RP roles around the league. That if anything points to an organizational problem with the Nats and their bullpen construction/development/management.
Also...before anyone thinks we've turned a corner, we're still the 3rd worst team in the NL. And if you think we aren't actually the 3rd worse, we're playing the team that would supplant us as such. Unless we sweep them there, we'll still be 3rd worst. Blerg.
@Wsgats I agree, I'll get excited when the bullpen can string a solid week together. Even during this winning streak they still have to build a big enough lead for the runs the pen is going to give up.
Salary of Rosenthal: 8M (1M buyout included)
Combined salaries of Holland/Kintzler: 8.25M
Considering what a huge risk Rosenthal was (down in his last season AND recovering from TJ), signing him was a huge unforced error. Rizzo blackballs players on occasion, and that's what he did with Kintzler, much to his DIS-credit. I have also never understood why we have never brought Clippard back. When it comes to relievers, I can never follow Rizzo's logic on the non-closers.
I agree ^^ especially when all it took was a minor league deal to get Clippard in CLE. Ridiculous that we couldn't kick the tires on him. But, maybe he didn't want to come here? Who knows.
I never liked the Yunel Escobar for Trevor Gott trade when it happened. Granted, Escobar would've had no position to play that season (or they wouldn't have signed Murphy! Both choices equally suck!) but they could've gotten a whole bunch more I believe. And the fact they pretty much had no intention of Gott making the major league bullpen that year (I believe he spent all or close to all year at AAA Syracuse) and than gave up on him after his brief cameo's in 2017 & 2018 made me even matter at the trade. At the worst Escobar in 2016 would've been superior IF depth options to Difo & Espinosa. Difo vs. Kershaw to end the '16 NLDS was like a 7th grader going up against the best high school senior pitching prospect in the country, he had absolutely no chance to put the ball in play, he was completely over matched. Not saying Escobar would've hit a home run to tie that game but he definitely had a better chance to put the ball in play, get a hit, and keep that line moving.
Harper
Bryce is doing 23% worse than anyone could have predicted so under your line of reasoning the Phils got a steal. The interesting thing is that at 28 he can't hit a fastball over the plate. His swing and miss rate at fastball is second highest in the majors. No problem. Some people thought he was worth 500M. You do remember those articles I quoted. As I said the Phils got a steal at 330M.
As for Rosenthal he has been a disaster. But if I went back to the spring post about his signing, how many of you said back then that it was a disaster? Sorry but I don't remember anyone being negative back then. After the fact everyone is a genius. Maybe I will take the time to look up your quotes on the Rosenthal signing. It should be eye opening.
Is there a bigger arsehole on the internet than ssln? If so, I haven't come across them. Good grief man, what's your boggle?
Don't feed the animals.
I hope that Bourque works out. A couple years ago, I saw Glover in the pipeline and rising fast. Now the same with Bourque since last year. All the makings of good relievers. Would be a shame if putting a curley-W on their chest is the reason they both might crash and burn. Something that seems to be working in Potomac and Harrisburg every year doesn't translate to DC. I know that in the lower minors, pitching miles ahead, but for these call-ups to fall off a cliff when they get to DC is really frustrating. Wonder what Sam Narron and Michael Tejera are doing that Lilliquist and Menhart apparently are not doing? Who knows, but my guess is preparation, communication and sticking to a routine - all pillars in the minors. Some coaches at the MLB level just give the ball to the guy and tell him to do what he wants to. For the wrong player, who needs that constant guidance, it could be a disaster.
That's why I loved Maddux and how he made our pitchers keep the book the day before their start, something we had to do in high school. A little humbling, but makes them start dialing-in on their opponent 24 hours before first pitch. And limits all the dicking around, which pros are not immune to. Scherzer is a goof on the days he doesn't pitch, but he can flip that switch. Not everyone can. For those who can't, someone like Maddux is the most important person for them on that team. Someone to keep them accountable for their routine and preparation.
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