That was a bad loss. The Gray Ace didn't pitch too poorly, arguably one pitch from a much better result, but also arguably exactly where he should have been giving up 7 hits and three walks over 5 2/3rds. The Nats didn't hit too poorly either - the first seven batters all got hits and they managed four walks as well. However they were all singles except for one double (by guess who... ok I'll tell you - Juan Soto) and spread out so they didn't amount to much. The last two batters, Robles and Escobar, didn't get hits and it's starting to get VERY silly that the latter is still playing. Let's recap
Alcides Escobar was a glove first very healthy SS who manned the position for the the Brewers than the Royals for 1390 games over 9 seasons (that's over 154 games per). The problem was he hit terribly. The no power (41 homers for his career through 2018) wasn't surprising, but when coupled with no walks (about 25 per season) meant he was giving you nothing unless he happened to slap enough balls through holes. He rarely did and by the time he was in his late 20s he was putting up seasons that would be among the worst full time ones in baseball.
2015 : .257, 26BB (.293 OBP), 3 homers, 20 doubles
2016 : .261, 27BB (.292), 7 homers, 24 doubles
2017 : .250, 15BB (.272), 6 homers, 36 doubles
2018 : .257, 29BB (.279), 4 homers, 22 doubles
Really what justified playing him was his defense and a little bit his speed. You could argue he was the 2nd best fielding SS in baseball in the early to mid 2010s, but as he aged these things went away. 17SB became 4 and 8. The plus defense became average at best. There was no reason for the Royals or anyone to keep playing him, so after no bounce back in 2018, the Royals let him go and he never made it to the majors again... until 2021
Escobar had been toiling in the minors and in Japan and was back in KC's system when the Nats traded for him and stuck him in the lineup. He immediately did well and in about half a season Escobar put up a his best numbers of his career, although the top-level defense did not return. You can see given that why the Nats might sign him to back up their SS to be Luis Garcia but instead he was put in as a starter. A 35 year old with middling defense, that not even the worst teams wanted in the majors since 2018, who swung a bat who's history of being good amount to a half-season since 2014. That's who the Nats made a starter.
This is even more absurd given their most ready prospect is a MI, who is major league ready. Luis Garcia did not do well at SS last season, we won't try to pretend he did, but at 21 he held his own in a way that made you interested in seeing what he might do this season. He also spend a decent chunk of 2021 in AAA hitting to a .303 / .371 / .599 line which suggested he might not have anything left to prove there. The decision was simple. But again they started Escobar and sent down Luis and told him to work on his defense which admittedly is not great for a SS (he should be at 2B in my opinion) but given the Nats weren't replacing him with a great or even good defensive SS didn't seem to make sense
Garcia is hitting .360 / .407 /.613 in AAA right now.
I don't care how bad his glove is, he needs to be in the majors.
I don't care how good Escobar's glove is (and all indications is it's not very), he needs to be off this team.
This ain't hard.
So why is Garcia still in the minors? All I can think is that it IS service time manipulation. But as we know Rizzo isn't keen on that, then it would be a call from above, telling him to keep an asset as valuable as possible for the next set of owners. Maybe I'm thinking too much into this. I don't know. But it's an inexplicable decision on a baseball level.
Other Nats Top Prospects (not traded for last year division)
Cavalli - rough start, carrying a 9.00 ERA and it's been consistent poor outings.
House - crushing Low-A (.386 / .463 / .529), he'll be up in H-A soon
Henry - Looks unhittable in AA so far (3H 2BB, 12 K in 9IP) but they are being very careful with him (hasn't gone past 3 innings in a start) so he'll stretch out first
Rutledge - hurt still
Vaquero - 17yo Int'l signing will play rookie ball... sorry "Complex League" and that hasn't started yet
Lara - Great 1st start in Low-A but not good since. Sitting on a 6.52 ERA
DeLa Rosa - Pretty solid Low-A start (.292 / .395 / .492)
Antuna - OK in High A .261 / .435 / .370 - eye looks great but was loved for his power-average bat so this is an interesting start.
I liked signing Escobar for one more year when the plan seemed to be a continuation of last year (Garcia at 2B, Kieboom at 3B) since neither of those guys were good on defense last year and it made sense to have a veteran presence steadying the ship. But when the plan turned into "sign ex-Phillie IFs and hope you can flip them to restock the farm," the plan stopped making sense. Go with Hernandez or Escobar but not both. Obviously Hernandez is the better option because he's younger and does not suck
ReplyDeleteRe Garcia, I was of the mind that his ~35 games of hitting well in AAA in 2021 was not enough to declare that he "has nothing left to prove" in the minors given his prior batting inconsistency in the minors. The first month of 2022 has been enough for me. There's now no defensible baseball reason at all to be playing Escobar over Garcia.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm skeptical this has much to do with service time manipulation. Given Garcia's MLB time in '20 and '21, it would take keeping him down for much of the year in '22 to get an extra year of control on the backend, don't you think?
Question: in a counterfactual world where Hernandez was SS and Escobar was 2B, do you think Garcia would be up playing 2B already? I kinda do, which suggests the concerns about Garcia's SS defense are perhaps more significant than we think. At the same time, we spent years watching Ian Desmond make errors at the MLB level, so it's hard to imagine defensive concerns as a legit reason to keep Garcia down.
ocw5000 - Hernandez would be a starter somewhere. Escobar was barely hanging on in the minors for 3 seasons. There isn't a choice here
ReplyDeleteAnon @ 7:56 - I was ok with a re-sign to back-up but not to start bc this (Escobar sucking) was the most likely outcome of an extended run.
