You can win in several ways in baseball but the current hotness is to "rebuild" sign a bunch of your young players while they are young so they don't cost as much and hope that if you sign 6 that 2 work out and money wise that still probably saves you enough money to spend on FA.
Of course because people LOVE to go into the comments to say "It's not up to the Nats..." "Scott Boras won't let them..." I'll note here that what we want to see is a concerted and public effort to make these signings. If the public part bothers the players so be it. The fans need to know the team is trying in good faith. So shutta ya traps!
Let's look at the bats
James Wood
Pros : He's so young! He's so good!
Cons : He's so expensive (relatively) because he's already good.
Decision : Sign him dummies. If you aren't trying with guys like Wood then what's the point honestly. Call yourselves the Potomac Pirates, the Rockville Rockies and be done with it.
CJ Abrams
Pros : He plays the IF, is fun to watch, and is clearly the second best bat on the team right now. Still plenty of time until he hits FA (2029) so you can get value
Cons : From reports attitude can go up and down. Plays SS but pretty poorly.
Decision : Could go either way. I think you need to get either him or House signed though.
Dylan Crews
Pros : Nearly everything about his fancy stats and college performance suggest the guy has star potential. Getting comfortable in the OF where he should be good. Super fast. So seems like there'd be a place for him even without a bat.
Cons : Always had great fancy stats and lacking actual stats.
Decision : Wait probably. I think the discrepancy between performance and potential will create too big a gap between what the Nats should offer and what Crews would take. But check-in.
Brady House
Pros : He's already a solid fielder in the IF and there's a lot to like about his swing. Good runner.
Cons : He's a bit too much of a free swinger and needs to strike out less if he's not going to walk more or else that average/OBP will hang on him
Decision : I'd probably go with him first over Abrams just because an IF that can field that might hit strikes me as slightly better than an IF that can hit that will never field. But I'd like them both to be honest.
Robert Hassell
Pros : if you look at the fancy stats you could argue he's a better Brady House right now. Good field, slightly better approach and swing, faster. Seemingly finally coming around.
Cons : The biggest difference between House and Hassell is the 2 year gap. Hassell HAS to come around now or might not ever. Also a big difference is Hassell plays OF where the Nats have choices and it's easier to stick a FA. House plays IF. Even if Hassell is coming back one injury derailed him for 2 1/2 years. What happens the next time?
Decision : I've always liked Hassell but I'm a realist here if you can get him for reasonable 4th OF money, sure try it. If he wants more pass bc I worry one more injury makes him a big nothing.
Daylen Lile
Pros : Young and holding his own in the majors at the plate for a couple months. If not a OBP machine, at least it patient at the plate. Hits a lot of nice line drives and balls up.
Cons : Not great in the OF, probably the least "prospecty" of your choices. It's not like the team is lacking in young OF that you gotta nail this one down.
Decision : Pass. Prove me wrong Daylen
Anyone Else?
Nunez can't hit and isn't that young. Tena can't field and is mediocre at the plate. Lipscomb is overmatched. Young is an excellent fielder but is showing regression at bat and is an non-intuitive baserunner. Garcia is an average hitter and can hold 2B who flashes some good hitting stretches.
Decision : If you can get Garcia down through age 30 or so, I'd do it. One of the things teams do is find ways to cheaply not have problems and Garica at 2B isn't a problem. I think he probably will be as he ages out though and he doesn't have the bat to be 1B or DH so you don't want him here forever but if you can not think about 2B through 2030, even if it's just as "could be worse" I think that's good. Young and Tena are worth carrying around but only bc you can do it for the minimums. I wouldn't pay for it past into FA.
15 comments:
Even if you are bought in on Young's true talent wRC+ being around 80 or 85 (which would make him an above average regular and absolutely someone worth extending in the abstract), his skill set is very dependent on his speed and probably won't hold up into his 30s. He just turned 26 and was a rookie last year. Even without an extension, the Nats already have him under control for basically as long as you'd want.
