I did go on vacation again, yes. I also will again the second week in August.
The Nats have begun their sell-off and it's mostly gone exactly as you could hope
Chafin and Garcia and Soroka out.
Chafin was found money, a DFA'd player who turned it around for the Nats and ended up part of a deal. Soroka didn't pan out exactly as planned but the fact he was sent out for anything means his signing was a win. Luis Garcia is at least a decent arm with the potential to have a great couple months, but is 38 and not part of the future.
This does gut a pitching staff that was put together with string and bubble gum but hey, you apes want to live 2025 forever?
What's the returns? From my take on best to worst
Ronny Cruz - the type of lottery ticket you want to get. decently high draft MI pick that's super young and has looked ok so far. Talent heavy but this is for Mike Soroka remember.
Christian Franklin - reads like the type of player the Nats have avoided. IOW good baseball instincts. He's a smart runner, makes good reads in the outfield, has patience at the plate. If he could just hit a few more flyballs and get that average and power up he'd be a solid player. Alas at 25 that ship has likely sailed. But seems like a good guy to have around
Jake Eder - a college starter that basically stalled out in AA after injuries that is being looked at now in the majors as a reliever. Not impressive so far but a live arm so whatever.
Sam Brown - a first baseman/corner OF with no power or patience? organizational depth
MORE TRADES
Finnegan GONE! He's ok, but even the Nats knew he couldn't really be counted on. Will be missed in the continuing non-literal decimation* of the pen. Who's coming in in relief? Maybe you!
Coming in is Josh Randall and RJ (not Randall Josh) Sales
Josh Randall - live arm you take a gamble on. Just move to A+ and had a great start but while he strikes out a lot he's not unhittable. Arm seems dependable and strong. Kind of guy in a year you'll see if he can be a reliever. The better lottery ticket here.
RJ Sales - competent college pitcher at 18. Hard to get a good read on as a hitter which really limits his hits and homers but doesn't miss enough bats and walks way too many. In A ball now at 22, looked better on the wildness overall but was slipping recently.
What's next?
I wouldn't trade Gore. Not unless you want to set the timeline on (maybe) being good again at 2028. The Nats can be good (wild card level) next year. They have an ace. They have a stud bat. They have a good 2nd bat. Pieces are there. What they need is investment, not starting over.
*It's literally worse!
16 comments:
Looks like Mikey D learned to trade from rizzo. The fact we turned hardly anything (2 medicine relievers that couldn’t stick with other teams to start the year and a pitcher with an era almost 5) into a few solid prospects and org depth is pretty solid.
Though Gore seems to be more like a nice #2 or ideal 3 now that he is reverting to the mean. He’s obviously not as bad as he’s been, but he’s showing that there was room for regression as he has been doing for quite a while now.
* mediocre
Not medicine. Ha!
Nothing too exciting from these moves, unfortunately, but anything that would bring excitement likely isn't worth moving (I'd love to see Finnegan move, but seems like high profile relievers are moving around everywhere right now and we all know Finnegan is more of a setup man).
Would still love to see a few more lotto tickets gotten by moving Call and Bell, but I'm not sure there's much market for them given the Guardians are shopping Kwan
Oops spoke too soon, Finnegan to the Tigers
Trading Gore does effectively start the rebuild over. That was my fear from their recent draft. They drafted a ton of high school players. Trading Gore mean you might as well trade Abrams as well. You're hoping to be good in Wood's tenure. The take home message would be that the Nats are going to stink badly for 2-3 more years. When are the Lerner's selling the team?
Are either of the prospects they got from the Yankees in exchange for Rosario promising? It's tough to tell what it really means when someone is the [Xth] best prospect in [Y] team's system.
I don't follow prospects league wide very much and it takes me a while to fully get a handle on new acquisitions, but the quick frame I often find helpful is to look for a similar prospect in our system.
So far here are my comps on the Rosario return.
Beeter - Brzykcy - Beeter has better stuff and worse control, but they're both relief arms that have done very well in the minors but haven't yet figured out how to succeed in the majors. FV 40.
Martinez - Nauris De La Cruz - A DSL bat with good results but modest hype / projection. Not really a prospect, but interesting enough that he may become one. FV 35.
Liking the Call return. Swan looks like a potential closer if he can get his control in check, and Linan looks like a potential backend starter
If you really thought you were going to get an extreme, Soto trade type return for Gore, you can talk yourself into it. The problem is trying to explain that to a fanbase. (That, and I can't imagine getting a Soto-like return. Gore is good, but he's not Randy Johnson...)
When you start trading off your "we traded our star for this guy to kickstart our rebuild guys" ... it makes supporting the team feel kind of pointless for fans even if it's a defensible move from a teambuilding standpoint and it makes your rebuild look like a failure. It's just hard to sign up for a team that goes 8 years without looking like it's trying to compete.
It would be really good for ownership to (1) have a plan and (2) communicate to the fanbase that they have a plan.
Overall, the deals added substantial depth to the system. FG has the system with 49 players 35+ FV or higher, with two 45s (Franklin, Swan) and two 40+ (Cruz, Beeter) among those added.
I'm shocked Bell was not moved. By not opening up DH, this blocks up the outfield with 5 guys now positioned for at bats in 3 positions (Wood, Crews, Hassell, Young, and Lile). Maybe they will do him a solid and waive him when Crews is ready and let him go to someone who can use him down the stretch.
@CP: 100% agree. It’s really depressing when I can’t watch the MLB level games anymore because what is the point? The Nationals are not a serious franchise. It’s pretty tough when the only thing worth following is “hey, Yoel Tejeda had another good start tonight” and “damn, another golden sombrero for Elijah Green.”
However, the Nats did communicate a plan of rebuilding with an eye toward contention in 2025. Well… here we are and we’re worse than ever. So that rebuild didn’t work so now we’re in a situation like the White Sox where it’s a perpetual “rebuild” and you’re just never competitive. Really hoping that’s not the case. But with all these deals and promising prospects, it does give the avid fan some hope, which is a dangerous thing. As Harper stated, if ownership is not going to invest, then Willits, these trades, none of it matters.
I would debate you about worse than ever. This team is solidly mediocre, a surprise Marlins performance away from their usual 4th place spot in the NL East.
I think the current trades do work. I wanted more deadweight offloaded for lottery tickets ($100 max payoff scratchers at best), but nobody useful beyond this year got moved, which is good. They even kept Lowe, so it seems like they're trying to figure out who to sign for 2026 in order to be competitive.
That is this late season's overly optimistic take from an idiot. Do with it what you will.
This is a nice deadline when the Nats had nothing amazing to deal. I don't think Rizzo would've traded Call and that was my favorite move of the 5.
one of the other blogs (TalkNats?) had a long piece about how the team doesn't have the cashflow to support anything more than a barebones payroll, and the Lerners' main business being commercial real estate which is also in big trouble, and they're just going to not spend. So they need to sell, take their 4x capital gain, and let someone else run the show. They even deferred 2/3 of Finnegan's salary, which is some bush league shit.
maybe not "worse than ever", but "the new normal" of 65 wins except for a run at 83 every 5 years seems like what to expect until the Lerners get out of the way. The White Sox are a depressingly good comp. Big market, big potential fan base, but dysfunctional ownership and dramatically insufficient investment.
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