James Wood is up and has been basically what you could expect he'd be right now. He's hitting (.320 average) he's walking (they are throwing him junk out of the zone to see how much he'll chase - not much is the answer) he's striking out more than he did in AAA (but not much more which is very good) and he's not hitting with much power (of course for this punchless team that marks him as like 5th best on the team and also he's hitting it hard... just not up). It's a near perfect debut that marks him as a good major leaguer already. We'll have to see how both the league and he handles the second time around games and the crush of a full season but all signs point positively.
Jake Irvin DIDN'T make the All-Star team and that's probably fair. He's been good but not overwhelmingly so in a morass of about 15 guys that could have made it given different circumstances. But importantly he remains GOOD. A better than mid-rotation starter that reminds long term fans of Tanner Roark coming in and surprisingly becoming a solid pitcher for a few years. This is with the league having a full season of starts now to have a book on him. Exactly the kind of good cheap pitching stock you want to have.
But along with the good there has been some bad and I haven't seen the balance in thinking about it. When Nick Senzel was hitting early on (he had 5 homers in his first 10 games) and had a reasonable average through the first week in May, Nats fans talked of him as another secret get. Look at Rizzo go! But he's been terrible for two months hitting to a .589 OPS* and got DFA'd. Where was the Rizzo made a mistake talk? Lost. Rizzo is doing the same thing he's done the past couple years, dragging in these bodies and hoping for something to happen. Candelario and Winker worked out. Far more didn't. There isn't skill here. Just quantity.
When DJ Herz threw a couple high K no walks games articles came out about how the Nats young pitching was amazing and look at all these arms. Not mentioned was how Herz stunk in pretty much every other start. Now he's been sent down. There won't be talk, except here, about how the Nats SP is not robust but still pretty thin going into next year. Parker looks more like a 5 every time he goes out there** able to keep the ball in the zone but unable to make it hard for guys to put it over the fence.
If this is really about 2025 keep your head on straight. I've been seeing people riding the highs and not regarding the lows. That can be dangerous, especially for a team that's 43-47 and only nominally in the playoff hunt. What you want is to ID the issues and pound on the team to address them in the off-season. Don't get lost in the idea that Rizzo can find another Winker (instead of the Senzel, Gallo, Rosario, looking like Ramirez) or that Herz will be another Irvin (instead of Adon or Rutledge or Tetreault)
2025 people! Eyes on the prize!
*means he's not walking, hitting for power or hitting for average.
**but if he can repeat this as a 5 that's fine. I'll take that. But that does leave two spots empty. A true ace would be nice or else you need a couple of other real solid arms because that's what the Nats have gotten pretty much this year from Williams, Parker's start, some random other games by Herz and Corbin.
13 comments:
I don't think that Rizzo will find another Candelario or Winker--because he won't be looking for them. Dumpster diving for position players is a specialty of bad teams. Decent teams don't waste roster spots on dumpster position players, especially when they have a good utility man like Vargas. The Nationals won't be bad next year, if they acquire a #1 pitcher and at least one good DH/1B bat. They might even be good?
Rizzo will go to a different dumpster--the bullpen dumpster. But all teams do that.
Is Trevor Williams done for the year? I haven't seen any updates about him. Too bad, because he would have been valuable at the trade deadline.
The question, though, is who Rizzo can go after that isn't borderline dumpster diving? Cole will opt out but likely to just re-sign with NYY. Everyone will be chasing after Burnes, then who's really left that we'd consider an SP1?
The corner infield/DH market's a bit more manageable to find someone, but I'd be really surprised if the Nats are able to go out and sign a top pitcher this offseason. It may be a wait and see period and try to buy at next year's deadline
"Where was the Rizzo made a mistake talk?" re Senzel.
One year, $2M. Yeah it was a miss, but one we can live with. If it had been a multi-year deal I'd call it a much bigger mistake.