(Plus there's at least a decent chance that going forwarded he's just a glove first bench player with a true talent 65 wRC+. In which case he's probably even non-tendered for Arb2 or Arb3.)
And for Wood, I'm with you. Set a record for pre-arb. Lock him up for 15 years. There is some risk, of course, but there's always some risk and Wood is as close to a sure thing as they come. Make him turn down $350M/15 or something. (Which he might, and if so - fair enough.)
The others are look like useful non-stars. So I offer versions of the Ruiz extension to all of them. Maybe double the dollars for Crews, and shade them down a bit for Hassell and Lile, who aren't coming in with the kind of prospect pedigree that Ruiz had at the time.
But I also think I prioritize trading from the OF depth ahead of extensions for OFs aside from Wood. We need to exchange some of that value to help other aspects of the team. The Nats simply have holes too glaring to justify keeping more than two of Young, Lile, Hassell and Franklin.
I’m not sold on extending Abrams, only because the Nats have depth there coming up. Abrams is signed through 2028 and Willits is projected to be up in 2029. They also have Dickerson and King before then. My guess is that they’ll need to move CJ to second at some point if they keep him, but they shouldn’t pay him shortstop money now if that’s the plan down the road.
What about Gore? Is it too late, or just not possible, to sign him to a long-term extension?
It cannot help that the two long-term contracts the Lerners have dished out since winning it all have been abject disasters (Strasburg, Ruiz).
Yeah probably too late. Signing Gore doesn't really fall in the "cheap long-term deal" camp. You'd only be buying out two years of arb. The idea of locking up the other guys is that they're all pre-arb so you're discounting the AAV that they'd expect in FA. With Gore, next year he's probably making $10M and the year after $20M if he continues performing at this level, you're not getting much discount on a long-term deal
That's not to say you don't take a shot, just that he's not in the same category as the other youngins
I want Gore, Wood, Garcia, Abrams, and Crews all locked up. Obviously they aren't all going to happen, but Gore and Wood are studs, Abrams is at least a top 10 SS at the plate, Garcia is a solid average 2B that should be cheap, and Crews has crazy talent and x stats, just hasn't had the luck (a .242 BABIP is rough for a guy with his speed).
If you want to throw out some contracts as a gamble a-la Ruiz, I'd try to lock up Lord. He doesn't have the pedigree so his expected AAV is probably pretty low, and he's performing like a solid #3 SP. Some of that is probably luck (his GB% and Hard% are not likely sustainable), but if you can lock him up for something like $10M AAV, you take the gamble
Lord is a good call. Draft bonus of only $125k. Looking at 2 more pre-arb seasons. That's the kind of guy who will sign a deal like Ruiz's. (Actually, Ruiz only got a $140k bonus himself - so he was in pretty much the same situation that Lord is now.)
Lord would also protect himself against service time bullshit - like we were discussing with Parker before Herz got injured, the team just needs to send him down to work on something for 2 weeks at any point in the next 4 years to steal a year. With Gray and Herz coming back from injury, and Susana and Sykora rising, the team could probably find a time to make a plausible case for it.
Sykora just had TJ surgery. Unlikely to pitch again until 2027. That might be the next re-building period (or would 2027 more accurately be considered a continuation of the perpetual re-building period).
Lord won't be able to reject a minor league assignment until 2030 at the earliest.
I’ll just assume and accept they Gore is not listed here because he’s not worth the inflated investment that he’ll ultimately command to sway him from free agency. And I’m okay with that.
Some might say he’s off his game, but I think he’s right where he needs to be. This is not the ace you’re looking for.
I think that Cautiously Pessimistic is probably right. On the other hand, a pitcher's arm might fall off any day. Pitchers are more beset by uncertainty than hitters.
