The Padres were a perfect team to beat the Nats. It was elsewhere but basically the Nats win bc their pitching staff doesn't give free passes or a lot of home runs. The Padres score their runs by stringing together hits. The Padres lose bc their pitchers, especially a bad pen, give up too many long balls. The Nats don't really hit longballs.The Padres hit 3 homers and took 9 walks over 3 games (both under league average). The Nats managed only 2 long balls. Sweep.
Ok not a big thing to be right about and the games were close and it's just one series, not particularly telling.
The real problem, for those wanting the Nats to try for a playoff spot, is that the Padres were one of the numerous teams in competition for a WC spot. The Nats sweep put them into WC2.
That will be the talking point for the run to the ASG. After dealing with the Rays (in spitting distance of the much more competitive AL wild card), they'll play the Mets and Cardinals for 11 games (4NYM, 4STL, 3 NYM). Both these teams are ahead of the Nats in the playoff race and any negative showing, even a 5-6 run, likely sets the Nationals up on the outside looking in. If the Nats are making a serious play to playoff contention it will probably be decided now and then the usual All-Star break trade talk can take whatever form it will.
In other news - James Wood has played back to back days once since being called up. You could say it's being cautious, you could say it's being extra cautious, you could say it's slow playing his build up to a point that it makes sense when you don't call him up until he can definitely be in the ROY race next year. I'd agree with all of those.
This all ties together in how I see the next couple months go.
Nats don't make an undeniable push toward the playoffs. The front office trades away the bullpen and what they can elsewhere. At that point there isn't much of a reason to call up Wood in early August as opposed to early September so they hold on the move probably citing Crews needing more AAA seasoning and wanting to bring up these guys so they can play everyday together. Called up for Yankees/Cubs series? Maybe depends on the rookie dates and you might not even need the push for that to be well attended though.
So prepare for a muddle through of the dog days with the highlight being what lottery ticket Dylan Floro can bring back before the sweet sweet relief of Labor Day weekend and actual prospects that matter
Update I know nothing https://x.com/andrewcgolden/status/1806728939240321070
8 comments:
Well, you can see the logic, but apparently that's not The Plan. Wood up on Monday.
The calculus is probably more "getting Wood 300 PAs will do more for his development going into 2025 than the 25% chance of the ROY pick is worth" than "we're going for it!!!", but it still means we have more exciting things to watch than Floro's trade market.
I'm amazed he's getting called up. I have to think this is a move to see whether he's able to fill Winker's/Thomas's shoes so that they can ship one of those guys off without hurting their playoff chances. I assume this pushes Young to OF4
I don't think there's any way this pushes Young out of the starting lineup. Unless the team thinks his defense so far is a total fluke, he's no OF4. He's a borderline all-star.
Even in a world where Wood, Crews and (for example) Hassell are all even better than Young, you'd still trade him before benching him. A 2 WAR/600 player can be a luxury bench piece on a contender. A 4 WAR/600 player absolutely should not be.
It's Young in center, Thomas in right and Wood in left. He's been playing LF since coming back from his hamstring. I'm pretty sure that this will push Winker to primary DH and Rosario off the team.
Young's D isn't a fluke but part of the reason it's so impressive is he's doing a lot of covering for Winker who is bad and Thomas who is terrible. If Wood shows himself to be superior as we think then you don't need Young and Crews, who should be pretty good, is more than enough. Also - it's not like they have a track record of sticking with young impressive D CFs who don't hit well.
But you're right in that Young stays. Simple fact is Crews is slotted for CF so you don't start shifting around
I would like to see them keep Young as a defensive replacement/pinch runner, even if all three OF spots will quickly belong to guys currently in the minors. If one of them ends up flopping, Young is solid enough.
Another thought: Corbin has been decent in eight of his last ten games. While I don't see him even being able to bring back a lottery-ticket prospect, he could net a scratch-off or two, especially if packaged with someone else. If either Gray or Williams will be back soon, Corbin's spot in the rotation is filled. Even if they aren't, bring someone else up. Please trade him. Get him out of my face!
That's a really interesting point, Harper, but I'm not sure it's right.
Certainly Young is having to cover to Winker (and Rosario and Thomas) in a subjective sense, but if you look at his starred catches on statcast, I'm not seeing any that Wood catches instead. I also poked around Winker and Thomas's plausible misses that count against their OAAs, and Young isn't swooping in and grabbing any of them either.
I didn't look at them all, so maybe I missed some, and I certainly agree that the theoretical case makes sense -- adjacent plus OFers could have an overlap in coverage and that would reduce their value.
But I'm not seeing that apply to these actual datapoints, so even if it's a true effect, I doubt it's very significant.
But all the same I agree with you that the tricky thing will be whether Crews replaces Young or Thomas when he's ready (assuming Thomas hasn't already been traded). I think the pure strategy argument is rather clear that Thomas should be replaced, but he's the vet, a leader on the team and a legit good player, so I would bet on him getting most starts in RF.
The trade winds are blowing... I predict Winker or Thomas gone this week, where? Ugh... Kansas city? Just my shot in the dark
@Harper -
The catch that ended the game last night looks like a good test case. My sense was that the ball was catchable for a good RF, and even Thomas might have been able to make the play if Young hadn't been there. And again just by my eye test, it looked like Young had to cover a lot of distance and it was probably a one or two star catch.
But this morning, both Young's and Thomas's OAAs are unchanged. Maybe it's just not updated yet, but that seems like exactly the kind of play that you were talking about and it will be interesting to see how, if at all, it gets valued.
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