Falling over ourselves to accept nonsense

Bryce hit two home runs.  Strasburg was awesome.  The rest of the team?  Ehhhh but whatever. It's not like every game everyone is going to be awesome. That's the point of having great starters and a deep offense. We'll see where everyone is standing at the end of the series, just to get a real early feel. One game is just one game.

Now to the story.

Davey pulled Strasburg after 80 pitches.  Was it the right move?

No.

I mean, come on, let's be serious here. It wasn't. 

But at the same time it's not a big deal. The reason you want your starter to go later in games is because he's better than the alternative.  If he pitches it's less likely that he'll give up runs than the next guy.  But the Nats have a great bullpen so the drop off isn't severe. It's April against a team that isn't going to challenge them for a playoff spot. It's a team that looks to be so inept on offense that a comeback seemed pretty unlikely. The Nats could afford to make this move.

Still that doesn't mean we then have to swallow whatever it is the Nats feed us.

Greg Dobbs! 

Ed - This section no longer applicable.  Early info was Clip to face Dobbs without the "over Storen" part.  With that addendum the move Clip v Storen makes sense gets (though really 3 singles in 5 at bats is also not enough info stat wise)

One theory that Davey put out there was that Clippard was put in in case they had to face Greg Dobbs.  Let me state that again, Davey wants you to believe that they pulled Strasburg at 80 pitches for Tyler Clippard IN CASE THEY HAD TO FACE GREG DOBBS.

Here's Greg Dobbs.  Not exactly fear inspiring, is he?

Ok well he must rule Strasburg then right? And Clippard must own him right? Sort of.

Dobbs v Clippard  1-10, 3K
Dobbs v Strasburg 4-14, 1 2B, 4K

Clippard does better but the at bats are so limited we really shouldn't draw any conclusions just from the stats.  Could a scout there on the ground notice something that makes them worried?  I suppose, but here are the things :

• you can always remove Strasburg when Greg Dobbs comes up to pinch hit
• it wasn't even guaranteed that he would come up in the inning.

So really I don't see how you can take this to be anything but nonsense

Positivity

So Davey offered another explanation to Jason Reid. They didn't want to push him and possibly put him in a position to fail. Already, when you get to your 2nd explanation of the day, you have to be kind of doubtful.  

"I’ve always believed in getting something positive [from young pitchers]. I wasn’t going to give it a chance to turn into something negative.”

Of course Reid just takes that at face value but what exactly does that mean? I mean, I know what it means, but it provides nothing hard and fast to explain why he was pulled at that moment. He had a positive standing after 6. Why not then? It was positive after 5. Why not then? What made the 7th so special? What did he think it would provide an opportunity for him to fail that made him pull the trigger? Was his stuff faltering in the 6th? Has he shown tendency to tire early in cool weather? Or early in the year? Why?

Also throughout the article you read things like this :

• "There was no good reason for Johnson to push Strasburg to the eighth or ninth"
• "...but it wasn’t the right moment to break through a barrier"
• "Why push him just to push him? You’re going to make him throw a hundred pitches just to throw a hundred pitches?"

What barrier?!?  How are you pushing him!?!  He was at 80 pitches! Eighty!! Eight!!! Zero!!!! Ochenta!

Strasburg pitched in 28 games last year.  He threw more than 80 pitches in 24 of them. In 3 of those 4 where he was pulled, he was getting knocked around early. He threw more than 90 pitches in 20 of them. He threw more than 100 in 10 of them. 

By only pitching him eighty pitches you weren't keeping him from running into a "barrier" or being unnecessarily pushed, you were babying him, keeping him under a limit that he passed nearly every time out last year.

Is there something in here that could hint at a more believable reason?  I think so.  At one point Davey said this

it’s not just going to be [for show].

In other words, if Strasburg is going to go deeper into games it's going to be because they NEED him to go deeper into games. If he can get through 6 or 7 and the pen is rested, then it doesn't matter if he's at 80 pitches or 60 pitches. He'll be pulled and the relief staff will go in.  This isn't something that can be done for every pitcher.  You just can't work a pen like that, but there's a chance that for Strasburg this is going to be the norm going forward.  That it's not 100 pitches that's the limit, it's 100 pitches OR until he get deep enough that Davey feels safe going to the pen. Could this mean pulled after 6 at 69 pitches because the team is up 7-1?  Maybe.  We'll have to see.

This isn't a forever plan, I don't think. Eventually he does have to be stretched - as you'll want that golden arm going as deep as possible into games in October. You don't want to train him to be an 80 pitch pitcher. But we'll see how that stretching out works out on the field.

GLORIOUS MONDAY UPDATE

Baseball is back today! Ok it was back last night and I did watch some of the game, but the Amazing Race started late and then Superman was on HBO and I'd never seen it with even mild bad words (they said "ass"!)... anyway, it's a long season. I'm not going to watch every pitch of every game, and certainly not of one like Rangers vs Astros, so I'm not going to force myself to do it just because it's "opening night".   There's plenty of baseball I will watch today, and tomorrow, and every day until November.

I've updated the national media prediction page.  The current tallies (which includes ESPN's ridiculous 43 staff predictions); 26 of 61 picks to win the World Series, 53 of 58 picks to win the NL East, and no playoff misses. To put that in percentage form, that's : 

• 100% chance of being in the playoffs
• 91% chance of winning the NL East
• 43% chance of winning it all

Pretty good.

Our own crowd sourced record comes in at 97-65, and a sweep of division titles. If anyone who didn't guess on Friday wants to add their guess in the comments below, go right ahead and I'll update the number at COB.

For those looking for something more statsy - Natsradamus projects the Nats to have 98 wins.

April Prediction:
It's a pretty easy month for the Nats. They play 16 of 27 games at home and they only have one road swing expected to be tough (this weekend vs the Reds) until the very end of the month. They also have a couple of off days sitting in the middle of the month. The end could be an issue as they'll have played 10 in a row before rolling into Atlanta, but it's early in the year and they haven't done any West Coast travels so I expect they'll be fine.

I have them sweeping the Marlins, then losing 2 of 3 in Cincy (can't win every series).  They go on the take the White Sox / Braves homestand and the Marlins / Mets away run with 4-2 sets each. A 4-3 record at home vs the supposed cream of the NL (Cards and Reds), then a split of the games in ATL to end the month.  All in all that's a 17-10 record, which is right on pace for a mid 90s season given this is a home heavy month.

Other Notes:

Why do the Reds play at 4PM today?  I get that the whole "Reds first" thing is blown by the Opening Night game (not to mention stupid international games when applicable), but at the very least they should open Opening Day at Cincy at say... noon or something, right?

I also really wish SF @ LA was a 10:00 ET start instead of having SEA v OAK and STL v ARI to choose from to watch late at night, but I can't blame any team for having a day game on Opening Day. 

Read Boswell today, not because it's his best work or anything, but because Opening Day is made for Boswell.

Any questions?  Natsoftheroundtable is the email address. Gmail address to be specific.

I am on twitter. harpergordek for those of you that are into that sort of thing.

Let's get this train going. Strasburg. I'm counting on an Opening Day Perfect Game. Don't let me down.

So What Do I Think?

Updated Predictions :  6 out of 11 picking the Nats to win it all. A perfect 12 for 12 in NL East Pennants

OK enough pussyfooting around.  The season is just around the corner and unless the team falls into a cult and loses half its players to missions in Asia, the team is set.  It's time for a season prediction.

