That'll be where we go from here - what we expect the position plans to be in the off-season. While watching and of course rooting for the Yankees to win it all. I assume that's what we are all doing.
The "how the kids doing" series has to then end. But let's quickly run through the kids we really care about not covered (covered were Wood, Ruiz, Gore, and Abrams)
Luis Garcia Jr. - He had a really good bounce back year. It was pretty simple. He hit the ball better. Harder, less on the ground. More mistakes then became homers and that was enough. No seriously. If he hits like last year and say only has 10 homers his BA is pretty much what it was last year. He's still not walking so he'd be below average again. It's pretty simple, if not easy, for Luis
Dylan Crews - He only played for about a month so grain of salt all this, but I'd call it disappointing but promising. The stats were disappointing for a guy that was supposed to be a natural hitter. But the fielding was good, the baserunning was good, and the hitting was really centered around one issue - not getting the ball up enough. A 57+% ground ball rate. He did have enough fly balls so that's why you saw a few homers but that leaves his LD% at an embarrassing 10%. With his decent eye and his pedigree this seems like it will change. He also pulls too much but you can make that work. You can't make hitting a ton of balls into the infield grass work.
Jake Irvin / Mitchell Parker / DJ Herz - One important thing to note here I've said before - Irvin ain't really a kid. He'll be 28 before next year starts.
Irvin is a mediocre pitcher but by cutting down on his walks a bunch this year, he made himself perfectly acceptable as a 4/5. That's all he did. He might have a small improvement left cutting homers but minor league stats say this is Jake. That's fine.
Parker has better stuff than Irvin but he didn't quite find a finishing pitch in the majors. That was probably because he was working on not walking guys. He was a wild K guy in the minors. Things could swing wildly for Mitchell in 2025. He doesn't keep guys on the ground so the HR rate could bounce up. Or he could get wild again. Either of those and he's probably out of the rotation. Or maybe he does figure out how to keep his control and add more Ks to the mix and takes a step up. Or maybe he just stays the same as a 4/5. It was a good year bc he showed he can pitch in the majors. That's really what you wanted to see from a guy like Parker who's at best a middling prospect. But nothing here is guaranteed.
Herz is the guy you want to focus on. Another Wild K guy in the minors, but wilder and more... uhh... "K"y. He showed he can K guys in the majors with junk and guys don't hit him well. He still walks too many guys and let's guys hit too many balls in the air. So the combination kept him from having a good year but if he can get one of those under control... this guy can be actually good. Unlike Parker his stuff really plays here so there's a lot more potential. However, before you get too high on him there was a real definitive drop in effectiveness when he threw more pitches. after pitch 50 guys started to smack him. Third time around things got ugly fast. So the question does remain starter or reliever. (or modern dominant 4 inning 5th starter? Need a diff't bullpen for that) But his stuff should let him have a major league role either way. This is the most promising thing that surprised for the Nats this year. The introduction of a guy that could be a special starter, or a special reliever. Most likely he won't be but you want a bunch of these types bc they can't all miss.
20 comments:
I see DJ Herz as a 2+ inning reliever. He has great stuff. It's really about whether he can keep the BBs down. It doesn't appear that he has the ability to pitch 5+ innings.
I see Parker as SP 6 to be used when someone in the rotation gets hurt. Or maybe for long relief to eat innings in blowouts. At best, he's an AAAA pitcher.
Jake Irvin appears to be a reliable 4/5 starter, if not better. I don't think he got enough credit for his 2024 season. He pitched a lot of innings (187 -- 5th in the NL) and a 1.20 WHIP (10th in the NL). Most of the guys ahead of him were All-Stars.
You didn't mention Stone Garrett. Okay, he only had 6 Plate Appearances in 2024 and he's 28, but he looked pretty darn good in 2023, and he could be a sleeper candidate for OF4, maybe even OF3.
Also didn't mention Cade Cavalli. (I'm not Anonymous 9:39).
I mentioned the guys I felt really matter. Cavalli would be in there but he threw 8 innings this year.
Guys like Garrett I would put with Chapparo, Yepez, Young, Robert Garcia - you need these types but they aren't on the mission critical list
We've been over this, and there's no need go through it again, but it feels absolutely wild to me that you're including Young on that list.
I mean, Young is a defense-and-baserunning center fielder with a below-average bat. That's perfectly fine, as CF is a defense-first position for a reason, but if his defense slips at all, he becomes a below-average player. He's Victor Robles 2019 with a worse bat (less power), better defense, and fewer mental mistakes. Maybe he turns into Kevin Kiermeier, and maybe he doesn't. But "leave him out there and find out" versus "bench him, move Crews to CF, and sign Santander or Hernandez to a four-year deal" are equally defensible moves. If Young plays like 2024 for the rest of his career, then he's a useful complementary guy on a roster that you're happy to have, not a cornerstone to build around the way we hope Wood, Crews, and Abrams can be (and need them to be in order to make the Nats into a playoff team again).
