While the Nats have been pretty relatively successful this season so far at the plate , they are not sitting on their laurels. Yesterday they officially sent Brady House down and optioned Joey Weimer to make room for Dylan Crews and Andres Chaparro to come up. Why? Well sort of because Jacob Young got hit by a pitch.
On Monday Jacob Young took a pitch to the ribs. It was apparently pretty bad and he's nursing some bruised ribs. Jacob defensively is the glue that holds the OF together. Lile, although showing a little better this year, is not seen as a great defender. Wood, despite that speed shown off by his inside the park HR, is just bad. Young is one of the better CF in the game and can help compensate for these issues a bit, important for a team already struggling with defense. The Nats 4th OF had been Joey Weimer but he's no CF so the Nats had to dig into the minors.
Crews is the guy they WANT to be here as a star and he is generally seen as a gifted fielder. After a slow start in the minors, he was hitting much better over the past few weeks - something close to .300 / .370 / .525. The warning signs of a ton of Ks and limited BBs are still there but he'd only have to keep this up for a week or two more for you to really start thinking about giving him another shot. Fate made that shot now. Joey Weimer had gone the other way hitting .160 in limited at bats with no homer since April 22nd. He was always a long shot to be good so this was an easy call.
But what about House and Chaparro? That's a little harder to figure. House had not turned the corner this season so far, but he had been better especially in the power department. But he still wasn't swinging well, relying on just swinging hard and the occasional right guess to keep production up. To make matters worse he was a big negative in the field, a surprise after last years modest performance. So you could see the reasoning behind sending him down. Let the new org AAA guys get a better look at him and see if they can get him swinging better and his mind back on his glove. The problem is there really isn't a great replacement. Chaparro was doing modestly well in AAA and is historically just passable at fielding. The must have really wanted House down to send him down because Chappy up is just a roster move.
There is of course the specter of roster time manipulation here. If you ARE going to have guys down, teams try to do it in a way that earns them an extra year of cheap service. If you look at it broadly it rarely matters - they are manipulating guys that usually don't end up stars so any money saved is minimal - but all it really needs is to matter one time. Again - not my money, and they can afford to spend whatever given appreciation of sales prices, so don't do this - but I'm trying to hold back the tide here. And more importantly we don't know if this is how it's going to end up.
In general though I like the moves in a "we're not just running on auto-pilot, let's see what we can do" type of thinking. It's a shame that didn't extend to off-season pitching acquisitions.
Chaparro will get Mead's time at 1st, but I think the hope is that Mead will show enough at 3rd to play not only vs LHP but also RHP. Unless one is a fan who only looks at average, he's done very well against righties this year. Any split sample for a platoon guy is going to be small, but he's actually had more PAs vs RHP than LHP, and has a 22 BB%, 13.6K%, a .390 OBP, and a .435 SLG (.217 ISO). Stacast stats are consistent with this. Most you can say is this is a small sample fluke and his track record in the majors doesn't back this up, but his whole MLB career more or less doesn't back up his numbers yet Toboni saw him as a guy they should try. You can say the same about Vivas, so it will be a competition, but Mead has been more of an offensive force early.
ReplyDelete3B is not a long-term problem, even if House doesn't come through. The system is deep in promising shortstops, and most people who can play SS can also play 3B. It's pitchers and (unless Ford comes through) catchers that we lack.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't appear to have anything to do with Young since he's back in the lineup today. I really think it actually may have to do more than we thought with service time for both Crews and House. House wasn't lighting the world on fire, so send him down. Crews was finally doing things alright in AAA and was literally 2 days past the service time crossover. Get some MLB looks for Crews and allow the development guys work more with House.
ReplyDeleteSo realistically I'm looking at it as a Crews for House swap and then you option Weimer (since he still has an option) and bring in someone else since you "need" an IF. Would've preferred to see Morales, but maybe the org wants to see a little bit more out of him before then
I agree with this. The timing is just so suspicious. Plus Parker called up immediately after his clock ticked over. And Alvarez, though they may still send him back and I buy preferring him stretched out and on a rotation schedule as reasonable. (Way more so than "Parker wasn't one of our best 8 relievers on 4/12 but was on 4/15" or "Crews has learned all we asked him to learn at AAA and is now ready to continue his development in the majors. Call him up! Oh wait, look at the calendar, I didn't even notice that! Obviously, that had nothing to do with it.")
DeleteIt's just not a good look for the FO to be maximally ticky-tack and exploitative about things like this. I hope to see some counterexamples soon.
Concur with CP's point that Crews had nothing to do with Young's HBP. The promotion was being reported prior to the HBP, although the official announcement came later.
DeleteI mean I don't like it, but new FO running a business and looking at a new rebuild? Of course you want to give yourself the flexibility of an extra year of service time. Don't hate the player (er GM), hate the game
DeleteHarper -- can you do a piece on Keibert Ruiz? His OPS is up to .768 -- higher than Daylen Lile. And he only has two walks. Does anyone think Ruiz can maintain an OPS over .700? That would make him a major league catcher, likely above average (for batting, at least).
ReplyDeleteAs a sign of what a crazy world it is that we live in, I will note that Ruiz's defense has not only improved. It might be ... good? According to Statcast his blocks are above average (56th percentile) and his framing is in the red zone (75th percentile). He's actually at +0.5 rWAR/0.8 fWAR. He's even added a bit of speed (from 24.5 to 25.5, from 3rd percentile to 13th). If he can even sustain a 100 wRC+ (he's currently at 111), that's a perfectly cromulent MLB catcher.
DeleteAcceptable, respectable, satisfactory, fine, okay, decent… but “cromulent”? This guy…
DeleteIt's a Simpson's thing that has now made it to dictionaries https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cromulent
DeleteAs a long time believer of keep winning series the Braves this year are running your strategy to perfection. One sweep, one loss, one tie and a dozen 2-1 or 3-1 results. No big winning or losing streak.
ReplyDeleteCrews looked good Wednesday night from behind home plate. A bit unfair to him that he was selected so highly given his batted ball mix was far from ideal even in college.