I think you're just trolling Nats fans if you're comparing Herz to Joan Adon. Adon had one start where he was halfway decent and then got pummelled every other time.
Herz had one fantastic start (ok, against a high school team), got pummelled once, and the rest were "meh". On the whole, about the same a Voth, Fedde, and the other not-quites. Kinda what you'd expect for a Candelario rental.
I feel like it's real stretch to say Senzel is a "bad" to balance out Wood or Irvin.
No one, at any point this season, thought Senzel was good or likely to be good. He was a lottery ticket and not an especially promising one, and now he's gone. The whole thing is so unimportant than the effect on the team's future rounds to zero.
With Herz you have more of a case, because there are those "only Herz and Stras" talking points, but he's obviously just not ready yet. He was wild in AA last year. He improved to erratic in AAA this year, and unsurprisingly he's been erratic in the majors so far. That's not actually a downside shock and, in fact, him already being good enough to be high variance SP5 is great, and a positive development given our offseason priors. Herz is only a "bad" if you're comparing to a wildly optimistic baseline. I feel I'm higher than most on Herz, and while I give him ace upside, I don't even want to guarantee a rotation spot next year. I'm with you and a lot of folks here - sign a FA ace and have everyone besides Gore and Irvin compete for spots.
Here is the actual bad, in my opinion:
1. Gray will probably need TJ. Out of the picture until at least 2026.
2. Cavalli's rehab has been weird. Maybe it is just a flu or covid and the main impact is a shorter innings limit next year, but the starting and stopping is a very bad sign and I don't think we can count on him coming back at all.
3. TOOTBLANs. I mean, seriously. I can take aggression backfiring at times. But there have been tons of simply careless outs on the basepaths. That needs fixing.
4. Ruiz. We need him to be at least below average and not awful on both sides of the ball. It's still possible he's capable of that, but I'm less confident than I was before the year started.
5. Wood's defense. Very small sample size, but it's jarring enough that I'll begin to adjust my priors in a few weeks. It will be a big disappointment if he can't pull off "above average LF". Probably a full 1 WAR/600 hit to his projection.
6. Williams getting injured cost us a good trade. Though, to be fair, that can't fairly be called a shock because none of us were counting on getting anything for him. Still it bums me out a bit that, even after he caught lightning in a bottle, we're not going to be able to cash in.
I think it's way way too early to have any concern about Wood's defense. He's shown elite speed, and speed is probably the number one input into whether someone is a good defensive player in LF. He's probably never played in a stadium with a third deck before. But I agree he's been very tentative in LF so far and that needs to change for him to be as good as advertised.
Re Herz: Harper, I wonder what the minimum WAR is for any pitcher who's had a 13K 0BB start in MLB? Yes, doing that in 2024 is different from doing that in 2010, or 2000, or whatever. But to do that at any point is indicative of a certain talent level. I see a pitcher with enough talent to make a meaningful contribution to an MLB playoff team, though the jury absolutely is out on whether that contribution will be from the rotation or from the bullpen. Parker needs to give Herz some of the special sauce that led to Parker cutting his BB-rate in half.
Very few had this team pegged as one that would be within spitting distance of .500 mid season. Even you, Harper, have had to adjust projections upward. Most expected a better last place team waiting for top level prospects that would impact late in the season.
Instead we have seen a scrappy team getting by on passably good pitching -- starters who seemingly came out of nowhere. Williams turned a corner. Irwin strengthened into a possible All Star. Gore was more-or-less as expected. Parker appeared. Herz? He got called up and pitched a magic game or two, regressed and was sent down.
Starting pitching has been drastically different from the pundit plan -- perhaps this is Rizzo's biggest win. Someone was nurturing these guys.
Bullpen has been good.
Three of the youngsters -- Abrams, Garcia, Young -- have been better than expected. Ruiz not so much, but there's still hope.
