The Nats played a competitive series with the Reds over Opening Day weekend and were only denies a series win by an epic bullpen meltdown. Finnegan was hit hard the entire inning but lucked into the first couple hard hit balls being at Nats. The next one, after a fierce battle, was not and the last two were decidedly not. The bullpen was supposed to be... well not a weakness, so this isn't a great showing but remember when we talk all about this stuff that it is ALL small sample size. Three games. They matter but things can swing from this VERY easily. Many things will.
What did we see that we can focus on?
A team that's going to run more. They stole 7 bases, 3 by Abrams, 2 by Thomas, and 1 by Lipscomb. Youth generally has a speed advantage and while they do have some slow players their prospects that hit and even a guy like Gallo aren't lumbering oafs. This is good and as long as they pick and choose when to run correctly, it'll make the team better and more fun to watch, to boot.
Joey Gallo still looks lost. It was a terrible Spring and three games in you have to at least start to worry about a guy who is 0-12 with 6 Ks. They don't need Gallo but it'll force some decisions if he struggles like this for a while. The rest of the guys, some hot, some not, let's give it another series before noting.
Senzel hurt makes the Nats move on Lipscomb early so we'll get his evaluation done right now. Good. You guys know I don't like Senzel and I don't have any idea why he was signed or starting. I think this only makes the Nats better even if Lipscomb is below average.
The starting pitching is likely the issue we thought it would be. Gray looked bad. Corbin looked bad. Irvin was merely below average and that was the best. It's a tough start but unsurprising. They needed another arm and chose not to get one. Here the Nats are.
We have no idea what to think so far. Who are the Nats? Who are the Reds? How representative were these games? Early indications are they are who we thought they are but maybe a bit more fun getting to their 100 loss season. The Pirates series will tell us a bit more.
I'm most intrigued by Gallo. If he struggles the move is Joey to first, then... one of the OFs to DH and then... one of the kids up early? Wood has started in AAA hot 4 for 10 with a double and 5(!) walks. Just saying.
9 comments:
The blown save brings up a thought I've had a lot lately: the way bullpens are used across the sport is stupid.
Finnegan said he gave up those homers on cutters (which he threw incorrectly and wound up middle-middle.) So, execution aside, the issue is that he faced guys on Sunday who he'd faced on Saturday, so he wanted to throw them different pitches than the ones he threw on Saturday. His cutter is his "alternate" pitch, which were the ones he botched.
My question is: why in the hell is he facing the same guys two days in a row? If you look at the bullpen, they have 3 guys who are all "closer-able". It makes LOTS more sense to me if you just have each of those guys throw longer outings (target once through the lineup) less frequently. So Harvey on Thursday, Finnegan Saturday and Rainey Sunday. Nobody sees any of them twice, and if it works out, you get more overall innings out of your best relievers, and you get fewer of these kinds of problems.
If you're the 2001 Yankees and your bullpen is "Mariano and a bunch of guys", yes, there's a head-and-shoulders difference between your bullpen ace and the rest. But in this case, you have 3 relievers who are pretty good and (more importantly) roughly the same quality. All you have to do is promise those guys they'll get the day off after an appearance, and ask them to face 9 batters.
If each of those guys get 50 appearances of 2 innings each, that's 100 innings in a season, which is pretty good, and that reduces the workload on the lesser relievers.
The biggest and most exciting development for me has been the non-Garcia infield defense.
Lipscomb in particular has looked great in the field. And Ruiz looks much improved. If he's an average defensive catcher, instead of the worst in the league at everything, the rebuild takes a huge step in the right direction. And if Lipscomb can defend like this, he's at least a bench piece on a contender.
Losing sucks, especially like that. But there's more good than bad so far.
Ruiz has played well in terms of throws...his pitch framing is still a bit rough. He's at least trying to frame the pitches, but he's not subtle. Taking a borderline pitch and pulling it to the center of the zone is a lot of movement easily noticed by the ump and not really helping get calls
I'm not necessarily happy a guy injured himself...but losing Senzel is definitely a net positive with how Lipscomb looks
To add to Anonymous @ 12:49, the Joeys have looked competent at 1B. And we have four (count 'em: 4!) infielders who can play shortstop at a major league level: Abrams, Lipscomb, Nunez & Vargas.
To follow up on Anonymous @0230, Meneses made several very good plays yesterday to save infielders (as well as one of the pitchers) from errors.
Takes from the home opener: the Nats got BABIP'd to death on perfectly placed slow rollers and bunts. Both teams hit a couple of shots that I was certain were gone but died in the dank April chill. Not unexpected, but gives a real appreciation for Riley Adams's shot (427') over the visiting bullpen.
Martinez was hamstrung a bit in handling his pitching yesterday, and it fell apart on him when he had to bring in the low end of the bullpen. Mackenzie Gore had a rough inning in the second but limited the damage and otherwise pitched well. Yes, Martinez pushed him into the 6th (Gore finished at 102 pitches) but that was because of the bullpen. Harvey and Finnegan were unavailable, and Weems was sick (Winker was also apparently sick and came out of the game, so hopefully the off day today will give the team a chance to get healthy). I'm sure the limited options are also why Martinez had to mix and match with the bullpen, and when it got to Barnes and Rainey it all fell apart.
The team is scrappy - lost in the three run 9th on Sunday was the Nats' 3 run 9th on Saturday. And they kept battling enough to force the Pirates to bring in their closer in the 9th. However, "scrappy" is just one letter away from "crappy," so they still have work to do.
FG has Lipscomb leading 3B league-wide in defensive WAR.
I know it's just noise, but it's still exciting!
You know, I’m not a huge Robles believer, but can we please let him get ABs instead of Rosario or Vargas? I mean, the might not show you anything, but watching Vargas and Rosario get meaningless ABs is kind of annoying. At least a miracle MIGHT happen and Robles turns good.
Robles came up with a hamstring issue in last night's game and may be IL bound.
Savant finally posted the early 2024 stats and, on Ruiz, the results are encouraging.
On blocking, he's +1 above average over 161 opportunities (ranked 10th of 58) vs -10 over 5177 opportunities (63rd of 68) last year. If that holds up over a year, I think it's about a 0.4 WAR improvement.
On framing, last year he had a shadow zone strike rate of 42.6, ranking 57th of 63. That cost the team 13 runs over 3676 pitches. So far this year, it's slightly improved to 43.0%, which ranks 39th of 52. If this holds up over the year, Ruiz probably gains another third of a win or so.
On throwing, he's basically improved to average (+0.04 CS above average per throw), which interestingly ranks him 12 of 39, so maybe average will reset as they get more data for this year. Last year he was 60th of 63 at -0.14 per throw. Over a season, that's at least a half win.
So all told, that's +1-1.5 wins by getting his defense up from terrible to average-ish. Like I said, a huge step in the right direction. And to support CP's point, framing is still the biggest area for him to be working on.
(Also, one somewhat related thing that jumped out to me just now is that our pitches lived in the shadow zone last year. 4th most borderline pitches in the league. This year, at least so far, we're throwing fewer than average. Given that even an improved Ruiz is still a poor framer, that would help Ruiz another quarter win at least. Of course, if we're not throwing to the shadow zone because we're grooving fastballs or walking opposing hitters, there's a good chance that we have bigger problems than framing.)
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