I don't know if it's service time manipulation that's just a thought. Feel free to pick from the below -
Garcia's D is far worse that we, who aren't scouts but have watched a lot of baseball, believe it to be,
they know they can showcase Hernandez at 2B and Franco at 3B but can't do that with Garcia at SS,
they think it's easier to fill 2B/3B and have two guys who MIGHT be able to play SS in the majors in Garcia and House and want to exhaust those options?
Garcia needs to come up, but he's also the only position player in the minors who's possibly ready for the majors. I could see them being cautious, but the move needs to be made soon.
ReplyDelete@Harper
ReplyDeleteI agree there you can construct other possible explanations (and even the defense issue could be more about where he can best improve and not that it's actually so much worse than it seems by the eye test), but the simplest story is straight service time manipulation.
The Nats have been way better than most teams about bringing up guys without gaming the Super-2 deadline. But they, like every team in almost every case, absolutely have gamed the 7th year of control.
Garcia started the year with 1 year and 37 days of service time. If he's held out through the end of May, I'm pretty sure the team gets control of his 2027 season. (Does anyone know how the late start is affecting folks' clocks? We should figure out the exact date and see how shameless they're willing to be.)
I was really hoping the team wasn't being scummy, but the cutoff is actually pretty close and the team is terrible either way. It's the kind of move that makes maximizes multi-year total playoff probabilities etc, so I'm pretty sure that is what's happening.
God damn it.
Everything about this team is verging on the inexplicable. Even one of the speculative bones you threw out--keeping an asset (down on the farm) as valuable as possible for the next set of owners--makes no sense, unless the new buyers are cheeseparing Scrooges.
ReplyDelete(Setting associated and assorted revenue streams, is a franchise worth more for its big league roster, or its minor league prospects? Are the Blue Jays, say, worth more today with Bo Bichette in their starting lineup? Or more if he were still mashing AAA pitchers in Buffalo?)
It would be interesting to learn just when the I'll-never-sell-this-team Lerners decided to sell, and how soon Rizzo knew when the decision was made. (Rizzo's contract, not so curiously, expires after 2023.)
In the specific case of Garcia (he put two over the wall in a big comeback last night), promoting a young player sooner rather than later is nearly always a better proposition for everyone involved. (If he's good, woohoo! If not, then everyone knows and moves on.)
What I can't understand is why the Nats' beat writers aren't on this every day, pressing Rizzo and Martinez, over and over, why Garcia isn't on the big club. (Maybe Garcia is trade bait, who knows?) It just seems everyone from the manager to the front office to the beat writers have lost interest in the team.
And as go the manager, front office and beat writers, so goes the fan base.
@SM
ReplyDeleteI agree that there is a lot of borderline inexplicable awfulness around the team. All the base-running disasters, for example. But holding down Garcia isn't that. It makes sense as just pure psychopathic capitalism.
Players are better at 28 than they are at 22. Wins 89 and 90 in a given season matter way more than wins 69 and 70. The Nats might be good in a few years and they are definitely terrible now. It's clearly better for the team's bottom line to keep him in AAA for a couple of months in order control his 2027 season.
If you don't care at all about your fans or your employees, it's kind of a no brainer. Maybe you could make the case that for the youngest, very best players like Harper and Soto, they provide levels of excitement and engagement with HOF-dreams and record setting comparisons in a way that changes the tradeoff. But for a player like Garcia, who isn't that young or that great for a top prospect, the downside here is merely ethics and joy and it's not that surprising the team just does not care.
Thank you, @Anonymous, all valid points.
ReplyDeleteOne caveat, though: I'm not convinced a 28-year-old is always a better player than he is as a 22-year-old.
Sorry. Not "Anonymous " but SM here.
ReplyDeleteOne enormous difference between Harper/Soto and Garcia: Harper and Soto both came up early during seasons when their presence could have - and in Harper's case, probably did - affect whether the team made the playoffs. This is SM's point that the 90th win is much more valuable than the 70th win.
ReplyDeleteThere are two issues that make Garcia not playing SS for the Nats unpleasant: (1) that Garcia is in AAA instead of MLB when he has shown he's too good a hitter for AAA; and (2) that the person currently playing SS for the Nats is Alcides Escobar.
I think we can come up with reasonable justifications for (1), even if those justifications reveal that MLB has rules that are bad for the quality of the product. As Harper (the writer) well covers, the justifications for (2) are per se unreasonable.
Signing someone like Escobar while they worked on getting Garcia more time to get up to speed at SS made sense. I don't think they expected him to have this sort of result. Garcia's not just doing fine against AAA pitching - he's destroying it. At the same time, Escobar isn't just doing "not great", he's atrocious. So the plan sorta made sense to get Garcia some more SS practice without pressure and earn yourself another year of control. But given what Garcia and Escobar have produced it now seems insane.
ReplyDeleteLooks like we may be getting a hefty dose of Lucious “Lost My Lunch” Fox for a few weeks until the service time manipulation is finished
ReplyDeleteProbably service time manipulation for an extra year, as everyone’s pointing out, but even then it doesn’t make much sense. The Lerners are halfway out the door and Rizzo could be right behind them. Why care so much about a financial consideration in 2027?
ReplyDeleteHere’s hoping Cavalli comes around and House continues a quick start. Otherwise this rebuild could really take a while. Holding out hope for Gray but he gives slightly flashier, possibly less reliable Joe Ross vibes (and I *like* Joe Ross but he’s at best a #4).
Can we start a pool guessing the number of at-bats L Fox will have before he gets his first hit?
ReplyDelete