Look you wear those terrible Milwaukee City Connects bad things are going to happen.
After a slow start James Wood is HOT batting .500 (Yes .500) with 4 homers and 3 doubles in the last 7 games. His complete turnaround along with streaky CJ staying on a hot streak and Curtis Mead being this weeks Joey Weimer has kept the offense moving despite everybody else being pretty mediocre. Could this be real? Kind of! Like James Wood IS really good. CJ Abrams has this in him. Curtis Mead... well every week will bring a new Curtis Mead! Someone else is bound to be hot at any one time.
Pitching wise it's been not great but not as apocalyptically bad as before. Foster Griffin and Zack Littell are taking advantage of the relatively cold early season bats and Cavalli is doing well too. Outside of Mikolas the only concern is some shaky outings by Cole Henry. The Nats really see to nail down at least the back end of the bullpen. Beeter has been ok, Lord pretty good. Paxton Schultz is probably not the needed third arm. Could this be real? Less likely! But take it while you can get it while you can get it because the cavalry isn't close. Travis Sykora is coming back from Tommy John. Jarlin Susana is recovering from lat surgery. And Luis Perales looks like you'd expect the 6th best prospect in a so-so organization would look meaning... maybe he's something but don't expect him to force anything right away. (your best bet there is probably Alex Clemmey - solid but also crazy wild (7 walks in 6 IP) in two short AA starts so far)
The Nats have earned this start and now have some breathing room thanks to the sweep. They stay on the road to face the hot Pirates in a fun battle of "which of these is more real" before heading home to face the going nowhere Giants.
If you aren't paying attention TONIGHT is the game to watch. Cavalli who we always want to take a look at, vs Skenes likely the best pitcher in baseball who has looked like himself after a disaster on Opening Day. The Pirates have top notch pitching up and down the rotation and the Nats catch their hottest 4. The bullpen goes 4 deep right now. So if the Nats are going to win they likely have to shut the Pirates down. The lineup is a very black and white one. The top 5 are as good as any lineup in baseball has been this year. The bottom 4 are incredibly bad with Ozuna looking like he'd rather be sipping Mai Tais and Konnor Griffin starting the conversation on whether he needs to go back to AAA (still will probably get a couple more weeks to figure it out)
Let's keep this "Close enough to .500 to be fun" train moving!
Curious why some teams rush top prospects to the majors. Looking at Konnor Griffin... yes he was crushing AAA this year (in 29 ABs). 136 games across three levels in a little over 1 season, and yes, he did hit well at every stop, albeit in limited games. But did they ever give him a chance to fail? Especially with high strikeout and low walk rates, I'm surprised they felt the need to have a 19 year old shortstop at the MLB level.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe that's just it? The younger they debut and make a good impression, the more likely they are to sign an extension? Service-time manipulation aside, I personally would rather have my franchise superstar controlled through perhaps age 23-29 instead of age 20-26. If they don't sign an extension, they you're most likely watching them play for someone else in their prime years while you had to endure the growing pains of a college freshman playing SS for your MLB team.
I would assume it's the PPI (prospect promotion incentive). basically, get a draft pick if you call up a guy early in the year (within 2 weeks of opening day) and then have them stay the year in the majors. if that prospect ends up winning a major award (rookie of the year, mvp, etc) while under team control (so not necessarily the first year), they get a comp pick.
Deletetherefore, if you're the pirates, you're basically assuming Griffin breaks into the league this year and has a chance at rookie of the year. better to get him in within 2 weeks of opening day for a chance at that draft pick
I don't think it's that complicated. They are trying to win games and their best guess is that Griffin will help them do that.
DeleteSoto at 26 produced about 2 more fWAR than Soto at 19, but we don't win the WS without Soto. Unless you're tanking (and no one should be tanking), you need a very good reason not to play the best players that the org has available.
The PPI pick (and the ROY penalty) simply shift the math around the most extreme service time exploits. It's why Griffin is up now instead of next week but it's not why teams aren't holding down top prospects until they're 23.
Perhaps we need to judge Weimer and Mead differently. Instead of a situation where Crews and Hassell are languishing, we have a set of specially talented players (albeit with little chance of becoming superstars) performing well — at least until the league has the book on them. They are only meant to fill lineup weaknesses.
ReplyDeleteThe new regime has made two important changes. First, they are filling out the talent in the lineup with complementary tools. Second they are preparing players much more effectively. Young is a case in point.
It is really striking how so much of this roster is built out of low-value complementary pieces. And I will admit that Wiemer, Mead and Vivas have all exceeded my expectations.
DeleteThat said, I will need to see it keep working for at least 6 or 8 more weeks before I take it seriously (though not necessarily working this well, of course). Wiemer has 0.0 fWAR in April, for instance. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
I hope nobody (especially the FO) thinks Wiemer, Mead and Vivas are The Answer. However, if they're building a coaching staff/philosophy that lets what would be an 80-win team get to 85 wins by squeezing another .5 WAR out of "just a guy" 5-6 times over the course of a season and by playing them at just the right times, that's worthwhile. And if you've overhauled your team's philosophy, this would be one of the things you'd expect to see quickly.
DeleteSo, maybe? Sure hasn't worked for pitching, but it's nice there's anything to look at.