94-68, NL East Champions

Offensively the Nats are ripe for a regression. I wouldn't be surprised if Desmond and LaRoche both took steps back, if the bench played more like we'd expect them to, if Werth couldn't repeat the average of last year and his power is still gone, if Span hits more like 2011 and 2010 Span than 2012 Span, if the injury bug again hits this team. With all that you might think the Nats would be in line for a big step back, but there's something standing in the way of that. Bryce Harper. I can't see him getting worse. He could get better. A lot better. Best in the majors better. All these little things might hurt but the ascension of Bryce will cover most of that. Add in chances for better production from 2B and C, and you get a team that might take a small scooch back, but it's not going to fall back below average.

Pitching wise they should remain on top. The unreliability of relief pitching is still ever present but the Nats have done what they needed to. They've filled the back of that corps with great arms. The starting pitching might also fall back.  Haren has looked bad. Detwiler and ZNN both could pitch a little worse. But I'm still betting on Haren to be at least ok, and when I say a little worse, I mean a little. No ticking time bombs here. Gio was legitimitely great last year and Strasburg could be even better.  This is a squad that's going to be tops in the NL.  Maybe not #1, but right up there.

They were a mid 90s win team last year, who managed to have a couple wins go their way.  I stripped out that luck and added that tiny regression and settled at 94.  At 94 wins, I just don't see anyone passing them in the NL East. They have to win those games vs their competition and frankly, I don't see the Braves or Phillies as being better than the Nationals. 

What happens in the playoffs?  Playoff prediction is a fools game, especially at this point.  Who's injured? Who's tired? Who's come up from the minors? There's way too much about October 1 we don't know now to make any reliable prediction. I think the Nats will have the best team in the NL, for what that's worth. They also will have a top of the rotation that can battle with anyone. So NL East title, home field advantage, just like last year. This year though will carry the expectations of much better results.

Nationals Baseball: Positional Keyhole : Jayson Werth

Way back in the glory days of 2010 I called Nyjer Morgan the "offensive keyhole" of the Nats. What I meant was :

1. He was going to be a starter from Day 1 or play a lot of games at a position,
2. He has presented a projection that we believe in but could be wildly off for non-injury reasons,
3. His performance could significantly effect the performance of the team. 

Since then I've continued the tradition, naming Ian Desmond the keyhole of 2011 and Mike Morse the keyhole of 2012.  All three underperformed in that year given what was expected.* This year presented a difficult choice. Nearly every spot offered some level of outsized expectations. Single year break-outs (Desmond), career years (LaRoche), hot streaks (Zimmerman). In the end however, looking at the players and stats, one guy stood out; Jayson Werth.

Now things have changed since the Nyjer Morgan days.  What used to be meant by "significantly effect" was "could be the difference between more or less than 70 wins".  Nowadays its "could be the difference between an division title and a wild card", but I don't think anyone is going to argue that that doesn't matter.

Ok so what's the problem with Jayson Werth?

The first thing is the expectation game.  I think most fan's thinking with Werth follows this line : Werth was hitting real well before he was injured. He came back and hit really well again. He had that huge homerun and even robbed a home run** during the playoffs. The Jayson Werth the Nats expected is ready to come back! An average scraping .300, 25+ homers and great corner defense. Even the more realist fan is probably looking for .285+ and 20+ homers.

Except no.  Some where in the recesses of your brain and in the avalanche of Spring Training articles you might have run across the fact that Werth's power was way down last year. This doesn't seem to be a fluke as much as a trend.

isoSLG
2011 : .157
2012 : .140

Even in his terrible 2011 campaign he hit for more power than last year. Ok but that's just two years that might be explained away by injury.  Any other long term trends? How about home run rate.

HR/FB
2008 : 21.1%
2009 : 19.3%
2010 : 14.3%
2011 : 12.3%
2012 : 5.3%

That's harder to just wave away.  It happened in Philly and continues now.  I don't think he's a 5.3% HR/FB hitter - that's punch and judy stuff. But he's also no longer the guy that's going to get you 25+ homeruns. Maybe not even 20+.   It's not only the fact that he's hitting fewer homers when he gets the ball in the air.  it's also spurred on by a big increase in GB rate.

GB%
prime years : ~37.0%
2011 : 43.0%
2012 : 42.2%

He's simply not hitting the ball in the air at the same rate.  That's ok, right! He's still hitting for average.  Well yes, and no.  He did hit .300 last year but it came with the 2nd highest BABIP of his career. It's not terribly worrying.  If he gets around his career average BABIP you are looking at a ~.280 average. But if he gets a little bad luck for him and has a BABIP closer to .300 then your looking at an average around .260.  .260 and no power? That's not the Werth we signed up for.

So that's what's going on.  Is there a why?  We can speculate on a couple of reasons.  One thing that's going on is that he's not hitting fastballs like he used to.  Fangraphs has a little stat that measures a player's runs above average on a type of pitch.  It certainly isn't something I'd stake my life on but Werth's numbers do show a definite drop.  In 2008 his value was 17.4, then it went 19.4, 23.1, 6.1, and 4.7.  So when he's hitting fastballs he's not doing the same damage as before.

Possibly corroborating this is his swing percentages.  His swings outside of the strike zone have increased from around 22% in his prime to 24.2% in 2011 and 25.7% in 2012.  His contact rate for pitches outside the strike zone has also increased from 68.1% in 2010 to 72.4% in 2011 and 76.8% last year.  That may sound good, that he's making more contact, but contact on pitches outside of the zone lead to more weak hits.  I'd like to blame the Nats agressive philosophy but overall he's not really swinging at more pitches, so it's hard to do that.

The good news though is he's not swinging and missing more. That would be a strong signal of the last decline. More K's, average goes, career goes.  Werth doesn't seem to be there yet.

Now you may have noticed that I called him a "positional keyhole" rather than an offensive one. That's because his defense has also been in decline as well.  His Zone Rating has been below average for right fielders for 3 years now.

2010 : -7.2
2011 : -3.5
2012 : -7.7

It was reasonable to think after 2010 that that was just a fluke of the data. Single year fielding statistics can be unreliable.  But three years is harder to write off, especially at his advanced baseball age where we expect to see a decline in defense.  Backing this up is the fact that his CF numbers last year were not just bad, they were terrible.  He's no longer the solid defender he was in his prime.

Is this the end of Werth?  I'm not going that far.  He's still a good baserunner. He still sees a lot of pitches and walks a good amount (both rarities on this team).  One might even say he's morphing into the classic batter for his spot in the lineup. A .280 guy with a little pop, who fouls off a ton of pitches and works his way on base?  Sounds like a #2 guy to me. Granted that's usually a 2nd baseman and you usually aren't paying him close to 20 million a year but that line is not hurting the team. As for the defensive deficiencies, they are going to be mitigated by having Bryce and Span in the outfield. They can allow Werth to cover a lot less ground than he did last year when he was trying to help out an inexperienced Bryce (who in turn was trying to cover for the statue of Mike Morse in left).

Perhaps in the future, 2015 or so, Werth will morph into a very good platoon player. He did crush lefties last year to a tune of .395 /.471 / .566. This is something that was a hallmark of his early good days, 2007-2009.  As he comes back down the ladder, it might be something he's able to exploit again.


