A couple quick things before we get into the Phillies.
With Bubba Starling getting called up, it brought renewed attention to the 2011 draft which was a hell of a draft. In recent times it's probably just passes the 2005 draft for the best, though that gap will probably widen with time. But those drafts are important because they signify the first and last drafts in the Nats... say "building window" where the Nats almost always had single digit picks. So 2 out of the 7 drafts when the Nats were looking to put together a franchise were historic. That's some good luck. Also let's not forget that when they found themselves with back to back #1 picks the picks those years were thought to be generational talents. That's some good luck too. Suffice to say that things came up Nats pretty much right when they needed it to.
I say this in part because of something from the comments yesterday. I noted that once Kieboom is up for good, which should be September at the latest, there is no one in the Nats organization that I will place a bet on being a good major leaguer. This hasn't been the case for me since before Strasburg was drafted. (For those of you not around then there was a lot of trying to convince Nats fans of the talent of Kory Casto and Chris Marrero). Stras begat Bryce begat Rendon begat Giolito begat Robles begat Kieboom* begat... ?
It was supposed to be Luis Garcia, but his AA perfomance has been poor. At his age it's not anything that would make you write off him making the majors. The fact he was so young and doing well in A ball that that is why he was supposed to be next. He could be two years older and you would still be ready to give him another year of evaluation in AA. But this season does take him off the "next up" track and puts him back to merely an intriguing prospect.**
I don't mean this to be an indictment on the Nats drafting acumen. More to say - drafting is hard and the Nats, when they needed to draft well, got a handful of breaks in terms of the talent available when they were drafting. Sometimes it pays to be lucky as well as good.
On to the Phillies series.
Offense
Since the Phillies series the primary story for the Nats was that Rendon and Soto keep hitting but the offense had been cooling. The Royals series though, with some poor pitching to feast on seems to have righted the ship. There's been promising developments - Dozier hitting better, Robles hitting better, Zimm doing ok upon return. But Kendrick, Adams, and of course Gomes struggling. There are ways to juggle it so none of those guys plays but it's going to be a bit of a guessing game on who's hot or not here and it may effect the Nats scoring. On the Phillies side you begain to see some waking up. Yes, Bryce was hitting but so were Bruce and Hoskin and Realmuto. Even Segura was knocking around singles. This was more the offense the Phillies expected to see this year.
Of course how much does the all-star break effect momentum?
Pitching
I've talked about the relatively easy road for the Nats arms but you can only evaluate based on what's been done. To that effect Grace and Guerra are currently holding down the pen. Doolittle, Sipp, and Rodney have had good results but the stats are shakier on them. It's still not a full pen. The Phillies pen has gotten some excellent performances recently, most importantly from a returning Tommy Hunter. The bad news is they've come from random guys. Arms like Nicasion and Morgan who they were more expecting to lean on have been bad. It's a worse version of the guessing game the Nats have to do with the lineup. There using the wrong guys might lose production, here they might lose games.
The starters for the Nats are going to be Stras, Corbin, and Max and the reset after ASG matches up exactly with the Phillies series. No hard decisions required. Max has been dominant against the chumps, but so has Corbin - who's pitched to a 0.96 ERA in his last 4 games. Stras has been shakier only looking great in his very last start on July 3rd. For the month of June he actually put up a 5.70 ERA, gave up 6 homers and watched the other team slug nearly .500 against him.
The Phillies counter with Pivetta, Nola, and likely Arrieta. Pivetta is all over the place. He came back from the minors awesome (3 hit 6IP 0ER vs Dodgers!) but recently he's looked like the guy who got sent down. He's given up 9 homers in his last 4 games. If he was pitching on normal rest I'd expect the Nats to shell him but the extended rest makes him a complete Wild Card in my book. Nola has finally seen a return to form pitching to an 0.61 ERA in HIS past four games. Arrieta might be pitching injured and frankly was only ok when he wasn't. Rest may help him and he did handle the Nats pretty well last time, but there were a lot of ball hit where they were that may not happen again.
The match-ups don't look as favorable to me this time. The Nats are hitting better then they have been, but the Phillies are hot. The Phillies pen isn't in great shape but neither is the Nats. The Max game against the gimpy Arrieta is a pencilled in win, but the other two are more toss-ups then you might have thought. Still, even in Philly, you like the Nats taking two of three here and gaining another game on at least the Phillies.
