Monday Quickie - Fire Davey

Fire Davey.  

The man can't help but blame the players and I don't want that type of guy leading this team.  Maybe a veteran team can ignore him or maybe he wouldn't dare anger those guys, but this isn't a veteran team. It's a team of kids and they need someone to support and shield them.  

There are numerous reasons to fire the guy. His behavior this weekend pushes that all aside to get to number 1. Even if you landed on "well he won the series and changing the manager doesn't really matter" I don't see how you can still want to keep the guy. 

Slow fade

 Are we talking about this blog or the Nats? Hey yo! 

After the nice run that ended with a sweep of Arizona the Nats have played, as we've gone over before, like you'd expect a 75 win team to play.  Competitive enough that you would be surprised at them being swept in two straight series. Not good enough that you'd really expect them to win two straight series against better teams. 

And there are a fair number of better teams.  The dregs of the NL remain the dregs, the Rockies, Marlins, and Pirates playing their own game on how to not even try. The Nats are clearly better than that but only Atlanta stands below them and that's because the Braves are on one of the craziest runs of bad luck you'll ever see*. The Nats are not bad, but they are at least a half-step behind 3/4 of the rest of the National League, honestly a half-step behind 75% of baseball after you throw the not trying White Sox, Athletics, and new to the group Orioles, in there. 

Outside of Alex Call no one is hot right now and when Wood is putting up a .095 / .174 / .095 line in the past couple weeks you know the offense is grinding to a halt.  

I'll say I see 3 interesting things going on though

1) Gore is solidifying into that ace. We've brought it up occasionally but watching him last night the guy is in a zone and when he's there he's unhittable and that my friend, is an ace.  For Nats fans that means a real fun 6 innings of baseball watching every 5 games. It also means OH MY GOD THEY NEED TO SIGN HIM LONG TERM.  These type of guys don't come around often. You need these types. You can replace a bat somewhat but an arm? You have to gamble on them when you have the opportunity. I don't see a winning Nats team in 3 years without this guy

 2) The bullpen, free of the terrible signings and decisions to open the year, is getting better. Yes, that's funny to after another bullpen loss but Ferrer gave up hits to Soto and Alonso - two of the better hitters in the game. It happens. Henry got beat in extras but the game is designed now for a run to score. In the past two weeks these guys have pitched much better and actually haven't been the main reason the Nats have lost anymore

 3) Soroka threw a really good game. 7 Ks, 2 hits, no homers.  The guy is here to be traded. If he can come around SP is such in need he will fetch something mildly interesting. 

Sadly with the recent slide we're back to making our own stories from the team.  There is one last chance for that to change though. 7 games against MIA and COL at home coming up.  Say split the next two vs the Mets and go 6-1 in those 7 and end up 36-38 into the West Coast swing?  One last run at trying to be interesting? Do you have it in you boys? 

 

*they recently lost 5 1-run games in a row and have lost their last 12 1 or 2 run games.  

These kids aren't alright

This doesn't have anything to do with the Cubs series. 1 of 3 from the Cubs is what should be expected and seeing Gore look like an ace again is great. However, we are in the "stats are real now" part of the season and last time we looked at the kids whose stats said real good things about them. CJ Abrams continues to be cool but I noted his propensity for extended cold streaks was keeping him from being special. That's not the point, he's still overall good. The only one with a real issue out of that group was Jackson Rutledge. I mentioned he could fall back and he really has. Still he's not young but he IS new to relief pitching.  He's still learning. We'll see. 

So while there are kids who look good this year there are others who do not. 

 

Keibert Ruiz has been in free fall since a hot start. While there was hope from some on here than his general lack of hitting was due to previous injury and now that he's healthy he would go back to being decent that hasn't been the case.  He remains extremely good at squaring up and meeting pitches. This lets him maintain one of the lowest strikeout rates in the game.  Unfortunately he's bad at picking which pitches to try to hit (Chase rate is high), he's bad at generating any sort of power (exit velocity, etc. is very low), he doesn't get the ball up enough (launch angle too low), and he's super slow so he's not going to leg anything out. He also doesn't identify pitches well (as noted by that chase rate) so his walk rate is very low.  You can sort of take a bad hitting catcher if they can field but Ruiz is generally considered a poor defensive catcher (though one with an ok arm).  We're getting very close to having to accept that despite the contract Ruiz is neither the catcher of the future or the catcher of now. 