For now though, what do I see from Werth?  I see something like .280 with say 18 homers and 40 doubles, helped to average D in right?  I don't think that really diminishes the Nats pennant chances at all.  With a little bad luck though that could be more like .265 and 13 homers and a D that still hurts the team.  If the Nats end up in a situation where every game matters, a declining Werth could be the 2 game difference.

*To be fair Mike Morse's injury really made that call moot, and frankly it looked as if he had the whole season that maybe he'd do well enough to break the streak. Still, he did what he did, so... half credit? 

**didn't happen.

It begins - Nats Championship Predictions

I'll post all "official" Washington Nationals WS winning predictions here.  I'll just keep updating as I find more.

SI.com : Verducci and 3 others out of 7 predictions. (7 out of 7 NL East Pennants)

Yahoo Sports : 3 out of 4 predictions - Passan is the only one not to pick the Nats (4 out of 4 NL East Pennants)

Sporting News : 2 out of 4 predictions (Witrado also picks division winners - Nats to win NL East)

ESPN : 16 out of 43! predictions.(38 out of 43 NL East pennants)

Sportsline : 0 for 1 (NL East Champs)

Fox Sports : 1 for 2 (2 for 2 in NL East pennants)

Monday Whoopsie

Not "whoopee" - get your mind out of a gutter from the 70s. Whoopsie as in "I made a mistake".  Just deleted a days worth of comments.  Sorry about that.

This comment thing is getting on my nerves. It's not terrible mind you.  I'm not popular enough for that. But this also isn't my job so it's not like I can float in every couple of hours to delete comments. What I'd like to do is just force people to put in a name, even a made up one, because nearly all the spam I'm getting right now is "Anonymous" and I don't think people would care about tossing in a fake name, but there's no way of doing that here. Still thinking. 

Meanwhile the Nats carry on.  The most important way to describe the Nats spring? Unscathed.  Not a single injury that means anything (sorry Christian Garcia!).  While we're all focused on the NCAA Tournament the same thing applies to Spring Training. It's not about doing well.  It's about surviving. Just make it to Opening Day healthy.

Best team in baseball.  No controversy. No injuries.  (Jealous?  Yes. Yes I am)

Let's go already.

O-Minus 10 days

Or 9 or 8 depending on how and what you are looking at.

Some random thoughts (as I'm focused on some round orange ball related things right now)

• Reading through the comments on the last post it's obvious that the Storen deal is a vocal minority of haters, with a silent majority of supporters. Good to know Nats fans haven't yet reached that "everyone must be an all-star" level of thinking. Yet
• Also - I didn't say I was sort of glad Davey was retiring because of Game 5 or anything to do with his actual managing.  I said it because I'm getting a little tired of the whole "I'm an old man. I can say what I want. grumble grumble anachronistic saying" bit.  Davey's a good manager as much as that matters.
• The good thing about the WBC?  No teams forced to travel across the world for games that count a week before the season starts.   I'll take the WBC every year over having teams shipped to Asia in mid-March for "regular season" games.
• Here's praying that everyone gets the last "clown question" jokes out of their system before the season starts. 
• I don't think interleague everyday will bother me other than the fact the daily boxscores will have to include that as a section just for one game. 
• Do the winners of the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues get anything? I think they should get Cactuses and Grapefruits respectively. See how the other half lives. 
• Chapman to pen. Give the Reds fans what they wanted. Also good for the Nats and good for me (kept Leake in a fantasy league hoping this would happen) Hooray for everyone! 
• Speaking of Chapman, let us also pray that the Nats never bring up Giolito or Solis or Purke, etc. to close games late in the season. They'll look good and then we'll have to deal with this stupid argument.
• Also, that first weekend series against the Reds is immediately must watch right?
• The distance from Pitchers and Catchers to Opening Day this year is the same as Opening Day to May 20th. Interminable...except it isn't. Almost over. Almost starting.

Storen paying for Davey's mistakes

Drew Storen has had a pretty bad spring.  So what?  As we've said 1.39 million times, Spring Training stats don't matter. But Nats fans are ready to give up on Drew.  Don't you remember?  HE LOST GAME 5!!!!  HE CAN'T HANDLE PRESSURE!!!! HE EXXCUSESDS AND HEADCASES AND ELEVELENTY!

Let's review shall we?

• Drew Storen took over the closer role in 2011.  He was great according to the standard stats. He had a 2.75 ERA. He blew 5 saves and converted 43. He was great according to the fancy stats. He had a 1.022 WHIP, and 8.8 K/9, a 3.14 xFIP.  He was probably a Top 10 closer. 
• Last year after coming back from injury he pitched great again during the regular season. Both his WHIP and ERA dropped. He didn't give up a single home run.  
• In the playoffs he appeared 3 times before the finale.  He came into game 1 with a one run lead and got out the heart of the Cards order, Jay, Beltran, and Holliday, to save the game for the Nats.  He came into game 4 tied and got out Freese, Descalso, walked Kozma, then got out Carpenter to hold the lead and set up Werth's dramatic home run. In those first 3 appearances he pitched 3 innings, gave up no hits, walked 1 and struck out 4. No one scored on him for a 0.00 ERA.

Now, I mentioned Game 1 and Game 4, what happened in game 3? In that game Storen came in 8 runs behind. Why did he come in 8 runs behind? To get work in.  Davey didn't use him in game 2 and there was a day off between games 2 and 3, so to keep Storen "fresh" Davey wanted him to throw. He did and he did well, as you might have expected, getting out Freese, Descalso and Kozma in order. Fine.

The problem is this unnecessary use in game 3 set-up a dangerous situation. What if Storen was needed in Game 4 and Game 5?  They were scheduled to be played back to back, which would mean he'd pitch in 3 consecutive days.  He'd done it before (twice since coming back from injury) but both times he had very easy 2nd outings.  In the first case he was asked to get 2 outs against the Astros and did it in 8 pitches.  In the second case he was asked to get 1 versus the Mets and did it in 3.  His role was different now. Davey wasn't going to use him just to get 1 or 2 outs.  What if he had to pitch a whole inning in his 2nd appearance and labored through it?  Wouldn't that set-up a no-win situation where either a tired Storen would have to come in for the 3rd game in a row or you'd have to go with a arm you believed in less?

So getting TO Game 5 Davey blundered twice.

• He chose not use Storen in Game 2, prior to the off day, to keep his arm warm for the remainder of the series. If he had he probably wouldn't have felt compelled to use him in the Game 3 blowout. Maybe he'd have to use him in 3 straight games but it would be dictated by necessity.
• He did use him in game 3, even though he didn't need to which set-up a potential situation where a tired Storen could be necessary for a critical spot in Game 5.  It wasn't the most likely scenario but it is what in fact transpired. 

In Game 4 Storen held the line and helped set-up the biggest win in Nats history, but there were no easy at bats. He came in to face the exact same 3 guys as he had the night before. They were more comfortable against him and worked him for 24 pitches. In Game 5 Davey was faced with a situation where he basically needed to go with Storen. He'd burned through his #2-#4 relievers (Clippard, Burnett, and Stammen) and the Nats were clinging to a 2 run lead. It'd either have to be Storen or the untested Christian Garcia to finish the game off. (Mattheus being the 3rd option).  Davey went with Storen.  Etc.  Etc.

We've gone over this before but in Game 5 Davey made two critical errors.