*Soto? He passed Robles all while we still liked Robles. He's a chain bypasser.
**Another way to look at it is if Garcia doesn't have a strong finish he's likely to drop in the prospect rankings. That's something none of the other guys really did. Ok technically Robles did but that was more people passing him than an indictment on him. Going from like 5 to 10 isn't bad. Giolito did at the end too but after four seasons of increasing expectations. No one went from "oooh let's look at this guy" to "eh maybe not". That's more of an AJ Cole experience
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
25 comments:
Um harper I hate to tell you the Pivetta matchup favors us greatly. We absolutely crush him.
We hit a collective .364/.448/.707 slash-line over 30.1 innings against him. It's a real thing, I don't know of another pitcher whose gone over 20 innings against us we've hit better it's not a push or a tossup your out of your mind. I'll grant you nola although he doesn't exactly light it up against us either.
Also going based on how hot a team is aren't we the hottest team in baseball? We are 8-2 over are last 10 they are 5-5.
You're too down on Garcia.
He started terribly but hit .312 in June and is hitting .394 so far in July (in only 8 games, so that's not a new gear or anything).
No power and no patience and the D hasn't been great, but he's the youngest qualified hitter in AA. Struggling and then making adjustments in that league at that age is not a disappointment.
What's a fair definition of a good major leaguer? At least 3 seasons of at least 2 WAR? I'd offer you even money he'll provide that.
i mean the other thing to talk about with Garcia is...what position would he play for us? i guess he could still be 5 years away from making the big leagues, but i thought trea and kieboom had a lock on middle IF
Jimmy - eh after watching Price beat the Yanks in the playoffs after start after start of getting killed by them I've given up the "we hit him well" analysis. I'll give you the Nats are better and hotter than the Phillies but that was even more true last time. I'm just giving the Phillies some credit they can win one at home. I don't think that's being too down on the Nats.
Anon - he's hitting .182 in his last 3 games! (Honestly though the June number is nice but it's like 25 singles and a few doubles - which is
I'd take that bet. There's so much that can happen negatively.
Let's look at it this way - none of the guys I named (or Soto) had a extended time as bad as Garcia is having right now. They all had more impressive extended time than Garcia has had so far. Like Robles (who isn't doing super great in the majors - should come around but you can see a 1 in 8 future where he doesn't) his WORST minor league extended stay is better than any of Garcia's three.
There's no WOW here. There's not really that power - you have to say it will come. Or plate control - same. It's just impressive he can hang at this age. SO today I don't have that feeling that - oh yeah he'll make it and be good. Kieboom isn't up yet so maybe in the next 30 games Garcia will make me change my mind.
How can you have a meaningful discussion about Nats draft luck+accumen without mentioning the fact that they could have selected Trout with #10 comp pick instead of Drew Storen? In a 2 year span they could have had Stras, Trout, and Bryce. Unreal.
Harper, you seem to have a blind spot when it comes to analyzing the Phillies' starting pitchers who are not Aaron Nola. They are bad. Period. There's no reason to think they are going to be anything other than bad in any given bad, other than the fact that sometimes even bad pitchers can pitch well (or pitch poorly and have good results).
Let's look at Pivetta. This is at least the second time you've pointed out that he had a good start against the Dodgers when he came back from the minors. Here is who Pivetta is: he has a 5.84 ERA and a 5.91 FIP in 2019; his career ERA is 5.42 and his career FIP is 4.56. He's had some decent minor league numbers, but nothing eye opening and he has no prospect pedigree. Like, I can't understand why anyone would expect Pivetta to be any better than Erick Fedde. Fedde at least has had some reasonably consistent and good minor league numbers (not this year, though) and has prospect pedigree. Pivetta has a lot more MLB innings pitched, but he's pitched terribly. Zips projects Pivetta to a 4.99 ERA rest of season, and gives Fedde a 4.82. The extended rest cannot turn Pivetta into something other than he actually is, which is a shitty starting pitcher.
I'm not going to go through the same exercise with Arrieta, but we're talking about a guy who was once an excellent pitcher, but who hasn't been that guy in many years. His ERA/FIP this year is 4.67/5.07. There is not a good pitcher in hiding here!
The Nats are big favorites in games 1 and 3 because of the pitching matchups. Maybe they don't win those games because anything can happen. But please stop pretending that the Phillies' non-Nola starting pitchers are anything other than terrible.
