The Nats needed that break. Now they come back to face a bunch of middling teams in a row. How will it go? Who knows. The only good team they faced in the past 3 weeks was Milwaukee and that was the only team they won a series from.
The next 10 days will be about trades. Does Finnegan go? What about Derek Law and Dylan Floro? All are 32+ with good stats. Finnegan and Law have another year of control. What does that bring back? Who replaces them?
Also on the block would be Jesse Winker a FA to be that proved that he is good if he can stay healthy. Not a bad bet for a team looking for only two-three months of games. Does Lane Thomas also go? On one hand he's younger with a year of control and has proven to be a consistently (slightly) above average bat. On the other he is sneaky bad defensively dampening his overall production. If they both go does that mean we see Dylan Crews? If you wait a month you don't start that clock.
That's the set-up. Then August and September becomes only about the kids and how they look.
Kids that need to look better include Keibert Ruiz and Trey Lipscomb (if he doesn't want to get passed). Notice I DIDN'T say James Wood. First time up - whatever he does outside of strike out 50% of the time and bat .050 is fine. Ok ok he's actually almost there in Ks. He's struck out 18 of his last 43 PAs. But he makes enough hard contact to keep the average above the Mendoza line and keep the team from feeling the need to send him back down.
Kids that need to hold on to around average include Luis Garcia, Jake Irvin, and Mitchell Parker. Guys who have settled into a nice above average usable spot that you want to see stay about there to keep new holes from forming. Garcia entered the ASB hot. Irvin and Parker not so much. And we can't just dismiss August and September if it goes poorly. It's a third of the season! So if they do crater re-evaluation will be needed about their position. So don't! Just play about average!
Kids that need to keep pushing include Abrams and Gore. Both are playing like they could be stars for years. The Nats need stars. But the season has been up and down a bit for both which introduces some questions about how good they could be. The good news though is it's in both directions. As multi-year veterans now seeing them get a little better is what we want, but keep being this good is probably ok. Just don't have a late season swoon.
Two weeks from ALL KIDS ALL THE TIME (and grumbling about Corbin every 5th day).
6 comments:
Any chance that a team in contention would take Corbin, possibly for long relief, if the Nats were to eat 99% of his salary? I doubt it, and it's possible the Nats want to keep him just to eat innings for the rest of the year.
Minor quibble - FG has the Rays, Mets, Padres and even the Cardinals (just barely) with higher rest of season projected win percentages than the Brewers. That's obviously just one projection, and we don't need make too much out of it, but I don't think we need to caveat the last 3 weeks as a hard stretch, especially coming on the tail end of 49 games in 52 days.
And I bet we don't see Crews until the clock flips. A few weeks of Call to bridge the gap would be so easy. And that's even assuming another team wants Thomas enough to meet Rizzo's price, which I think less likely than 50-50 in the first place.
Honestly, one thing that's been bothering me about Thomas's trade speculation is that single time I see him mentioned they stat-check his RHP split for his career (wRC+ of 85) and this season (wRC+ of 70, 190 PAs) but not this season since coming off the IL (wRC+ of 101, 147 PAs). The career line is most important, fair enough, but obviously he wasn't right to start off the year and it feels pretty dumb to completely ignore the trend line.
In any case, I'm resigned to other teams not valuing him as much as Rizzo does, so he'll probably be here next season too.
MLB.com noted today that "Other questions will be answered as the calendar races toward the end of July. Do the Yankees need to add a catcher given Jose Trevino’s injury?" Which makes me wonder--could Riley Adams or Drew Milas be traded given the drafting of two high-potential catchers last week?
Harper, it's been a year since the 2023 MLB draft when most thought PIT would take Crews (or cut a deal with a high-schooler) at #1 and the Nats would take Skenes at #2. It's obviously very early in both their careers--Skenes's arm could fall off and Crews wouldn't need to be a star to end up a more valuable player--but I'm curious if your long-term view of the Nats would be different today if things broke the way we expected and Strasburg 2.0 was pitching for the Nats? I think we'd feel pretty good about the state of the rotation, with all the health caveats. You absolutely can imagine a Skenes-Gore-Irvin trio leading a deep playoff run. This, I think, would mean the FO would focus entirely on bats/relief pitchers in the offseason. The flipside, of course, is that our outfield of the future wouldn't be quite so rosy. Curious what you think.
Bigger long term problem is that we have lost J Gray for most if not all of 2025. That is a hole that needs to be filled in FA if the team is serious about contending for a WC spot next year.
With Gray out, my hope is the Nats pursue a #1 or #2 via trade or FA. Gore is not an ace (not yet anyway… but how long are we going to wait for his breakthrough?). So 2-5 in the rotation for next season looks like Gore, Irvin, Parker, and Cavalli… with Rutledge and some other AAA guy as SP6/7? It’s decent. The Gray injury hurts for depth. But like Gore, he isn’t a front end starter either (yet).
More waiting. More evaluating.
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