• He pitched Edwin Jackson in relief for no goddamn reason. Both Mattheus and Garcia were available.  Instead he went with his gut, used Edwin, who nearly blew the game right there. He got lucky, only gave up one run, but turned the line-up over so the big bats would get one more turn up.
• He kept Storen on the mound in a position that was ripe for failure. You could argue he should have used Garcia but even I think you have to try Storen there first. Sure he might have been (and was) tired but sometimes that works in your advantage.  And it seemed like it would work. After a double came two outs, but then he walked Molina and set up a situation where Storen was about to face the same 3 guys - Freese, Descalso and Kozma for the third straight night. He was obviously was not the same pitcher, and had already thrown 16 pitches in the inning. It was time for him to sit down.  But Davey chose to stick with him. And he walked Freese.  So now he's thrown 22 pitches, he's just walked the bases loaded on back to back bases on balls.  He's about to face ANOTHER guy that saw him in each of the last two nights.  YOU HAVE TO TAKE HIM OUT.  Yet Davey keeps him in and the guy gets a hard shot off of a diving Desmond that ties the game.  THEN REPEAT EVERYTHING I JUST SAID EXCEPT ADD A HIT.  And yet Davey keeps him in.

Sorry about this. Getting out of hand a bit.

Look the point is this. Up until the very last game he pitched in 2012. Drew Storen was not a good relief pitcher, he was one of the better ones in the majors. Not Chapman, Kimbrel dominant but reliably very, very good. In the Cardinals series alone he had a big save and even a bigger hold. In the last game, he was set up to fail by a series of dumb decisions by Davey Johnson leading up to Game 5, leading up to the last inning of Game 5, and in the last inning of Game 5.  If you told me Davey's ultimate goal was that he wanted Storen to lose this game, I could almost believe you. And eventually, after almost getting out of it, Storen did lose it. 

I can't argue with picking up an arm like Soriano.  They lost Burnett. Clippard labored at the end of last year. Bullpens are notoriously fickle. They needed another arm. They got a great one. But adding Soriano as the closer doesn't mean Storen should be disrespected. He's not a bad pitcher.  He's a damn good one that had one bad game in the worst of circumstances and he's taking far too much heat from fans that should be directed at the manager.

Monday Quickie

So in the hidden "weaknesses" post, which mostly devolved into a commentary about announcing - shows you how truly strong the Nats are, commenter "blovy8" pointed out that I somehow totally missed the fact the Nats strike out too much. Does it matter?

Well, even though striking out isn't the terrible avoid at all cost thing it used to be, it still isn't a good thing. Anyone with decent speed or the ability to keep the ball off the ground in DP circumstances would be better served putting the ball in play.  But strikeouts are more of a problem when they hint at larger issues; an inability to distinguish strikes and balls, inability to make good contact with the ball.  So really you have to look at other things along with it.  Are the Nats able to take a walk?  Are they able to slug ok? The answers are no, not really and yes.  So the slugging isn't an issue but the walks may be.  Something to look at this season. Will pitchers, can pitchers, just pitch around the Nats and hope they chase?

Also I want to add something more to the hidden "weaknesses" list.  Hubris.  Any front office that thinks they can take a 3 time injured arm (2 TJ surgeries), who hasn't started or pitched significant innings in years, and rely on turning him into top notch starting pitching depth thinks a bit too much of themselves. A little less "no comeuppance" next time, please.

Hidden "weaknesses"

It can't be helped.  You are always looking for things to improve in a team.  You win 100 games, you want to find out how you can win 101. But it's tough to find weakness in the 2013 Nationals.  On a macro level : Starting Pitching?  Great.  Relief Pitching? Very Good.  Defense? Very Good.  Offense? Good.   On a micro-level, I suppose LH relief pitching is a weakness, but that was a choice that mostly makes sense for the Nats (how many times a year do you need to get out a LH who is terrible random against ok lefties but will crush the great righties the Nats have?).  And I guess... maybe catcher? I mean, it's not a strength right now.  It sure could be though.

Even expanding it out - manager, GM, owner... no complaints.  TV Announcers? Park and location? Batting practice ballcaps?

No team is good at everything, even the Nats. So where do these Supermen fail? What minor little quibbling things can you find if you get bored and pour over some stats?

They walk a few more guys than you'd like.  (10th in the NL last year)  Surprising on a team with control freaks like ZNN and Strasburg but it's true.  The Nats love "stuff" and when that's your default you'll rely on guys that can get a little wild sometimes.  Obviously this hasn't hurt performance, but I'd expect something similar this year. Even though most of the main offenders are gone, their best control relief guy (Burnett) is gone too, and the Nats really love the heat (look at how they are fawning over Karns and seem ready to give H-Rod a 3rd chance).

The left side of the infield makes a lot of silly errors.  Of qualifiers - Zimmerman is middle of the road in 3B Fielding Percentage, Desmond near the bottom.  This is something we've all noticed too. These guys sometimes have brain lock-ups and all of a sudden balls are flying every which way. The good news is that these don't show any pattern of repeating and frankly it's more important that they get to a ton of balls. Which they do.

They are kind of a slow starting team when it comes to hitting.  Every definite starter (with the exception of Bryce) tends over their career to start slowly in March/April.  That's usually the case for most batters in general, but the law of averages would say that someone on the Nats would be a guy whose March/April tend to be one of their better months. Nope.

They pick the wrong random old guys to lend a veteran presence.  Man, DeRosa and Lidge were bad last year.  The good news - No 35+ ers this year. Also no Nady, no Maldanado.  Even that ancient Wang is gone.  He'd have been 33 this year! Get outta here oldies! (everyday oldies excluded - watch out for Tracy to be bad! Oh no! Season over!)

and... you know that's really about it. I tried.  I lightly scoured, but this is all I could find.  And none of these things really matter.  The walks go hand in hand with the Nats Ks which are among the best in the league.  As long as their HRs remain down (also among the best in the league), and the relief pitching remains good (ditto) the walks are just a minor nuisance.  Zimm and Desi's brain locks are offset by the fact that they get a lot more guys out than your average left side. So even given the fact they give team's a few more extra outs on errors, they take away a bunch more on range.  They are a plus.  Who cares if the Nats are slow starters? It's not a one-month season.  And random old guys only matter on the fringiest of fringes. Maybe these guys will combine to cost you a game?

Nats are good.  Damn good. Best in the league good like everyone says. Watch out Nats fans, you are going to see a LOT of Washington Nationals as picks for WS winners this year, just you wait.

Every damn year

Anthony Rendon was cut from the spring training roster.  BUT HE WAS HITTING SO WELL!!!

Bryce Harper is a man on fire.  HE'LL HAVE A MONSTER SEASON!!!!

Stop.  Bryce Harper might have a monster season.  Anthony Rendon might cruise through double and triple A and be in a Nats uniform by June. But it has little to do with how they performed in what amounts to two weeks of at bats.

We've gone over this before pointing out the guys that led the team in hitting before (Mark DeRosa last year!) and yet here we are again. But it's not being crazy, you say.  I'm not being influenced by Spring! Perhaps if you see what's happening elsewhere, you might take a breath.

Jackie Bradley Jr for the Red Sox is tearing it up.  He hit .270 with limited power last year in half a AA season.  Fans are clamoring for him to start the season with the team,

Jeff Baker is having a super hot spring for Texas.  The 32 yr old career part-time player with declining stats has a good shot at opening the season as the Rangers utility guy.