Looking at guys who were getting regular starts the last month of the season, Wood, Crews, Garcia, Abrams, and Ruiz got readouts. The guys that didn't are Tena, Chaparro, Yepez, and Young.
None of Tena, Chaparro, and Yepez produced at a 1 WAR/600 pace last year., and the first two were barely above replacement at all. Young had 2.6 WAR in 521 PAs.
I know people have been trained to be skeptical about defensive stats, but the shade Young gets is ridiculous. I bet Young's WAR/600 next season is closer to the mean of the first group than that of the second.
Wood et al were all Top 100 prospects. Makes an easy split
Defense is just far more variable and that's all Young's value.
I think that’s a bit harsh on Parker, assuming he stays about what he is I think he’s a solid (maybe even good) 5. Irvin seems like a solid 4 or great 5.
I too am a fan of Stone but we have so many guys with a similar profile some are gonna have to go
What are your benchmarks for 4/5 starter? How many 1-3 starters are in the league? Based on stats that I looked at (ERA, FIP, xFIP, SIERA), Irvin and Parker were more like 3/4 starters in the league. Do you think they will get worse? Other pitchers will pass them?
I think it's easy to try to sound smart by going negative, but advanced stats like both those guys (they both have FIPs a bit lower than their ERAs). They both have decent K/BB ratios, they both look to have decent stuff under the eye test, Herz in particular; his main issue's been cutting down on walks, which he did in his more limited time.
I don't think either's an ace but given their ages #3 or 4 in a solid rotation seems like a realistic high-end outcome, which would be great to have from two guys who seemed more likely to be org filler. That lets you compete for Soto or Burnes on the FA market.
I think our intuition around the reliability of defensive stats hasn't caught up with the statcast data being available publicly. Especially for range. Incremental arm-based plays are fundamentally a little fluky. Those opportunities are rare enough that the distribution is very uneven, and it's not 100% clear how to fully account for extra bases not attempted. But the current state of the OF range data seems very solid and stable to me.
And that's exactly where Young shines. He just covers ground. And maybe he'll have 20% fewer opportunities next year or something, but that's about the maximum defensive regression that I think is reasonable.
I looked at Young's monthly splits for defensive runs saved over average (from FG). It was 1.9 in Apr, 2.2 in May, 2.2 in June, 2.5 in July, 2.5 in Aug and 2.0 in Sept. I'm not sure there are more than a couple of dozen players in the league with bats less variable than Young's defense.
If Young does slip to a 1.5 WAR/600 player who should be a premium OF4, it won't be because his defense is only above average. It will be because pitchers learn to exploit his swing better and he can only deliver a 70 wRC+. But I think it's just as likely that playing through injuries hampered his hitting this year, and he improves to a 95 wRC+ next year. We'll see.
Look, bottom line is that this is your house. You can focus on whichever players you want, and if you want a stubborn prior based on prospect lists, that's fine. I'll just look forward to your readout on Young next offseason.
Quick clarification - those monthly splits are for FG's Def stat that combines data from multiple sources but is largely based on statcast, not DRS. I shouldn't have used an ambiguous phrase to describe it.
SMS - Is there any definitive data that overall D stats are more correlated year over year now than say 3 years ago? If so, I'd be willing to buy more into Young
Some of this has got to be feeling. I mean I think based on stats the Nats were a 5 deep in 3s. Did Irvin have about as good a year as Gore? Yeah. Do I think I like Gore more than Irvin? Yeah.
For such a polarizing player, Young has impressively “medium” stats. He has the same WAR (2.6) by both FG and BR. His wOBA and xwOBA are identical (.290) and is BA and xBA/SLG and xSLG are within .005 of each other.
He’s right on the edge. If his defense slips he’s a 4th OF. If his bat improves he’s Paul Blair with more speed. Speaking of which, defense isn’t Young’s only carrying tool. He’s also a good baserunner.
Fair enough. Parker and Irvin seem like pitchers that you love to have during the long regular season, but you aren't excited about them in the playoffs. On the other hand, this year, there are two (Cole and Flaherty?) pitchers left in the playoffs that you are excited about? Otherwise, we have a potential World Series game 1 match up of Manaea V Bibee? Those guys aren't obviously way better than Irvin and Parker.
Well, I wasn't able to find it in 10 minutes of googling, but I'll look a little more later today. And, if I come up empty, I'll just do the analysis myself. It might take me a couple of weeks, but I'll report back even if it proves me wrong.
You could say that about a lot of guys slipping. Young gas is at an age there’s no reason to think he should be regressing outside of small natural variations. If anything he should improve.
SMS - Let us know what you find out
My favorite thing about this blog. "...I'll look a little more later today. And, if I come up empty, I'll just do the analysis myself." Good on you SMS...and extra credit for you for committing to come back to us no matter what the data shows.
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