 

Fleet of foot Jacob Young make Keibert look like James Wood when it comes to power. One of the weakest bats in baseball who gets nothing up in the air, I'm sure this combination worked for him all through his career so far. He could leg out enough hits and play stellar defense. But the margins on that working get slimmer and slimmer and the body gets slower and slower and Jacob is rapidly approaching a point where he has to do something better to stick around.  It could be that he walks a bit better. Never really his strong suit but he is a little better this year and he doesn't chase. Maybe if he does that he can set himself up as a 5th OF. That would be a disappointment given the Nats hopes when he rose up the minors at a decent clip but honestly it would be a win given his draft position. He was never a prospect. 

 

Speaking of OFs despite the assurances of the rabble in the comments (rabble I said!) Dylan Crews's too early actual stats meant more than his too early fancy stats, and he's seen his performance level out while his fancy stats drop to meet what he is doing. He strikes out too much and doesn't walk enough in general and his fielding, which was supposed to be stellar, has simply been adequate so far. I don't come here to bury Crewsar though. He immediately improved his walk rate after a dreadful start and before his injury was beginning to generate more power. The fancy stats, now like all stats more real with a third of a season down, suggest unlike Ruiz and Young, the guy can swing a bat. He doesn't chase and he can really nail it when he gets it right. He just doesn't do it often enough yet. It does seem like it's a matter of time before he's a productive major leaguer. From there we can discuss what that means, but we gotta get there first and to do that he's gotta get back from injury. Why is he in the "aren't alright" section? He's alright to me! Well because this isn't what anyone was hoping for the guy when drafted. You wanted an impact star ASAP and he's simply not that. Reset expectations from 10 to 8 and see where he goes and we'll all be fine* 

 

This isn't bad for a split of what kids are working and what aren't, especially when you consider only Ruiz is really crashing out. Young is merely not overperforming like hoped, and Crews is just not an immediate ROY candidate. Both of these guys can still be valuable, even very valuable in Crews' case, hitting below the high targets that had been set. 

There is a base, we all can see it. It could be an actual foundation with guys like Garcia and Ferrer being ok and more kids on the way. But what the FAs are doing is killing the team and they are going to need some good FA signings to put this team over the top.  

*You're going to yell at me again, aren't you?  

 

Monday Quickie : Hey hey!

 I'm thankful for a lot but I'm very thankful today that the Nats team is winning in strong fashion and not sneaking out close wins because if there's one thing that I hate (and as you can probably tell there are many) it's the trite re-use of the "Cardiac" nickname for any team of young players (Cardiac Kids!) or whose name slightly allows it because of a similar sound (CardiAc NAts!). That isn't happening here. I can breathe. 

 I'm also thankful for a great weekend of Nats baseball to liven up the season that had a chance to go very moribund. It actually pushed them to a nice little 10-3 run and relevance? Not quite. But another one of those from relevance! 

The recent push has been helped along not by James Wood being a stud (look the guy is a star at the plate and it's time we just start talking like he is as opposed to some young player than might be something). Josh Bell and Luis Garcia starting to hit again... and enough timely hitting to score the runs needed to back up the pitching. 

Gore had a couple of ace like performances and the pen 2.0. Brad Lord, Cole Henry, Jose Ferrer until his arm breaks are doing very well.  

When can you get "excited"? Let's set our sights on June 13th.  The Nats will be past the tough stretch and looking at 7 games against the Marlins and Rockies. I know the Nats have been kind of up against the good, down against the bad, but the Rockies are so bad that supercedes that. Just look at the last 3 game set. The Nats were the closest the Rockies came to winning a series, winning one and losing two 1-run games but they still didn't do it.

We talked about not getting too low before, nor should you get too high.  I still think this is a 75 win team. But seasons where you can pretend it's more, where you flirt with being meaningful before a late fall, are more fun that seasons when you can't. Nats are almost there. It's almost fun, you know in a "not the usual fun of just watching baseball fun" A couple more good weeks would do it.