Playing the game :
Carlos Santana signed. 1/5.25. An imperfect Nats fit. A switch hitter but better from the RH side. Can't play anything but 1B now. Nearly 38.
But his OPS would be about the same as Gallo and he's a proven decent 1B even at this age. I would have signed him instead of Gallo. But I can understand the counter argument as well as a gamble on old Nelson Cruz making Rizzo gunshy here.
Guys, are you happy with the off-season?
It's February now and things are winding down. The Nats were mildly lucky last year to hit 71 wins and the off-season hasn't seen much work to improve the team. Gallo will probably be better than Dom Smith, and fills a lot of needs if just, but has a higher bust rate than a 30 year old should and money is on marginal improvement. Nick Senzel is a huge question mark seemingly brought in to be a guy to hold a spot for 4 months. They signed Dylan Floro one year removed from being very good in a Jeimer Candelario type move that could work.
And that's it.
They made a 71 team maybe a 72 team? Then again Jeimer is gone so maybe a 69 win team. And that's from results. From stats it's looking like 65-68. Everything rests on the kids. If the Nats are going to be anything to watch more kids need to come through that fail.
Offensively - I can see someone being ok with that. The future is here or in AAA (or in AA with a fast track to AAA likely). You gotta roll with it sometime and doing it now can mean better figuring out where the hole or two that needs a big FA is. House regresses and Lipscomb is nothing? Nats need a 3B. Wood OR Crews debuts but the other struggles and Hassell remains hasselled by injuries? Nats need an OF.
On the mound - To me it's a terrible plan. Corbin barely hung on to be usable. Williams was worse. Gray and Gore showed flashes but not the type that can carry a staff and Irvin was just a guy. The one guy on the horizon is coming back from major injury. This isn't figuring out what the next move is, it's putting it off.
So I would not be happy. There's an arm missing from a competitive team from 2025- . I'd want to see it.
6 comments:
Might as well bring in Justin Turner and Joey Votto to complete the trifecta.
Why does it have to be a binary yes/no happy/unhappy?
Overall I want them to sign at least one other starting pitcher and that's a definite down mark. I'm certainly disappointed there.
But OTOH I am on board with idea of setting the stage for our position player prospects (or "let the kids play").
And most of all I'm happy that we're close to seeing baseball again!
So is it permissible out here in Internet Comment Land to take a position in between "happy" and "unhappy"?
It's not binary. Harper didn't say he was unhappy; rather, he said he would not be happy.
There's a lot of emotional parking space between "happy" and "not happy."
As of this moment, I am unhappy strictly because of the lack of a bigger signing (preferably a SP). I was really hoping there'd be a Werth-esque signing this offseason. But yeah, on offense, I'm very much okay with the moves made and playing the waiting game a bit. As for pitching, though, there's no waiting to be done, there's nobody in the system to be looking forward to. You gotta sign somebody, and a Montgomery type would've been great
Biggest miss of the offseason was probably David Rubenstein buying the Orioles instead.
can't imagine there exists a pessimist for whom the Nats have delivered a positive surprise in the last few months, so I doubt anyone is affirmatively happy about the offseason.
But I'm content enough. Certainly I'm fine with the rental bats they've gotten. If I were a billionaire and the team was my toy, I'd have tried to go bigger, but I agree with the overall structure of the moves and those rental players are always going to flawed, so this set is likely fine.
On the pitching side, I wanted the team to sign a pitcher that we'd be happy starting playoff games for the next few years. There aren't very many of those. I really wanted the team to be in on Yamamoto, but I was thinking the number was going to be like $70M less than it actually was. I'd say Montgomery and Snell are worse options, since they're a bit older, but I'd in for either of them too.
But if they can't or won't sign a player like that, then I go back and forth about signing Ryu or whoever just to spare us (and the pen) more of Trevor Williams. I'm not sure about this, but I worry that we just sick of watching our bad pitchers and want to replace them with someone, anyone -- how can they be worse? But if Williams or Corbin were free agents, coming off terrible seasons with some other team, aren't they the kind of flotsam that we'd be signing to hope for a bounce back?
I don't know. To my mind it's just not that big a deal whether we do or don't sign anyone, once you take as a given that we're not going to sign anyone good.
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