It feels weird having a Spring without the Post or MASN telling us what's up. Having to go by Zuckerman's updates or official MLB news.
Anyway Zack Littell signs with the Nats which is good for the Nats but a bit weird. Well maybe. Littell was a reliever that got coverted to a starter in 2023. He was pretty solid in his half season there and in 2024 and put up a good ERA in 2025. That masked a pretty mediocre pitching effort though. If you were to describe his pitching it would be "I'm going to put a lot of balls in the strike zone. I'm not going to walk anyone and when I do want you to chase you'll do it but I actually don't make you miss on those chases and what you do hit you hit hard" It's a weird combination that relies on the fact most balls put into play are outs and is one of those things when guys can hit him hard enough the whole thing will come apart fast. Like "my last season in the majors I started 7 games and had an ERA of 8.50" fast. But at only 30 you wouldn't think now is when it happens. So why wouldn't a team take a chance on this guy for their rotation. Likely to throw 180 fair innings - that has major league value. I'm a bit confused. Like you'd want to give a promising rookie a shot over this pile of mediocrity but you also just need arms. You always do!
Anyway the contract includes a mutual option which is good because it may make him tradeable if he surprises to start as opposed to Mikolas that's just an old pitcher trying to pitch well enough to get another deal in 2027. It's a good move for this team so I can't complain but it does leave the question of "aren't there too many starters now?" That's fine to me. That's a good question to have, even if it's just "aren't there too many mediocre starters" Like I just said - you always need arms. The rotation will be interesting in how it sets up.
Really I'm kind of worried they let Lord, who surprised last year on a team that should now be looking hard at every stroke of good luck, fall back to the pen or into AAA for seasoning or whatever.
3 comments:
This signing made me think: this one out-Rizzo's Mike Rizzo in the "find a gem in the rough" department. I read earlier that while the Nats don't have a high ceiling for starting pitching but maybe they have a higher floor than we thought. I'm unsure if that's a compliment or a dig. I'll wait and see while I look for the signs of development and coaching to help the young ones reach their potential (looking at you Crews).
Similar to the Mikolas signing, Littell really only helps our median projection in paths where the injury situation gets pretty bad. That's plausible, of course, but I'd say there are much bigger holes on this team than SP depth, so it's a little weird to me that the few FA dollars they've spent have exclusively gone in that direction. Probably the logic is that it is the cheapest way to buy expected return at the trade deadline.
What's kind of wild is that, even if they ship out all 3 rentals and flip Gray at the deadline, by then Herz and maybe Williams will be healthy and you'd still have 6 or 7 SPs before you even look at prospects. I'll be stunned if any of Alvarez, Parker and Lord pick up service years this season. (Irvin would have to be in AAA all year for it to matter.)
I like this move, I thought he made sense for the Nats back in the fall. I think there's just so many question marks with every starting pitcher in the organization that they had to bring in someone who's thrown quality innings recently. I like Lord, but he was a much better reliever last year.
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