Yes, I'm not posting as much. Busy and the team quickly became uninteresting. I should just resort to putting up pics of James Wood.
The Nats got swept by the mediocre Cardinals. Have lost their last 5 after clawing their way back to 2 games under .500. There's a fairly decent stretch of good teams coming up. ATL, who has basically been an above average team since their awful start for 7 games, SFG, SEA, ARI, CHC, NYM with only Texas and Baltimore for breaks. Still. before we pack it in let's remember the Nats have played oddly good against good teams and oddly bad against bad ones.
Positives
Lucas Sims is gone. After trying to hold onto him as long as possible to get value out of that 3 million dollar deal he signed the Nats finally let him go, meaning both of the obvious Opening Day roster mistakes of Poche and Sims are finally gone. Two guys that were bad bets, that performed poorly in Spring Training, that should have never made the roster, finally where they should be : Not here. It's not that the Nats have a ton of solid replacements lined up, or even interesting AAA arms. It's just that even uninteresting AAA arms are a lottery ticket where as Sims and Poche were just wet pieces of paper with maybe numbers written on them, you can't tell it's all smeared.
Let's talk about CJ Abrams
Since back from his mild injury Abrams is raking to the tun of .357 / .423 / .486. Abrams and Wood in the top of the order is an exciting combo. Adding Lowe as a general solid bat means a tough inning for any pitcher. He's swinging at a few more pitches and striking out a touch more but it's more than made up for by hitting the ball a lot harder and at a better angle meaning fewer GB and more line drives.
We've seen this type of run from Abrams before but at 24 there's still time to think this is sustainable and if it is that means two stars at the plate under 25. That's something right?
10 comments:
They might as well declare this rebuild a bust and try again. Next year is Gore's walk year, as well as Garcia. And they're both Boras clients, so any offers to them will be where the Phillies start the bidding, and they'll take less money to leave. Might as well trade them now. Is there a gain to be made from replacing Rizzo? I think he's doing well, and the player development seems to be doing much better (they've turned a number of unknowns in to real major leaguers). There may be an ass't GM out there who's better at the job, but I don't know if there is, or if she'll take the job.
What about manager? I know Harper hates Davey, but again, we're a bunch of guys reading on the internet, and probably don't have the first idea what being a manager really takes. I suspect we can do better, but I know we can do worse than Davey.
The coaching staff sure doesn't seem to be much good. Then again, I don't know how effective a hitting or pitching coach is. Do any of us? Beats me.
I really think this team is just hindered by payroll limits. Strasburg's money would have bought a couple good players, but clearly that's not going to happen. If the job is to build a credible major league team on $115M, that's just not going to happen when $38M of that is going to someone who's already retired.
The coaching staff needs an overhaul. The number of players out there making small tweaks to their game when they leave the Nats, resulting in significant improvements, is astonishing. The only players the Nats have "developed" in the last decade are those with the talent to overcome whatever pisspoor coaching they got (e.g. Soto) whereas there's a long list of players who never lived up to expectations (e.g. Robles) and an even longer list of players who succeeded when they left (e.g. Fedde).
Hell, look at Wood. He's got insane talent, and that talent is allowing him to still turn into a star. But there's also a glaring problem in his game and that's that he hits way too many damn groundballs. That is something that should be able to be coached out of him, but I have zero confidence in this staff to do that.
Next year is Arb 2 for Gore. 2027 is Arb 3. So, Gore can't "walk" until after the 2027 season. He's going to make a lot of money when he leaves.
Either that or he makes a lot of money when he stays here and then gets a career ending injury.
Yeah as they say below - arb years mean more money but not are walk years.
Can we do worse than Davey? I guess the answer to something like that is always yes but the man literally has the worst Winning Percentage of a manager ever to win a WS which strikes me as "lucky to win that WS"
I'm always hesitant to fix what's working. I think you gotta be subtle with these changes. Don't break, bend.
Totally agree Harper. 2019 will always be a special year. How much of that was because of Davey? There was more than a little luck involved (which they were probably due given all the playoff bad luck). They beat a juggernaut of an Astros team by winning all the away games. Crazy series. Davey should have been let go a long time ago.
I'm open to the idea Davey sucks, but judging him by his winning percentage is nonsense. I could manage the Dodgers to a 100-win season every year --- that roster is a Cooperstown checklist.
Hit publish too soon. Anyway, the manager's job is pretty hard to define- keep the personalities in line, and then deciding which failed starter is going to give up a bases-clearing double, or which guy who belongs in AA is going to hit cleanup for you. When that's the tools you have to work with, it's not a valid argument to say "his winning percentage is low." I have a feeling that's why managers get fired all the time -- they're the only person you're allowed to blame when the whole organization is rotten.
As former Washington Senator once observed: the average man believes that he is better than everyone else at running a baseball team.
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