Shane Robinson is killing it for the Cardinals. He is a feel good story on perseverence and proving something to people.  (lucky for the Cardinals they have their OF set so he's only in line for a small promotion to 4th OF from last year)

Donovan Solano crushing it for the Marlins.  He spent his minor league career as a mediocre average, no power, no patience guy. But thanks to a strong finish in the majors and a hot spring he could hit at the top of the order for the Marlins (though to be fair he might be their best hitter left after Stanton)

Adam Lind is having a resurgent March. He's watched his ability to hit lefties slowly degrade over the past 5 years until now he's just a platoon player at best. They Blue Jays still might waste a month of the regular season seeing if he's somehow regained that ability, in part based on how he hits them in the spring.  How many at bats will that be? 30?

I'm not even cherry picking here. That's really just picking the Top 5 guys by average from the Spring Training stats. You may not think that it can happen to you.  That there is no way that I could be affected by Spring stats anymore, but its a battle everyday to avoid falling back into that trap. It happens to everyone.

Gio and batting order position

Or "Fooling around with numbers to get nowhere"

Fangraphs did a nice little article yesterday on how Gio Gonzalez absolutely destroys the opposing team's pitchers when they come up to bat. This is something we noticed last year (and now I'm kicking myself for not following up) and can by itself explain why Gio took a step up to the top tier last season.  As the author says, this is simply demonstrative, and it isn't meant to be dismissive of Gio. He pitches in the National League. You have to pitch to pitchers. To do that better than anyone else is a very good skill to have.

It did raise a question for me though.  What if Gio pitched better to bad hitters and worse to good ones?

Now I hear you.  OF COURSE that is going to be the case. Better hitters are better. Worse hitters are worse.  But what I'm saying is what if he dominates the bad hitters more than the usual pitcher and gets hit harder by the good hitters than the usual pitcher as compared to their own baseline pitching.  In that case Gio would bode poorly as a playoff pitcher (in a very broad general sense and against his own high level - it's not like you'd rather have Wang out there) because you usually face better hitters in the playoffs and while every pitcher would get hit a little harder, he'd tend to get hit even a little harder than that.  You follow?

So I compared the baseline OPS given up by an NL pitcher last year to the OPS given up by batting order position and the did the same for Gio.  Did I find anything to be worried about? Maybe...but probably not.

Overall, unsuprisingly the best hitters are 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th. (although this is bad planning because your 6th hitter will get up less than your 1st or 2nd - it's not really killing anything. As we've gone over, lineup construction has a surprisingly small effect on scoring).  Gio has about the same ratio of "BOP OPS" (batting order position OPS) to overall OPS as the NL as a whole

3rd  NL : 1.14   Gio : 1.10
5th  NL : 1.05   Gio :  1.02
6th  NL : 1.04   Gio :  0.98

Clean-up hitters do hit Gio harder than his baseline in comparison to the rest of the NL (NL : 1.13, Gio : 1.27) but given what we see above it doesn't seem indicative of anything.   (A Note here - Gio's baseline of .582  is so much better than the NL's of .721 that even though #4 hitters hit him relatively harder, they still hit him a lot less than they do the rest of the NL.  OPS NL : .818   OPS Gio : .739)

What about the rest of the lineup?  Well here's where things are a little kooky.  Gio dominates pitchers like none other but he also is a LOT better at facing #2 and #7 hitters.

2nd  NL : 1.00   Gio : 0.74
7th  NL : 1.01   Gio :  0.70
9th  NL : 0.64   Gio :  0.39

But he's a LOT worse at getting out leadoff hitters and #8 guys.

1st  NL : 0.98   Gio :  1.46
8th  NL : 0.94   Gio :  1.20

What the hell does this all mean? Well I'm not sure. I could say that he's bearing down on the pitcher spot so much that he's actually hurting himself in the 8th and 1st spots.  But then what's up with #2 and #7?  

Really I don't want to say anything yet. There is some noise we have to get rid of here.  Are there more lefties in the 2nd and 7th spots than in your average spots? More righties in leadoff and 8th spots?  Are these spots specifically bad/good in the NL East? That could explain some of it. Or it could be just yearly fluctuation. Each position is roughly 1/9th of the batters Gio faces. That's not even a month worth of pitching.  You wouldn't (well... you shouldn't) get overly excited by a month of good/bad pitching, so there's no reason to get excited by what we see here. If you asked me right now, that's what I would assume right now. It's nothing.  A fluke of the limited data.

This is something to look at over the course of the year. It'll probably go away, or at least be really diminished by the time the season finishes up. If not, well then we can debate what it actually means and if whatever we decide really means anything in a practical sense because Gio's baseline is much better than the NL's baseline. 

Optimism is the new reality

The Nats are probably the best team in the major leagues. They had a great starting pitching staff last year. They arguably improved it. They had a great defense last year. They certainly improved it (assuming Danny stays healthy). They had a great relief core last year. They arguably improved it (but I'm not so sure the results will be better). They had a decent offense last year.  One could argue that they'll have a better season this year (there are forces pulling in both directions so either argument is valid).  They possibly have the best young starting pitcher and the best young offensive player in the game today.

They won 98 games last year. Nothing obviously got worse.

I'll still blog in mostly the same way I always have.  This is wrong. This could be better. This is good here and overlooked. This is fine, but this could use some work.  The difference is it's not .500 or even the playoffs we're talking about here. Any negative by itself fits into this season as a "how will this effect their chances of winning the NL East again". Pennants are the new baseline.

Could things change? Of course. Injuries, surprise let downs, great performances by other teams, these can all affect how the Nats season goes. It's a long year. But right now there is no overly optimistic view of the 2013 Washington Nationals, unless you are looking for 120 wins. 

Three weeks fans. 20 days.

Impenetrable rationality with apparent mystery

Boz is at it again. Even when saying something that is completely and utterly right - the Nats may be very successful over the next 3-5 years and never win a World Series - he has to play up some mythical angle. In this article it's about the "apparent rationality with impenetrable mystery" that is baseball. Thing is - that's backward. The rationality is not "apparent", it is in fact very real. The mystery is not impenetrable, it is in fact very explainable.

Baseball is so rational that if you gave me two numbers, just two, Runs Scored and Runs Allowed, I'd have like a 50% chance of getting a teams record within 2 games. I'd have a better than an 80% chance of getting it within 5. This is the case knowing nothing else about the team at all. The same applies to individuals. You give me a player's stats in his career, and I'll have a damn good chance of nailing his stats in any situation where he's had a lot of at bats. Playoffs, RISP, whatever. It's the fact that baseball is made up of repeated events over the course of a very long season that makes it entirely rational.

Entirely rational does NOT mean that events can be predicted with 100% accuracy. But that's not "mystery", it's variability. Calling it "mystery" is akin to thinking demons must be in play if a dice roll lands on a 1 because 2 through 6 was far more likely. We know why we don't know.  It's because we CAN'T know. That's the way the world works. But to me that's not mystery. A mystery is something we can't understand, that can't be explained. The fact that random chance plays into a baseball season ultimately ending in success or failure, that random chance dictates who would end up performing the best in a short 4-7 game period, is both understandable and explainable.