Rizzo is one for four on dumpster dive FA choices -- we're not flipping anyone for high stakes. But Winkler is entertaining and two (?) of the others are already cut loose to make way for call ups.
I'd say things are moving according to plan, maybe better than. Gotta love watching Wood.
What is grim? Cavalli and Gray not turning out as planned -- so much for starters # 2-3.
There's been regression in overall performance over the last month. But still much more entertaining than last year.
* Two fantastic starts and the rest ‘meh’.
The dumpster-diving approach has been much better in the last two years. Rizzo clearly learned from going all-in on Nelson Cruz and then rolling with Cesar Hernandez and Maikel Franco. Rosario, Gallo, and Senzel didn't work out but at least had upside potential and were worth trying.
I don't think the Winker trade market is that good because he's now in a DH platoon with the worst hitter in baseball (Harold Ramirez - https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/percentile-rankings?type=batter&year=2024&team=&sort=1&sortDir=asc).
Mitchell Parker is much better than an SP5. He's gone at least 6IP in half of his starts, which in 2024 is saying something. His advanced stats are average...but that's not bad for a 24-year-old rookie and certainly better than an SP5. If the team's SP5 is league-average, you're looking at the best staff in the majors.
Harper, I agree with previous comments that you are reaching for "balancing" negatives. Senzel is in the line of veteran signings to see if there's some value there. By their very nature they're going to be hit and miss. Rizzo has a balance of hits (Schwarber; Candelario; Winker) to go with some misses (Senzel; Rosario; Cruz). Heck, the Nats may have gotten the best 18 months of Josh Bell's career and turned it into a decent pitcher (if the "adding Bell got the Nats Susana" rumors are true). The idea that they didn't ALL turn into something of value is not a realistic standard. IMNSHO.
I'm pretty sure that the important reasons that Herz was sent down were (1) to give him a break and manage his innings; and (2) because the team desperately needed another bullpen arm as the bullpen has been showing serious wear and tear as the team staggers to the finish of a 17 games in 17 days stretch. I expect Herz to be back when the Nats need a 5th starter after the break.
The real problem for the Nats at catcher is that they don't really have a good alternative to Ruiz. Many Nats fans (possibly following Frandsen's lead on MASN, since he constantly talks up Adams and disses Ruiz) have the idea that Adams is a better defensive catcher than Ruiz. It's simply not true. Ruiz has a higher CS%, allows PB/WP at a much lower rate, and has improved his framing numbers to the point where he's middle of the pack (31 out of 60 qualified catchers; not good, but better than awful). Adams is 47th.
"OMG why are you happy - can't you see that Parker is basically a #5 starter?!?" is an odd take. For one thing he's put up 1.4 fWAR/1.6 bWAR in his 16 starts. For a 5th round pick (2020) that's a win right now. Measured by bWAR, there are a grand total of two (2) players taken from the 3rd through 5th rounds in 2020 that have a higher career WAR. One taken before Parker, one after. No one is penciling Parker in as a TOR impact pitcher. But a team needs guys like Parker in the rotation, and there's nothing wrong with being happy that the Nats found and developed him. That doesn't mean that we think that the Nats rotation needs to improve.
Sigh. Last line should have been "[t]hat doesn't mean that we DON'T think that the Nats rotation needs to improve." Stupid lack of edit function.
Is Herz like Detwiller where he only has a couple usable pitches? I've only seen him play in-person (that gem against Miami), so not sure what the scouting report on him is. Hope the above comment about him making space for a reliever/managing innings and coming back to the majors is correct, makes sense for them to see what he can do this season as much as possible.
His FIP's continued to go down despite some of the poor scoreline outings, and outside of the game at Colorado he's only given up three HRs. I get some Gio Gonzalez, 'boom-or-bust' vibes from him. He's not been a particularly HR-prone pitcher during his minors career, his main problem's been walking too many guys (BB/9 ratio close to as high as his career K/9), which he's not doing right now.
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