Harvey, my pick to click, the Nats best reliever and their current closer has gone down with an arm injury. It might be nothing, it might be a big deal but it does create a couple of issue. First, there's the hole that it creates in the pen where you are replacing your best arm with someone that couldn't even make the pen before. The change is huge and the Nats don't have enough good innings to spread around to cover for it. It's going to be a big problem in the middle innings before you get to the relative OK-ness of Finnegan and Thompson.
Second, Harvey was one of the potential targets for teams at the trade deadline. He might have been the one that would bring back the most return. I will say Thomas is under the same control as Harvey, and probably would get more, but fancy stats are very wary of him so it depends a lot on which teams are wanting him and what they think of the fancy stats. Candelario will get back something but he's not controlled beyond this year making the return muted, very muted if we look at recent trades. Finnegan is under the same control time frame as Finnegan but isn't as good. Williams is an affordable 4th/5th starter but has limited value for a team making a playoff push since he wouldn't be starting in the playoffs and it's not clear if he can go back to relieving and if he could if he could repeat what he did over 20 games in 2022.
For a team looking to get quantity as much as quality it's a hit.
Such is the life of a team rebuilding.
- In other news - CJ Abrams is hot and up to an average bat at this moment. I'd love to see a chart with Ruiz, Garcia, and Abrams' OPS+ over the year and see how it bounced around noting one of them as the "ok now this guy's got it" for a moment before he slipped and another guy bounced up. But for now OK I think Abrams has got it!
- Meneses is hot but I'm not sure that's gonna matter unless he can stay hot right through the trade deadline.
- Dickerson was hitless in St. Louis and is running out of time to look like something anyone wants. Including the Nats who if they can't deal him, might as well DFA him.
- Gray had a tough outing but was kind of blase about it because he wants to pitch a certain way (more bad contact) and that can sometimes not work for you. If it helps him avoid the homers I'm all for it though. It limits his ceiling but also raises his floor and the Nats need guys who's floor is not "out of the rotation"
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It's even worse than that because the shakier bullpen also increases stress on all the arms that we care about. Gore, Gray and Thompson most of all, but also Irvin, Weems, Ferrer and the rest. It helps their development for Davey to have some reliable options to cover most high leverage situations. Ah well. Maybe it'll be a small thing and Harvey will be back in a couple weeks. If it looks like he's be out longer, does it force us to hold onto Finnegan too?
It's also a shame Edwards hasn't been able to get back in time. We wouldn't have gotten much for him but, if you churn through a dozen AAAA castoffs, you'll find a Lane Thomas or a Hunter Harvey. We need to keep the lottery tickets coming in.
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