This is Boz getting better though.  Taking the fact we can't predict the exact way things will play out and making it into mystery is far better than making it into a statement on heart or attitude or chemsitry.

Other notes

FUN WITH ARBITRARY ENDPOINTS #1! Boz says this:

In the past three years which MLB teams have won the most games? The Yankees, Phillies, Rangers, Rays and Braves. .... None has won a World Series. Only one, Texas, has even reached the Series. That’s what being a tip-top team in a multi-year window insures you: nada.

Correct final point made BUT why does he stop at the five highest? Because if you toss in the 6th you get the Giants and 2 more WS appearances (and wins) in the past 3 years.  Why does he look at the last 3 years? Because if you go to say 5 years, you'd run into both the Yankees and Phillies winning (and the Phillies and Tampa Bay losing). I'd say the take away is really "That’s what being a tip-top team in a multi-year window insures you : multiple relatively small chances at ultimate success. The more chances you have the better."  


Is Boz right? The Braves should have only won 2 World Series over those 14 pennant years? Well the math is fuzzy. What chance do you give the Braves of winning a single game vs team X? It should be lower than their overall win percentage because they are playing better teams. Then again it should be adjusted too for the pitcher being used.  But making some fair assumptions, I think 2 sounds about right.  I could crunch it, but I'm guessing they'd have been expected to be in around 5 WS and win about 2.


Boz says this: 

The NBA Finals have had 44 Most Valuable Players. Forty winners (91 percent) are in the Hall of Fame or will be. Michael Jordan won six times. Of 47 Super Bowl MVPs, 32 are or will be in Canton. That’s 68 percent. 

True but it's kind of an unfair comparison. In the NBA and the NFL the offense is in control of the ball.  In both cases you are going to go through your best offensive player as much as you can. These are likely to be high quality, if not Hall of Fame type players. In baseball it's much harder to do this on offense because you don't control the ball and the structure of the game is working against you. Your best regular hitter is only going to get a couple more plate appearances than your worst regular over the course of a series, and that's if they actually pitch to him. On "defense" baseball is limited by fatigue. Your best pitcher is probably only going to be seen twice, one mediocre outing and his MVP chance is likely done.


FUN WITH ARBITRARY ENDPOINTS #2! Boz says this:

Since ’81, just seven of the 34 World Series MVPs are or will be in the Hall of Fame. We could debate a few borderline players.

Fine point but it makes it seem like it's a total crapshoot who wins it when in reality it's more likely a good player will win the MVP than a bad one.  Wonder why Boz starts with 1981? It's not because of the strike (would make more sense to start with 1982 in that case). It's because from 1961 through 1980 future HoFers won 14 out of 20 MVPs (and one of the other 6 was Pete Rose).  Just saying. Kurt Suzuki might win the WS MVP, but a smart man puts his money on Ryan Zimmerman.

The bar has been set and it's REALLY high

The Nats pitching staff is young and awfully good. Led by Strasburg, Gio, and ZNN, it's only natural to compare them to the best rotation in our collective memory, the Braves' staff anchored by Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz.  Here's the thing though.  That staff was amazing.

Starter ERA* by year
1994 : 3.28
1995 : 3.25
1996 : 3.45
1997 : 3.05
1998 : 3.06

Nats 2012 : 3.40

*Yes I know ERA is imperfect.  Consider it pitching and defense if it makes you feel better. It's not like the Nats aren't proud of their defense too. And yes, luck is in there too. Deal. 

OK you say - that's not fair.  Totally different time periods. You're right. Let's add in league starter ERA (in parenthesis)

1994 : 3.28 (4.62)
1995 : 3.25 (4.63)
1996 : 3.45 (4.68)
1997 : 3.05 (4.60)
1998 : 3.06 (4.60)

Nats 2012 : 3.40 (4.26)

So not only were the Braves' staffs better, they were better in harder circumstances.  The Braves were around 30% better than league ERA over a stretch of 5 years.  The Nats were 20% better last year.  That's not to say the Nats staff wasn't really good, but it wasn't anything historic. Hell, going by comparison to league ERA, the Nats were neither the best NL staff of the past 2 years (Phillies 2011 2.86 (4.16)) or the best staff in the majors last year (Rays 2012 3.34 (4.40)).

But the Nats do have something those two teams don't have and that's a chance to keep the same group together for years to come. The Phillies are too old, the Rays too cheap. What do the Nats have to do to compare to these Braves teams?

Well they need to get that ERA down to about 3.00. Can they do it? It's possible but it's going to be tough. Let's assume that Gio and ZNN are about where they should be. With ERAs slightly below 3.00, that gives the Nats a little cushion. If Dan Haren is healthy...  I guess you could pencil in a 3.00 ERA given the Nats D and the move to the NL.  Ok so where do you like Detwiler? 3.50? Now you've set Strasburg's bar at 2.70. Like him higher? 4.00?  Strasburg's gotta pitch to a 2.20 ERA or so.

Let's break it down to three things

1) The Nats need Strasburg to step up.  Maddux really was carrying the Braves claim to best staff. His ERAs over the course of this time?  1.56, 1.63, 2.72, 2.20, 2.22.  If the Nats are to match the Braves Strasburg has to be nearly as dominant.

2) It wouldn't hurt if Gio and/or ZNN could get better too.  In 1996 Maddux had an off year for him. Avery started to breakdown, Jason Schmidt was bad.  Denny Neagle was bad. So how did the Braves pull off another great year relative to the league?  Both Smoltz and Glavine pitched a little bit better. Not a lot better mind you, but both pitchers had been very good (better than Gio and ZNN) and they improved a little bit instead of declining like everyone else. It made all the difference. It's kind of unfair asking Gio and ZNN to match up with one definite and one maybe Hall of Famer, but if you want to compare staffs it has to be done.

3) The Nats need to keep finding decent guys behind these three.  Whether it was Kent Merker and Steve Avery, Denny Neagle, or an emerging Kevin Millwood, the Braves always had someone at the back of the rotation that was capable of putting up a year just as good as the guys in the front. That was necessary because some years that last spot is just not going to work out for you (see 1997 for a Braves example).  Despite statistical protestations, Edwin Jackson is not that guy. Dan Haren IS. Ross Detwiler might be - at least for a year or two. That should be long enough for someone else to emerge.

Oh let's add a fourth

4) Health - Smoltz got injured in 94 and 98 but managed not to miss that much time in either year (thanks to the strike in '94) and was only seemingly hampered by it in 1994 (4.14 ERA was the worst of his career until his final season).  Maddux and Glavine were completely healthy over this time.

It's a tall order for the Nats rotation to match up to these guys even for one season and it's probably more than a bit unfair to make the comparison at all.  But I look at like this; the fact that you can say that maybe the Nats staff can one day be looked back at by baseball fans as in the neighborhood of these Braves staffs is a huge compliment.

Quick q

So this spam thing. Would it be a pain if I made you guys log in to comment? Right now it's not so bad that I can't handle it (when I'm not on work travel - smart guy) but I don't know if it'll get substantially worse once the season starts. Any suggestions or ideas?

This season is taking FOREVER to get here

I didn't think an extra week of Spring Training would matter but man.... it just accentuates the drag of this thing.  Before you could distract yourself at this point with the build up to conference tourneys but now we're still finishing up the season.

Mattheus pitches some more innings!
Haren is feeling good!

