We're a mere week away from pitchers and catchers and the Nats need one of those. With Kluber retiring today, the total FA pool looks like this now :
1B/DH : JD Martinez (Mets?), Brandon Belt (Rangers?), Jorge Soler (Giants/Red Sox?), Donovan Solano, Garrett Cooper (Red Sox?)
Others with DH potential : Tommy Pham, Adam Duvall,
Starters : Lorenzen, Clevinger,
So the FA bats will probably end up leaving Solano, Pham, and Duvall on the sidelines at the start of spring with one of them getting a Phillies deal with Marsh injured. These are all better choices than Gallo but not like that much better given the fit we talked about. We'll see if one of them gets picked up by a bad team on a nothing deal.
I think the pitching FA pool didn't shift and you aren't hearing as much (probably here) talk because the big guys (Snell, Montgomery) are still jockeying for years and dollars and until they get there it makes sense for Lorenzen and Clevinger to wait. They'll have more leverage as the only guys left rather than an early grab cheap guy. But... could either end up on the Nats?
It's what they need. It would make sense. Hell even for a year. Neither is repped by Boras if you are wondering, who the Nats have a history of working these kinds of "makes sense for both groups at the moment" deals (see Gallo, Joey), but that doesn't mean that much. Neither of these guys have won so you'd imagine that might matter. Clevinger has pitched well for competitive teams. Lorenzen really only having one shot, did not.
Anyway - the door remains open, to a "fine ok you did the minimum" off-season. get that starter for 2024.
4 comments:
Sure, either of those SPs would be a good idea (and a plausible one), but Williams had a sub-4 FIP (and ERA and xERA and xFIP and SIERA) as recently as 2022. Yes, he was terrible in 2023, and the most likely outcome for 2024 is that he's terrible again, but I'm not sure betting on a bounce back is a such wildly worse gamble than bringing in, say, Lorenzen.
I will say though, that even beyond the ~1 win gained, it would certainly be a fan-pleasing gesture to be seen doing *something* to address the team's most obvious weakness.
Also, @Harper - I had a thought about the PECOTA conversation and I think folks are forgetting one form of bad luck that the Nats had in spades last year -- ball/strike officiating. Even if you believe our catchers' lack of skill explains the 10.75 expected runs umpires cost our pitchers, there's nothing but variance that can explain the 23.57 runs that umpires cost our hitters. If you correct for that, you'd recapture about half of the 4 wins we lose by pythag.
This has got to be the longest team sale in baseball history.
Anon @ 12:39 - ok but in 2022 he didn't pitch a full season and barely started any games. When he did start I'm not sure his FIP would be under 4.00. For the most part his extended runs of starts have been uniformly terrible. So I do think betting on that bounce back is worse, maybe even wildly so.
It's possible that there are other things like this in the Nats favor but when you look at Davenport's adjusted standings they aren't even hitting the pythag wins.
But we're not really saying anything different. They stink. It'd be nice if they do something so they wouldn't stink this much outside of hope the kids come through
I'm still hoping for Hyun-Jin Ryu to hopefully form a bridge to Cavalli before Ryu breaks down/is traded.
Post a Comment