Arrieta is such a joke. He is living off one good year in 2014 and one great year in 2015. I remember when Strasburg signed his extension Arrieta had all this bluster about how he would never sign an extension, he would never sign anything team friendly because he knows how much he is worth and he is going to get paid.
Meanwhile Stras' contract is worth literally $100 million more than his and Stras has 10 more WAR in 100 less innings over their careers.
Never liked Arrieta due to his tough guy act and totally unearned swagger/alpha personality.
Kinda wish we had Scherzer slotted to go on the same day as Nola since he's most likely to give the best performance for the phillies.
You raised some interesting issues in your preamble to the Phillies matchup.
Of course drafting can be hit-and-miss. (Just to put this could-have-had-Mike-Trout stuff to bed once and for all: Even the Angels selected Randal Grichuk ahead of Trout.) Still, I'm not so sure the Nats have been THAT bad.
Kieboom currently looks like the only big leaguer on the farm. He was the Nats' first pick in the 2016 draft. But from that same draft, their 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th pick have all been traded away (Dunning, Neuse, Luzardo and Daniel Johnson respectively). Say what you will about Nats' drafting, obviously other teams found those picks attractive (and a source of consternation, long after the fact, for some of the commentators on this site).
I know there's a sort of rule-of-thumb before an organization concludes when a prospect becomes a suspect. I'm not sure the Nats are about to give up on Garcia in the immediate future. Like Yasul Antuna, Garcia was an international signing, and the Nats sank a lot of dough into both. If, however, Garcia becomes trade bait and some other organization begins panting for him, the whining on this site should begin within. . . oh, about 14 months.
Though it's probably a futile exercise--your occasional specialty--I wonder what you make of the Nats' selections in this year's draft. Only half of their first 10 picks are pitchers, versus 7 of 10 last year, and 9 of 10 in 2017. True, the pitching class in this year's draft may not have been the strongest, but the Nats seem to have paid more attention to hitting than in previous drafts.
I'll wait for your answer in two years' time.
Circling back to Garcia, I think a big part of the problem is your comparison set is crazy skewed. You've called out the 7 guys who were his predecessors as the "Nats' Top Prospect". But those among them are 4 who are at a level that is just not a fair comparison.
Stras generated 22.4 WAR during his rookie contract. Bryce 30.6. Rendon 28.3 (with 75 games to go). And Soto is already at 6 through a season and a half and projects to be one of the top 10 players in baseball over the next 5 years.
So, yes. Nothing we've seen from Garcia would make anyone think he has a decent chance to join that class of star player. It could happen like 3% of the time or something because there's always a chance, but no one would expect that outcome.
But that's an unreasonable bar for almost any prospect and not, for me at least, the bar that one must clear to be a "good major leaguer". I'd set it closer to my line from earlier: 3+ years at 2+ WAR. An extended arc as at least an average regular.
And for the other top prospects of the past, I don't agree they have never had stretches of similarly bad performance. Giolito in the second half of 2016 (July on). He was 21 pitching in AA. He pithed 61.2 innings. 4.15 ERA, 1.34 WHIP. 7.9 SO/9. That's not good, and adjusting for the Eastern League's low offense and the differences in their ages, pretty much in the ballpark for what we've seen this year from Garcia. (Which is also to say, that Giolito at the end of 2016 did not look like the likely star player he does now).
Robles also struggled when he was called up to Potomac as a 19 year old in the second half 2016. Not as badly as Garcia this year, but below league average and at the same age at a lower level.
Kieboom had terrible first months with both Potomac and Harrisburg when he was first called up to those levels in 2018 (as a 20 year old) but he adjusted and kept moving forward. Not a perfect parallel for what Garcia is going through, but also not a situation where their performance is clearly dominating Garcia's.
I'd argue that Garcia is close in value to where those 3 guys were at that point, though probably at the bottom of the group (at least behind Giolito and Robles, who both peaked as top 5 prospects, maybe about even with Kieboom).
I guess my main objection isn't with the point that "Garcia is going to be the worst top prospect the Nats have had in a while." but with the point that "This year has been a disappointment and Garcia is less valuable today than he was 6 months ago."
I also would quibble with the implication that his recent improvement is just random sequencing luck and not predictive of a new true talent level. I expect him to keep hitting singles at a decent pace and finish the year at something like 285/320/340. It sounds like you expect him to basically repeat this half and end at 265/290/310. I guess we'll see.