It's fake baseball that doesn't matter and yet we have to talk about it because what else are we going to do? NOT talk about it?

worse, there's just more time for Boz to spout out nonsense like this column where he conveniently forget the Nats overpaid for their own egotistical malcontent (in arguably a position they didn't even need), Rafeal Soriano. If I wanted to do a "Boz job" on the Nats I'd also mention they paid a couple of kids 20+ million in total, one who blames every bad outing on something other than his pitching and then never talks about it, the other one who sprints around the bases in his Indian warpaint crying out for people to look at him so he can appear on another commerical lifting day-glo weights.

Not that I believe what I just said about Strasburg or Bryce, just that if you have an agenda to push (in Boz's case there's something overly special about the Nats) you can view things in a way that's favorable to your agenda. Let me flip the above.

"The Nats do what good teams do, strengthening a strength and taking some pressure off our young arms by bringing in the energy and drive of Rafeal Soriano to close. Forged in the pressure of playoff baseball in the AL East, he'll anchor what was already one of the best pens in baseball. But mostly they built this team the smart way, home growing talent like possibly the two most exciting young players in baseball. Strasburg brings a focus and determination to the team that it needs while his personality opposite, the enthusiastic Bryce Harper keeps things fun, hustling in a way we haven't seen from a player this talented since Charlie Hustle was diving head first into 3rd."

Gah gah gah. The truth is that every team has its mix and if they win, they tend to get along. If they lose they tend to argue. It really is that simple.  If you want to pick on the Dodgers for bringing in a ton of high-priced talent that has failed to produce that makes sense. It's a huge gamble with a lot of $. If you want to start saying a guy telling you the truth about why players make contract decisions is emblematic of a team that will be unable to win because their high-priced parts just don't care enough, that's dumb.

I don't know what I'm trying to say.

Yes I do.  START THE DAMN SEASON ALREADY. I need something real to talk about, not feelings and impressions.

Where Hypothetical Rendon goes

The thing about this whole Rendon deal is... well the thing about this whole Rendon deal is that he's yet to prove himself in the minors, so really this is all moot until he does... but the other thing about this whole Rendon deal is that fans are trying to decide where he might end up late in 2013 and into 2014 using 2012 stats as a guideline. It's not their fault. What can you do but use the most recent stats available? But it's terribly flawed because what matters most in terms of where the "hypothetical reaching his potential" Rendon will end up playing is the stats between now and whenever he's called up. What matters most is something we don't know.

This is important because if you look at 2012 of course 2nd base is going to be where you stick Rendon.  Danny Espinosa had an off-year with the bat and was probably the least valuable member of the infield. Plus he's nursing a shoulder injury. Seems pretty well set, right? But there are good enough reasons why Rendon could end up replacing any of the other infielders that we really shouldn't be sticking him at the keystone just yet.

Why Ian Desmond? 

We all like to assume Ian Desmond had a break-out year and will continue to hit as he has. Hell, I'm predicting some regression, and still think he'll easily be a Top 10 shortstop.  But what if it's far more a fluke than a breakout?

In 2010 and 2011 he did not hit well ( roughly a .260 / .303 / .375 hitter) and he didn't field well. While I'd be shocked if he went back to being a 10 HR type of guy, I was shocked he became a 25+ guy. Shocks do happen. Fielding tends to be on the fluky side when looking at one year so perhaps 2013 was overly positive for him.

Like I said yesterday at the end of 2011 people were looking to move Ian so Rendon could get into the lineup. The 2012 Desmond is irreplaceable but if the 2011 Desmond returns we'll see the same arguments return with him.

Why Ryan Zimmerman?

Ryan's contract is too big and too long to just out and out replace him with Rendon.  Plus whenever he's been healthy enough to play there's year after year saying he can hit and he can field.  This isn't going to be a talent thing.  He might get pushed across the diamond but he won't necessarily be replaced because the numbers he puts up and the numbers he puts into his bank account say otherwise.

Still there are numbers that might cause Ryan to be replaced by Rendon.  They are 17, 61, 20, and 56.  Those are the number of games Ryan has missed in the past 5 seasons (he also missed 5 one year for you completists).  Ryan has had significant injuries before. He could again and if so, it would make too much sense not to slot in the natural 3rd baseman waiting in the wings.

Why Adam LaRoche? 

The Nats have the least amount of attachment to Mr. LaRoche. They pretty much told him to find a better (longer) deal elsewhere and only took him back under their terms.  Those terms were "We're signing you to a short term deal so don't expect to retire here" There would be a little hesitation about sitting Adam for Anthony, but given that it would only amount to doing it for a year, I think the Nats would swallow that cash if Rendon was forcing the issue,  They'd end up either dealing Adam or making him a highly paid platoon-esque first baseman.

Of course you don't replace 2012 LaRoche with Rendon unless he's some sort of wunderkind. But 2010 LaRoche was pretty mediocre. Adam is going to be 33 next year.  He doesn't have the best profile for gracefully aging. He could simply put up a very average, a very replaceable year. And what if he gets injured again? We've all see what that did to him in 2011.


I'm not saying I think any of this will happen. Off the top of my head I like Ian to keep playing well (with the average dropping a bit - but not markedly so).  I like Zimmerman to be healthy enough to play 140+ games and do what he does. I like LaRoche to age slowly enough that he can put at least one more good year, if not two. I also like Danny to hit a little better as well.

But any of this could happen. There's not a single player here that has played very well over each of the past 2-3 years missing little if any time. There is no one you should immediately say "Well Rendon isn't going to replace that guy".  Thus talk about where Rendon should play should really be shelved until he's ready to come up. He should try out ALL the infield positions and if/when he's ready, be ready for whatever the year throws at him, whether that's being thrust into a starting role, or playing super-sub for the stretch run. 

Odds and Ends

Starting Pitching Health last words

I spent the last 2 posts talking about the Nats likelihood of facing an injury to a starting pitcher and while that still holds true, I may have sold short their ability to have 4 healthy starters all year. Yes, these great healthy rotations fall apart because of injury, but they also fall apart because of free agency. The reliable pitcher goes away and the team is forced to replace him with someone less reliable. That's not a problem the Nats face with their main four. I looked at the last 5 teams to have 5 starters hit 30+ starts and instead of seeing how they did do the following year, I looked at how they would have done if everyone stayed. (You might have seen this in the last comments - but hey not everyone reads those)

06 WhiteSox - 4
05 Indians - 3
05 Cardinals - 4 (though Morris was terrible and probably hurt)
03 Mariners - 3 (misread this originally)
93 Dodgers - can't be sure, strike year but 4 likely.

Bolstering my theory that an injury will happen, no one would have replicated  five healthy starters.  It's just THAT hard to keep five guys throwing 200IP  healthy all year. But two teams would have hit the 4 level, and another one would have likely also done it if not for the strike.  More importantly, no one would have crashed to the "only 2 healthy starter" level.  Personally that's the level the Nats would have to get to for me to worry about their playoff chances. (So in other words - to reiterate - pitcher injury will happen but alone is not a worry)


Danny is good

Rendon hit a home run!  It's time to begin talk of replacing someone!

Last year, prior to the season, the prevailing theme was "Ian is no good! Trade him and move Danny over! Let Rendon play 2nd".  Then Ian had a breakout year.  Now the talk is "Danny is no good! Trade Danny and let Rendon play 2nd!" The problem is that Danny IS good.

