The day when I officially declare "things are real". When we get to the point where a hot week doesn't change you from a bad hitter to a good one, where a bad start doesn't totally wreck your ERA.
The Nats lost to the Battlin' Sotos and they beat the Battlin' Sotos so today is the rubber match. Really the only news out of the first two games, other than Soto is Soto and the beginning of the year talk was silly, was Finnegan was handed the closer job again and closed it out. There was some question on whether this would be the case, with Davey kind of giving a shrug answer to if the bullpen had set roles, but there he was again on the mound in the 9th yesterday. It may not ALWAYS be the case, but my assumption is he gets the bulk of the chances.
Since next week will be all about chewing some Nats stats let's look around the league today and tomorrow. Today the AL. Standings wise not that much has changed if you were looking at it a month ago at least narratively.
The AL East is still dominated by the Rays with the surprising Orioles in 2nd and the rest of the division solidly following. The Rays only weakness might be the back of the pen... if you can get that to matter. Everyone is hitting with 8 players (2 regularly used bench guys) with an OPS+ of 130 or better. The Orioles are doing it through hitting - Rutschman is a star and guys like Ryan O'Hearn and Austin Hays are having career years giving them a lineup with no super bat but more importantly no breaks. the Yankees remain carried by Judge, Cole, and the relief core, but all those pieces can do a fair amount of carrying. The Red Sox, a question to start the year have, found some spark from new OFs Masataka Yoshida and Jarren Duran to keep the line-up deep despite the departures enough to make up for an average staff. The Blue Jays, a pre-season favorite, are close, but just seem to be missing something.
The AL Central is the OK Twins and a bunch of crap. The Twins rotation is surprisingly GREAT with Sonny Gray and Joe Ryan fighting for a Cy Young right now and Lopez and Ober good enough to be most teams 2/3. If Correa can heat up they could be dangerous. Detroit has one great starter in Rodriguez but the young bats have mostly failed. A similar story in Cleveland with the Guardians who have seen leaps back by Gimenez, Rosario, and Kwan which has gutted the offense. The White Sox should be better than this but Tim Anderson and Benintendi are either disinterested or hurt, Eloy IS hurt and the rotation and pen is only good enough to keep the team in games not win them. Giolito is doing fine though. The Royals... well Sal Perez is good! And Zack Greinke is still going.
Texas' play for the AL West crown is paying off this year. Another deep lineup that like the Rays can go 6 deep at any time with guys hitting 130 OPS+ or better. And even with deGrom hurt - insert spit take here - the rest of the rotation has stepped up to be good or great in Eovaldi's case. The Astros have clawed their way back to a decent record with excellent pitching. Barely a bad arm on the staff, but age and defections have made the offense less potent so they have to play catch up. The Angels are trying desperately to stay relevant but are like 60% as good as anyone and 40% kind of crappy. Last year's darling the Mariners have the pitching with maybe the best rotation in baseball and a solid deep pen but not the lineup. Julio Rodriguez is in a big sophomore slump. The A's ... well I'm going to be fair. The line-up isn't the worst. They have some decent hitters but suffer because their bad hitter are REALLY bad. It wouldn't take much to correct this and get to average. But the staff is terrible with 1 guy who'd be in the back of most staffs and 4 guys who wouldn't even be that. The relief pitching isn't any better. They are on pace to set a new record for Runs Allowed in a season since the 62 expansion by a good 50 runs or 5%. That may not seem like a lot but it's as big a difference between the worst recent season (1996 Tigers) and the 13th.
3 comments:
One thing you may be missing with the "Finnegan is still the closer" comment is that in yesterday's win, Davey managed it so that Harvey, by coming in when he did, handled the dangerous top 4 of the Padres lineup in the 7th and 8th, and Finnegan closed against the lesser hitters who followed in the 9th. It's pretty clear that Davey currently (and correctly, given recent performances) sees Harvey and Finnegan as his best late innjng options. But I'd say that - to his credit - he's not locked in to a "this is my 8th inning guy" and "this is my closer" mentality, but is sometimes making his decision so as to deploy Harvey in the most critical spots.
James Wood promoted to Harrisburg
I think that, Harper's soulless automaton-ness aside, it's worth noting that the Nats are merely crummy instead of unwatchably horrible.
Believe it or not, they're 3rd in MLB in batting average, which probably says a bit more about the flaws in AVG than it does about the Nats, but they _are_ getting on base. They're 21st in SLG, so they are pretty bad, but that's closer to average than to last, so it's a start.
Last year they were dead last in FIP, ERA+, and only in front of the Rockies in ERA.
This year they're 25th in ERA+ and WHIP, 26th in FIP, and 20th in ERA (ahead of LAD, even.)
Kuhl has been a bust, and Irvin is looking like Joan Adon - a few nice starts, then got figured out. So probably not ready, but maybe someday. Espino's got a 4.5 ERA in AAA, so it might be just as well to DFA Kuhl and get Espino into the roataion.
Anyway, I think they're reasonably watchable this year, and we won't have the dread of trading away marquee players in July. Plus some guys are coming along, either in rehab or developing in the minors, so they should keep improving for a while.
To me, the big question is what the Lerners are going to be doing in the next few years. If they can't get the money for the team that they want, are they going to continue to run them on a shoestring budget? (One could argue that if you have money to invest in a rebuild, then you add a slew of one-year guys and flip them for prospects.)
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