Like most years, coming into 2021 you could find a way to see the Nats pen as a positive. The Nats spent some money and signed one of the better FA RP out there in Brad Hand to close and had Will Harris (solid in 2020) and Daniel Hudson (2019 hero, bad in 2020 but who cares about that half season, unless swe're talking about Will Harris). They had reason to be a little positive about Tanner Rainey. Kyle Finnegan and Wander Suero seemed capable. That's a pretty deep pen!
And it started out pretty well. Yes, Will Harris got hurt and barely made it onto the mound and Rainey was bad but Hand, Hudson, Suero all had fast starts and Finnegan, along with Sam Clay and converted starter Voth looked ok. But the pen was asked to take on more and more innings as the starting pitching failed and that took a toll. Suero would wear out. Every time someone looked decent, Davey would lean on them until they weren't decent anymore. Hand, who had been close to All-Star level for the first half after a minor blip in May, broke down at the worst time, driving the nails into the coffin of the Nats 2021 chances with a series of terrible outings.
The Nats were able to offload Hand and trade Hudson, but with Harris out and Rainey terrible they were down their projected top 4 relievers to enter the season for the remainder of the year. The pen, which was actually pretty decent through the 4th, spent the remainder of the year cemented as one of the worst pens in the game.
Presumed Plan : The Nats throw money at a lot (3-4-5?) of cheap short contracts hoping to grab guys who have good first halves of 2022 so they can flip them for organizational depth and lottery tickets. Finnegan and Espino fill out two more spots and then whoever they seem to like in Spring Training. Mason Thompson if he looks decent. Ryne Harper maybe.
Reasons for the presumed plan : The FA market is lousy with relievers that weren't lousy. A guy like Adam Ottovino, for example, a usable arm but nothing more now, is like the 20th best arm available. The Nats can check out the market and grab 3 arms for like 15 million easy and come out with a pretty decent set. Maybe 4 because in all honesty the Nats pen is empty.
Kyle Finnegan stays as the best of what was left at the end. Low bar, true, but the pen can't be 8 free agents. Paolo Espino who did an admirable job as a spot starter until he was worn down, has a decent chance of sticking around in a long man role or attempting to convert to a more traditional reliever. If they do scrimp out on SPs but he doesn't make the rotation you could also see Josh Rogers who looked ok as a starter at the end of the year. I'd bet on one of those two at least.
The rest of the pen is filled by whoever they like the best now and in Spring because there aren't guys they really like and there are positions that have to be filled. This is the best way to do it I guess.
My take : It'll be rough. How rough might depend on the starting pitching, even with 3 FA relievers. The Nats aren't going to grab something like 3 of the best 5 available. Given that they are likely to grab a guy who does good, a guy who is ok, and a guy so bad he barely pitches. So go relievers. Based on what we've seen in 2020 and 2021 a couple Nats guys will be usable, others will look good for short periods and terrible for others. It's a standard pen which means not all that good but could typically end up anywhere from 8th to 22nd best depending on how it breaks. Probably closer to the lower end there.
But I said "typically" because once you start heaping innings on these guys they can break and you are forced to use the guys you didn't like in the first place. The Nats don't have depth. There isn't a reason to try out a bunch of arms if you know you don't like them. In those instances you might throw 7-8 guys at a wall and find one you think you like and one you can use for a year. If you can figure that out from random short stints of pitching and not instead get confused by a good run by a bad arm that you knew was a bad arm.
If the starting pitching holds I suspect this pen will be like many other Nats pens put together by Rizzo. Eighty percent complete, likely to be middling, with the possibility of being good or bad depending on luck. It's a pen to hold the fort until the trade deadline where you either add an arm or two you'll ride with your best ones down the stretch or you trade away your good arms and suck up the losses. Guess which one I think is more likely in 2021.
To me, the biggest issue with the pen is that somebody needs to grab Davey by the collar and make him stop using the hot hand of the moment six times a week. As you point out, it's happened over and over again. Somebody has a couple of good games, and then Davey basically makes them fail. I suspect that every fan hates his manager's use of the bullpen, generally on the grounds of "How could he not psychically know that Reliever X would have a bad day?" but Martinez seems especially bad. He rides his relievers like they're Dusty Baker's Cubs starters, and he always seems to be trying to squeeze extra innings out of people, only for them to get the quick hook and have the next reliever come in with men already on base. He's the kind of manager for which I actually support Defined Bullpen Roles(tm) simply because it makes him stop running the 'pen by his gut.
ReplyDelete(If you accept Davey's bullpen management as a done deal, here is where I have to suck it up and agree with what you said in the last thread, Harper. Beg, borrow, or ateal a veteran pitcher who you can shove into games and demand that he pitch six innings rain, shine, or third-time-through-the-order-meltdown. The kind of guy who doesn't go six only because he goes two and even Davey is bright enough to put in the long reliever instead of burning his best pitchers.)
Not that Rizzo's bullpen construction has ever been all that great, but you can at least say that he tries to acquire good players and is willing to try to plug holes midseason--witness Kinzler/Madson/Doolittle, Hudson, even Papelbon and Strickland.
Of the players we have under contract, Finnegan, Rainey, Espino, Perez, and (if sufficiently back from injury) Harris are pitchers I'd at least be willing to see fill some of the slots. The 7-8 roles in the pen can maybe go to some of the flotsam and jetsam we have lying around--Machado, Thompson, etc.--whether they can be adequate and under the understanding that their role is to be mop-up guys. Otherwise, please bring in at least 2, preferably three adequate veterans with good track records. Unfortunately, the lefty side of the FA market is especially weak, making Aaron Loup especially desirable among a lot of teams. Among Proven Closers(tm), Iglesias is probably out of the Nats' price range, especially with the QO hanging off him, but a one-year reunion with Melancon might be productive.