Nationals Baseball: Monday Quickie - OD week!

Monday, March 27, 2023

Monday Quickie - OD week!

Opening Day is getting close and the Nats roster is now set... I think. The Nats rotation had a great end to Spring Training which I will re-iterate means nothing more than "feel better than if they had a terrible end to Spring Training" but that's something right? 

Call is going to the 4th OF, Vargas the back-up IF, Kuhl the fifth starter, Adams the back-up C, since Pineda is hurt. The last man on the bench will indeed be Michael Chavis as I predicted. I noted here that makes sense (Matt Adams is toast, Jeter Downs could use a full AAA season) but it's also less interesting than having Downs up.

Espino got sent back down leaving the pen with the expected : Finnegan, Edwards Jr, Harvey, Ramirez, and Thompson and the place holders for Rainey, Doolittle and Last Man in Pen, formerly Espino : Thad Ward, Anthony Banda, and Hobie Harris. 

Are you excited? Probably not. But it IS baseball and it IS back and we really don't know what will happen until it happens so let's try to keep upbeat about this for as long as we can. 


Getting close to the start means it's also prediction time. An early take from CBS's Matt Snyder is essentially Nats are terrible but at least sort of interesting to start, which I sort of agree with. It likely won't be pretty but start enough guys who people thought something of, either as prospects or young players, and well... it's something.  

There's the Nats 2023 slogan "Better than nothing, right?" 

You can say the Nats roster isn't good and you aren't wrong but at times people were/are excited that they had something with : Ruiz, Smith, Meneses, Garcia, Adams, Candelario, Robles, Gore, and Gray. And people want to see what happens with Hassell and Wood and Susana. All of them can't be bad so it'll be about how many are good and how good and what's that mean. It's a puzzle to figure out. Likely we won't like the solution but puzzles are fun. 

I'm trying here kids.

7 comments:

billyhacker said...

"A" for effort.

Kubla said...

The flipside to they can't all be bad is it is very unlikely all or even most will be good. Eventually, they'll have to bring in more people, and it is more a matter of how many positions do the Nats have covered in-house before they feel close enough to contending to start looking for players from outside the organization through FA and trades.

What is your prediction for when enough of these guys/new draft picks shake out as good that they start going after free agents and trading prospects for proven players? I would imagine nothing major happens until after a sale goes through and probably not until after Corbin and Strasburg are off the books.

It looks like they feel set at starting C and are optimistic about middle IF, but would a Cohen type open the checkbook wide enough to fill the rest of the lineup as well as build a rotation? Would they grab the right FAs before they were completely ready to contend just to make sure they got them?

Anonymous said...

“All of them can’t be bad”. Famous last words.

Nattydread said...

Nice to see you trying.

There's 780 MLB players. Not one of the rated "top 100" is a National, but a handful are ex-Nationals. Bryce, Max, Trey, Juan to name 4.

The mystery. What happened to the scouting acumen that identified and picked Trey, Juan, Rendon, Doolittle --- and the other assorted players that rose through the system? That faded or were traded away before 2019? What happened to Rizzo's magic scouting touch?

Two things are likely this year. One, the Nats should be at least marginally better than last year and not the absolute embarrassingly worst team in the MLB. Willing to bet on that.

Second, one or two of the young players will get significantly better or better yet blossom into a star. In the way that Trey did. Meneses may actually be tolerably good -- maybe a better hitter than 2020 Zimmerman.

Most of the teams in the bottom tiers of MLB are going through what the Nats are going through now. We see what's in front of us --- but its going on elsewhere.

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Kevin Rusch said...

@Nattydread - this is something I've been wondering about as well. 10 years ago Rizzo was out there getting away with highway robbery on trades. I suppose they're still doing better than most finding value in old free agents (which isn't nothing, but won't help right now.)

But the absolute wasteland of results from drafts and trades is kind of terrifying. Did they miss a revolution in player evaluation that everyone else didn't? (And that didn't make the nerd blogs?)

I do have a hypothesis that would explain things:
1) Lerners don't like to overpay.
2) Rizzo loves a dominant rotation, and has said "if you're ever going go overpay, go for the rotation."
3) That's why they let every position player walk. (I think there's a Boras element there too)
4) because #2, and because of the Nats' success, they've drafted lower in the first round, and drafted "fallen angels" who would have been 1-1 pitchers but fell to the Nats because of risk. Rather than taking "good chance to stick in the rotation" guys, they pick "could turn out to be Strasburg if he stays healthy" guys, and discount the reasons everyone else passed on them. That has come back to hurt them a lot.

So, they have good picks the next couple years. Given the system's depth, I'd spend nearly the entire draft on starting pitchers.

Harper said...

Kubla - less of a "when" more of an "if". Not that a couple won't be good but the timing may never be right. I think we'll know by the Sept call-ups in 2024 whether this plan will work as the team wants (young core with a strong supplement of FA talent) or if it will be more like you are going to have to be Cohen to make this work right now.

The getting FA BEFORE they need them is an interesting question. I'd guess yes? They did it with Werth. But there have been a couple opportunities to grab a SS which they needed (and could still use if they shift Abrams to 2B and Garcia to 3B) for the future and they did nothing. So I'm not sure if they'll do that. This post 23 offseason would be the last "before" time betting on the future I think we can see.


Natty/Rusch - I think Kevin's on the right track. Drafting lower with the same gambling philosophy meant results that were complete trash. But drafting has never been great under Rizzo. It's the 4th piece behind trades, FA, and Int'l signings.