You're right that he needs to improve his power and patience, though, or his ceiling is going to be pretty limited. But that shouldn't surprise us -- most 19 year olds aren't a finished product at the plate yet, and we shouldn't expect them to be.
Let's win tonight.
To add to Anon 12:18, Garcia isn't playing in AAA or the Majors where they play with a ball that even I could have 10 HR/year
Anon 12:18 - i think we're circling the same idea. I am basically saying "Garcia is the worst top prospect the Nats have had in a while" Or at least I'm meaning too.
His year is disappointing but only in that vein. If he were putting up a .290 / .330 / .400 line in AA (which I think some were expecting and we were kind of being sold on) he'd be the next top 15ish prospect to grace the Nats minor league system, continuing this fun run. Instead he's probably going to be about where he is now. 60-70? He's certainly less valuable in that case bc he's essentially sitting in the same prospect spot but a year older.
But it DOESN'T mean he's not valuable (he is) or that in comparison to a normal prospect this year is a disappointment (it isn't so far - I mean I guess he could totally tank but I'd be surprised)
I'm not even saying its worse than a 50/50 shot he is a useful player as you describe. I'm saying I can't look at him and feel secure about it like I did with everyone else. Sort of - they were SO good that anything below useful player would be a surprise. For Garcia if we traveled 10 years in the future and found out he peaked with one 2.5 WAR year and had a handful of ~1 WAR seasons I wouldn't be shocked.
Max missing his start now...
Well. On the one hand, we win the first game and Stras now has added an “okay” game to his “excellent” game and maybe is out of his June meh period.
On the other hand, no Max on Sunday, which has turned into an Arrieta vs Sanchez toss up. So we have a win in the bag, but have two toss ups left, and really should not be favored in either game. I think we end up taking 2 of 3 in the series.
@Harper. I think you’re a bit too low on Robles. He’s been as advertised on defense and has some pop (yeah everybody has pop these days but whatever, juiced ball pop of 25 homers and non-juiced ball pop of 18 homers, plus doubles). He’s going to end up having a 3+ WAR rookie year. Whether he ends up as a good regular, an all star, or an absolute stud is still not resolved....but his floor is solid starting CF.
My main hope is he changes his approach to be more patient at the plate and up his BB% rate. Weirdly, his HBPsactually jack up his OBP a bit, but you want him to be selective. The odd thing is he doesn’t seem to have a bad eye at all. It’s more that he just swings at the first strike he sees even if it’s a pitchers pitch and ends ABs early. A guy with his speed should be seeing a lot of pitches, focusing on contact, and lowering that K rate/upping BB rate. But we are certainly getting the defense and XBH power.
We may also be seeing the results of him losing a years worth of development last year and being hurt so long. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a much better second half.
Let's win tonight.
I AM ABSOLUTELY RIPPING MY HAIR OUT THAT HOWIE KENDRICK AND KURT SUZUKI ARE NOT STARTING FOR THIS TEAM THE MAJORITY OF THE TIME. Gomes has not hit the ball with authority in like a month once and is about to dive below the Mendoza line with no power. Meanwhile suzuki is an above average batter. And we have a guy with a .900 OPS who gets a hit basically every time he pinch hits. For gods sake get these guys in the everyday lineup as much as they can and still stay fresh. There is no argument for playing Zim over Kendrick at 1B. There is no argument for playing Gomes over Suzuki (unless pitchers are literally demanding it or suzuki is tired). But it is brutal to watch this team struggle to score with the bottom half of the lineup a giant gaping hole offering zero protection to soto.
I gotta say, going to the city of brotherly love and getting to hear nothing but crickets after that Soto bomb was absolutely priceless
Let's win today.
Tough one. They fought back. Would’ve been nice to win since we have some pretty blah pitchers coming up. I still don’t know why Kendrick isn’t starting at 1st 2/3 of the time. It makes no sense to me. But whatever. Obviously they’ve decided Kendrick is a bench player.
After such a strong come back, it was disconcerting to see Grace out there. My initial thought: "This won't work out well". So it came to pass.
No Doolittle available --- Nats bullpen vs Phillies bullpen is a toss-up. I don't fault Martinez on this one. We won the series and were playing with house money. Get out of Philly and go beat up Baltimore.
Post a Comment