The Nats are starting to become an embarrassment.
I'll pass off the cheap motivation signs and the usual "here come the kids!". The latter is par for course for any bad team looking to rebuild, the former par for course for nearly everyone. Spring Training is kind of embarrassing for stories. You just get used to the "best shape" and "new approach" and "learned a lot" and "really like what we got"s.
But beyond that the Nats said two things yesterday that made me cringe.
For the on-the-field product Rizzo said he wasn't looking for any major league pitchers. For those that somehow forgot the Nats had a terrible pitching staff last year, not quite the worst (leaving out the Rockies and their home field issues, the A's were clearly worse) but among 3-4 other teams clearly worse than the merely bad teams.
Gray had a good ERA but bad peripherals. Gore had a mediocre ERA and bad peripherals. Those are your best arms.
People fell over themselves to praise the work Jake Irvin did... which was have a bad ERA and bad peripherals. Granted I'll agree to the praise, we expected nothing from Jake and he delivered a typical MLB 5th starter performance for 120 innings. Good for you! That's also probably the best the now 27 year old can do. They also gave Corbin some props for his even worse ERA and peripherals simply because it was not OMG TERRIBLE as it had been. Finally no one could even fake liking what Trevor Williams did, one of the worst starters in the game in 2023.
But to take a macro look 127 pitchers pitched 100 innings or more. That's about 4 per team. The Nats had 5. That's good! But their five rank in xFIP 63, 101, 114, 118, 121. That's bad! really bad!
All of this is to say we all knew the Nats needed help in here and if they could bring in an arm that just sat in that middle of everyone range, it would be a BIG help to the team. But they said no to that and now they are saying no to anyone else, including a arms who didn't pitch well in 2023 but have middle of that range potential. They are going with what they got and what they got could easily be worse next year.
Now, we can say they expect Cavalli to jump in an (1) replace the worst pitcher and (2) be ok. And yes that will help but wouldn't it be more exciting if he were coming in and things were going well and you were thinking "Maybe they Nats have an almost competitive Top 4" rather than if he were coming in and things are going as expected and you were thinking "Ok if he's a solid 3 he's our best pitcher"?
But at least this is standard baseball. Teams cheap out all the time. Saying we have crap at home, why spend money on something that also might be crap just because it might also be good? Why not save that money for... the future*? But the Nats also went potentially above and beyond this in saying they want Strasburg to be down at Spring Training.
On a base level that does make sense. Even if you can't pitch, maybe you can give us some value for that contract. We know it's not the job you signed for but it would be a nice gesture. And I'd be inclined to... well maybe not agree with the Nats, again this isn't the job you were paying Strasburg for, but at least accept their prodding as understandable. But Strasburg isn't just unable to dial up high 90s heater anymore. He can't really use his arm like a normal person. When a person gives up his arm for the team and a championship, personally I think that's enough. As I responded in a tweet yesterday I think saying "Hey while you are laying down on the ground trying to get feeling back in your hand, can you go over the Phillies line-up" is kind of terrible. But this is they way the Nats seem to be leaning now. Kind of terrible.
OK, it's easy to be down. They are bad. They are in team sale limbo. They did not try to get better for 2024. The baseball media has kind of picked up on the fact that the team hasn't done a good job developing players and is beginning to note that. There is a bad feeling about the team. But they don't have to help with more bad news!
Bring in puppies or something because this team needs a vibe turnaround if we're going to have any fun before the games start.
*"The Future" being the name of the solid gold jet-ski being purchased for the yacht
8 comments:
Even sadder pat is that a sale to leonsis could make things even worse, a la the Wizards. Very tough to keep expensive season tickets.
Mainelaker:
What's worse - Leonsis (and really every owner) is applying cold capitalism to your human attachment to the team. "Eh, you love baseball, you'll probably still pony up." Which, probably. So the ONLY control you have is to not re-up. Otherwise, they'll say (rightly) "clearly you're not bothered by our indifference to winning."
I mean, look how long it took FedEx to stop filling up... 10 years of Snyder's awfulness?
Suppose most of these prospects hit, and the Nats are suddenly 2 starting pitchers away from being real contenders. Will the Lerners pony up, or offer 90% of what it'll take to get the right guys, not get them, then say "well, we're a small market team, so 83-79 will have to do. Besides, the clock is already ticking on Wood, Crewes, and House to move on as free agents, and they're Boras clients, so we'll trade them in July. Thanks for watching!"
I don’t think we’re in danger of the Nats being two SPs short of contending just yet. The ownership hold up still seems to be the discrepancy between the Lerners wanting to price the Nats like they don’t have a weird TV rights situation and everyone who wants to buy them wanting a discount because that’s the biggest value in owning a team. Maybe Rubenstein, who has a much less-combative reputation than Angelos, taking over the O’s helps? Not clear to me whether the Angeloses retained MASN ownership though.
Leonsis has a pretty mixed record if he’s the next one (and he seems to want to corner the market for local sports TV, so that would make sense). Caps were super competitive for a while, finally won a Cup, but then he didn’t bring back the guy who won them the Cup over what seemed to be a contractural pissing match, and comical mismanagement of the Wizards for most of his time in control. At least the current executive team for the Wizards seems to be rebuilding the right way? Or at least cornering the market on all second round draft picks from now until 2030.
The Strasburg situation is the worst. Ownership's greedy billionnaire nature on full display. Competitor SS did everything he could to get back to form, to demonstrate he deserved his payout -- and the effort completely trashed his body. Leaving him damaged for life.
No retirement, no thanks, no celebration of achievement. Just a knife fight over $100M. "If you don't come to the table and negotiate, then we'll hold you to your contract." "Come down to Florida and be a resource if you cant pitch." "Talk to the kids." Embarrassing.
Rizzo parroting ownership's unreasonable position. Embarrassing.
Hard to root for this. The Lerner's new toy has lost its luster and its no fun for them anymore. To expensive, to complicated. Sorry Washington DC, we can't afford it any more. But we won't let go unless we're guaranteed a profit margin.
As Shelley asserted in Prometheus Unbound, truth can be found at the bottom of the abyss, too.
(Or as Hans Gruber put it in Die Hard: Ah, the benefits of a classical education. )
Not so much that it lost its lister, rather that Ted Lerner - the one member of the family with an emotional connection to DC baseball history - passed away, and the rest of them don’t have as much reason to care.
Luster. Darn autocorrect!
Nattydread: you could also spin this as "you know I can't pitch anymore so let's stop the charade and give me $105m for 3 years while I go play with my kids."
If you were a Lerner, here are your options.
1) "look bad because your team sucks, you're not signing anyone, you've wasted the last 8 drafts AND your star pitcher's arm fell off AND pay him $105M for the last problem to go away while the world calls you cheap and evil."
2) "look bad because your team sucks, you're not signing anyone, you've wasted the last 8 drafts AND your star pitcher's arm fell off AND hang on to some of that 105M while the world calls you cheap and evil."
Which do you choose?
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