It's pessimistic, but this is two years in a row he's had a second-half swoon. Last year he was a solid #2 early then slumped late. This year he was a genuine TOR starter early...and is again slumping late. With only two years left of arb to buy out, he needed to stay good for a full year before it's responsible to put down, say, a seven-year extension on the table. Pay him his arb raise and revisit the question next year.
Wood, yeah, absolutely. I'd be looking into giving him a face-of-the-franchise twelve-year extension kind of deal and hope he stays healthier than Zimmerman did. This is the kind of cornerstone building block.
Abrams I'd consider, but I think he needs to move off SS. Yeah, we can stay with Garcia 2B, Abrams SS for one more year to see if he can make improvements, but if management intends to give Abrams a long-term deal it needs to be at a position he can actually play, whether it be 2B or CF or, hell, DH.
Crews and House would definitely be bets on their potential. My real problem with extending them is that the Nats have not exactly showed that they have any ability to evaluate or develop players into better versions of themselves at the MLB level. Whomever takes over at GM needs to basically rip out the coaching staff and bring in fresh, competent personnel. (Is there anybody they can pry away from Milwaukee? At this point, the Brewers are basically the model the Nats need to try to emulate--sustainable development and solid, fundamental baseball to offset the limited budget.) It would be a huge gamble to sign either one now, and the risk is you end up with Ruiz 2.0. I'm not sure the new FO wants to do that when they already have Ruiz.
No one else, unfortunately, justifies an extension offer, which is quite depressing. Garcia looked like he was rounding into "solid MLB player" territory, but took a huge step back this year, to the point that moving Abrams to 2B and just trading Garcia looks more and more attractive. Young, too, went from "hits just enough for the glove and legs to make him above average overall" to "please play Lile instead." And both Hassell and Lile look like OF4s right now. Don't even talk to me about the pitchers.
I disagree that Ruiz's extension is such a disaster. I mean, his play has been disastrous, but it's not that much money.
Ruiz's salary translates to less than 1 WAR / year at free agent rates. As an example, if Young had signed a similar deal last year and then regressed horribly (as he has in fact done), his 2025 production would still be justifying his salary.
There are famously no bad one year deals, but I also think deal with AAVs under $10M can't be that bad either, even if they are long term commitments. If you sign 5 of them and they all crap out, then sure, you're in trouble. But if you sign 5 and get 1 good player and 2 useful players, I think you end up ahead.
And if you wait for 2 years of consistent production, well, the players and the agents also understand how valuable that makes them. And by then you're in arb or almost, and the urgency from the players side slips away. Now is exactly the time to try to extend Crews, House and Lord. And I wouldn't be upset if they got Hassell or Lile to lock in a relatively low guarantee too (maybe just buying out existing control for like $20M or something, and then a couple of team options). I agree, though, that Abrams and Garcia feel a bit trickier, with their defensive struggles. They're also farther into their control, so they - especially Abrams - will have a higher price point. Those our deals I can absolutely see going sideways and hurting the team.
Heh. I like the "I know there are perfectly valid counter-arguments even as I write this, but I'm going to dismiss them out of hand rather than refute them" approach.
I agree on *trying* to sign Wood, CJ, and House while checking in on Crews. The Nats signed Strasburg to an extension (the 2016 one) that worked out GREAT despite his being a Boras client. No point in not trying.
The rub is whether making a concerted effort out in public is at all useful. Most agents do not like negotiating in public (Boras' main response in all public discussions to date has been "Not giving you any numbers, but MORE is always worth talking about").
And from a team PR perspective it seems fan response is by and large binary:
- If a player signs an extension, the team WAS serious and made a good faith effort. Our focus now will be debating whether the player who extended was worth it ("Extend a young player!" "NOT THAT GUY!").
- If a player does not sign an extension, the team was NEVER serious or negotiating in good faith. Probably insulted the player and drove him out of town! Sell! The! Team!
So I disagree that public negotiations would draw any other response from the fan base beyond "It's all PR, they aren't being serious. Want to prove me wrong? Get the player to sign!"
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