Lester and now Hand. Very quickly in lieu of the larger posts
Lester - meh. 1 year, 5 mill basically tells you what it is. He's here to fill in the 4-5 spot with innings and not terrible pitching. The former is very likely. they guy is a horse who hasn't missed time... well ever. You want 170+ innings you'll probably not have a better bet from someone who turned 37 a few weeks ago.the latter is less so. The guys stuff is on an inexorable slide last year striking out the fewest men of his career (6.2 per 9 last year) and by far the fewest since he was a pup of 24 (6.5 per 9). Granted 2019 was more normal so who's to say? Still if you are worried he's improved his control to counter this decline. His numbers in the past couple years better than the couple before that, BUT he's getting hit like crazy Worst and 4th worst H/9 of his career and giving up homers too (worst and 2nd worst).
The take away is the guy is getting worse. Far more hittable. Even if he can K more and keep his walks down it's not like he's elite in either case. When you aren't doing those two great you need to keep the hits and homers in check and he's doing the opposite of that. Best case is he struggles along with a 4.50 ERA and does the job. Worst case is he flames out and doesn't help the Nats at all. I can't see anything much better, sorry
Hand on the other... hand is great! He's not old. He's been very good to fantastic for 5 seasons. Healthy too! Last years numbers were probably an aberration BABIP low, BB/9 way low for his career, LOB% low. But even if they all regress to his normal he's still going to be very good. This is a no downside move. With Harris, who was good last year and historically is very good in recent years. The Nats should have a very good back end of the pen. After that they only need one of the other guys to hit to have a real formidable back end and if two do - that's a deep pen.
Hudson probably isn't as bad as last year's gopher ball pitcher but he's probably merely ok. 2019 is a fluke year. Tanner Rainey definitely has swing and miss stuff but a .129 BABIP last year is not going to be repeated. The question is how real the decrease in his walk rate is. If so I'd bet on him. Finnegan I'm probably rank last just because he's a guy that relies on keeping the ball in the pack and little else. Decent Ks, bad walks, normal hits... yeah if he gives up just a couple more homers he's a guy that could see his ERA jump easy. But again - only one has to hit here. Or someone out of the blue! An Albers like FA signing. Some random rookie. Whatever.
One thing to note here - even though these guys are new to the Nats they aren't young. Rainey is 28, Finnegan 29, Suero around that. So they've got a couple years left but not like a half-decade plus
13 comments:
Harper: can you explain the rationale behind going cheap and bad for a starting pitcher (Lester) who is likely to pitch 150+ innings, and going expensive and good for a relief pitcher (Hand) who is likely to pitch ~50 innings? It seems backwards to me. If the Nats had $15 mil to pay for free agent pitchers, wouldn't it make more sense to allocate more of that money to the starter? It is noteworthy that both Quintana and Happ signed 1 year deals right after Lester, so presumably they could have been had for a bit extra than what the Nats paid for Lester.
I just don't get it.
The only answer I can come up with is that Rizzo sees more in Lester than most of us writing/reading the blogs do.
Neither Happ nor Quintana is really good. Happ I would have bet on to be good (I like AL -> NL moves) but he's not as good a guarantee for innings. Quintana is a better bet for innings being younger but looks worse with more questionable recent history. Lester splits these sort of at a cheaper rate?
Really it's about the reliever - Hand is GREAT. If they thought they could be in on Hand but needed to keep the SP 5 million or under... this is probably the best they can do. The difference between Hand and a 2 million dollar reliever is a huge gap. Between Lester and Quintana or Happ is less so... probably
Happ and Quintana aren't the only alternatives to Lester, of course, they just happen to be LH starters who signed one-year deals the same week Lester signed. I just find it extremely hard to believe that the delta between Hand and the next best bullpen option is larger than the delta between Lester and a FA starter (name any!) with a 2021 FIP projection below 5.
Exciting to see the Nats sign Brad Hand!
I’m surprised it’s only a 1 year deal. A reliever of his caliber should be able to get a good multi year deal, no?
Anybody else the next signing should be Tommy La Stella?
G Cracka- I'm all for La Stella! Seems to have high obp and can slide in the top of the order for us. He plays multiple positions and the contract should allow us to stay under the luxury tax. Seems perfect to me!
Honestly I think it’s about innings. Lester is the proverbial innings eater at this point who is going to give you a lot of quality starts where you will only need three relievers. Not crazy about Hand’s velocity going down but he seems to have enough other things going for him to close - and we know that Hudson doesn’t like closing, and maybe Rainey’s forearm issues merit caution.
Realmuto at $23 per for 5 years. Lower than I thought it would be and that looks like a bargain for the next couple years but that takes him into age 36. Not many 36 year old catchers are worth that. Still, helps the Phillies keep pace in the division.
Running out of FA's the Nats could really use..........
Thinking Lester is a good choice because he "eats innings" is like praising a restaurant with shitty food because it has "large portions." Look at his FIPs since 2015: 3.41, 4.10, 4.39, 4.26, 5.14. His projected 2021 FIPs range from 5.01 (Zips) to 5.52 (THE BAT).
You can't "eat innings" if you don't make it out of the 4th because you've given up too many runs. We're going to see a lot of that with Lester next year. If he pitches too badly to stay in the game, it doesn't matter at all that his arm could throw enough pitches to get through the 7th.
Lester and Anibal Sanchez's projections for next year are virtually identical on baseball-reference (4.53 ERA, 145-160 IP), they're probably just banking on Lester's durability. Anibal was great with ATL in 2018 but the two years before that in DET he was dreadful and he missed several starts in 3 of the last 4 years. This feels like that kind of signing.
Looking forward to a year of Lester holding runners on first
I was talking about this with some fellow Nats fans. Lester has some really shitty games, but he also still has games where he's missing bats like crazy. We decided he's like an older Gio. When he's on, he's on. When he's off, it's a bullpen day. We should probably have our long man ready to go any day Lester is on the mound.
I like the signing for what it is. It's a value play - not a hail mary or tire kick. We need 150 innings or so and we'll get it out of the guy. Unremarkable as it will likely be. There were possibly better options for a little more money, but at 5 Mil, he's not too expensive. It's one year. Not like this team has a shelf life too far beyond that. Hopefully we can find ourselves a decent 3B/2B with the savings.
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