Danny does strikeout a lot and had an off-year hitting. With his pop though, it was still good enough to be average for a 2nd baseman.  His speed? Above average. His fielding? Among the best in the majors. Basically Danny does nothing wrong. It depends on how you look at the defense but last year Danny was somewhere between average and above average.And this is the guy you want to replace? With a guy who primarily projects to be a 3rd baseman?

I feel like this is a "don't know what you've got till it's gone situation".  With a slight improvement at the plate (really it would not take much) Danny is a Top 5 type 2nd baseman. Danny is 26, team controlled until 2017 and  by all accounts a decent fella. This is not the type of player you eye for replacement.I know we're always fascinated by the next big thing but it's not the Espinosas that good teams deal. It's the Skoles and Moores. The guys that haven't produced full-time in the majors and might be overproducing now.

(What should they do with Rendon?  Well IF he does well enough in AA - you play him all over the infield in September.  Then you begin the grooming process for which corner spot you want him to take. Hell - maybe it will be 2nd base even but the 2013 season is going to decide that, not a couple homers in Florida and the fact Danny struck out too much in 2012)


Christian Garcia

Seriously.  Usually I defer to the judgement of the guys in charge because they know this team better than me, but the whole Garcia to starter move was one that I couldn't agree with. So many injuries, so long since he's pitched even close to a starters level of innings. It just didn't make sense. Now he's injured. Still they persist with this starter fantasy. Stop it. Honestly. Stop it. Squeeze what use you can from this broken arm and move on. (I don't expect them to.  Rizzo is loathe to admit defeat - see "The 100 Chances of Wang")

Why not this pitching staff?

Yesterday I told you that it's very unlikely that the Nats pitching staff would go through 2013 without a serious injury and next to impossible that they'd be able to stay complete healthy all the way until the end of 2014. But still a couple teams have done that in the past 20 years and the Nats staff is supposed to be special.  Why CAN'T the Nats do it?  I'll leave the kicker until the end but first let's look at the teams that did it.

2005-2008 White Sox

Four consecutive years of 4 guys with 30 or more starts. That's mighty impressive. How'd they do it? They mixed home grown talent with savvy FA signings.

The first crew to do it was Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, Freddy Garcia, and Jose Contreras.  Buehrle and Garland were home grown guys, younger, and already had a history of lots of starts (4 years in a row of 30+ for Mark, 3 for Jon).  They brought in Garcia who had a 4 year streak of his own coming from Seattle. Only Contreras was the gamble.  He was supposedly a rubber-arm Cuban but spent parts of 2003 dealing with one thing or another. The White Sox gambled on him and won.

The following year this group would be joined by Javy Vasquez who also had a long history of 30+ starts (6 years in a row before coming to the White Sox) and they got the perfect 5 guys all staying healthy all year.

Freddy Garcia would leave the next year for Philly and promptly suffer an injury that would derail him for 3 years. The rest of the cast stayed the same and they got 4 again. One thing you'd notice though is that it didn't matter as much to the White Sox how well the pitching was. Contreras was awful this year and fairly consistently so, but they kept trotting him out there. At 72-90 the White Sox were out of the playoff hunt by the All-Star break.  A better team may have tried something else.

In 2008 the aged Contreras was let go and Garland left for LA, but the White Sox filled the holes with Gavin Floyd (trade) and John Danks (within) to get to 4. While Javy would leave after this year, these three would continue to put up 30+ games starts until last year when Danks went down.

1991-1993 Braves

The Braves! The pitching staff held up as the example of awesomeness, who did it almost entirely from within.

In 1991 It started with Steve Avery, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, and Charlie Leibrandt. Only Leibrandt came from outside and when the Braves got him he had put up 5 straight healthy years (though it looks like he'd been a little injured that first year for the Braves).  Thus started the run.

In 1992 it was the same 4.  In 1993 Liebrandt left and in came Greg Maddux - 5 30+ start seasons in a row before this.

And then... the strike, which made it impossible to get to 30 starts in '94 and pretty much impossible in '95  Could the Braves had made it  until Avery was brought down low in 1996?

No. While in 1995 the 4 would start 28, 29, 29 and 29 games showing another year of perfect health, 1994 was not that. Two weeks before the season ended Smoltz underwent surgery to get bone chips out of his elbow.  Is it possible that in a full year he tries to pitch through it? I suppose. But is it possible that that leads to a bigger injury issue with Smoltz? Or that if he has his surgery in the beginning of October instead of the end of July that he's maybe not ready by a normal Opening Day '95? (The 1995 season started in late April).  I'm thinking one way or another it ends in 1994 or 1995.  

Plus Avery did get injured, too. He just pitched through it and got terrible.

So why not the Nats?

The Nats (23, 26, 26, 26, 28) were older than the Braves (21, 24, 25, 34) when they started their streak, but younger than the White Sox (25, 26, 28, 33). Haren is an injury risk but then again the Nats don't need him to keep the streak alive (we're only talking 4 pitchers here) and even with an injury he hit 30 starts last year, which makes 8 years in a row. Why would I be down on the Nats in comparison to these two staffs (at least in the sense of hitting 30 starts)?

Here's why -
White Sox - Contreras lost a little time in 2004 with shoulder issues, no other recent injury issues
Braves - Liebrandt lost a little time in 1990 due to something, no other recent injury issues
Nats - Haren lost a couple games in 2012 with back issues. Tommy John surgery for Jordan Zimmerman in 2010.  Major hip surgery for Ross Detwiler in 2010. Tommy John for Stephen Strasburg in 2011.

Both the White Sox of the mid 2000s and the Braves of the early 90s were dealing with staffs that were mostly healthy leading up to the streaks.  As we talked about yesterday, past health is a great predictor of future health. While Haren might work out just like Leibrandt and Contreras did, there are still 3 guys on the Nats who have yet to put up back to back full years of health because of major injuries.

This doesn't mean the Nats staff is not better than the White Sox or arguably on par with the Braves. It is that good. It does mean however that what I said to start holds true.  The chances of the Nats making it through the next two years with great health (4+ starters starting 30+ games) is next to none.

Dream a little dream of pitcher health

Last year the Nats had amazing starting pitcher health.  For example here are the number of missed starts (where a whole rotation turn took place without said pitcher) for the Nats starters last year:

Gio : 0
ZNN : 0
EJax : 0
Strasburg (while in rotation) : 0
Detwiler (while starter) : 0

Hmm that's not a lot is it?

While neither Strasburg or Detwiler got to their 30th start it's likely both would have if given different circumstances.  How often does that happen, that 5 starters get to 30 starts a piece? Well since the 5 man rotation became the standard (let's say 1982 for the sake of argument - that's 30 years and that gets us past the strike year of '81) it's only happened 7 times. that's 7 times over like 800+ seasons, or like once every 3 years or so. It's a big recipe for success. None of these teams had a losing record and the last 6 averaged 95 wins.

Having four starters hit the 30 start mark is a lot more common (an additional 72 teams) but overall that's still not often. 79 times over 800+ seasons worth of teams is about 3 teams a year.  And how many times has a team managed to do it in back to back seasons? I counted 8 times (and only twice in back to back to back years for what it's worth)

The Nats do have things going for them.  The simple way of looking at it is the older you are, the more pitches you throw, and how often you've been injured before matter most in figuring if you are going to be injured this season. (Here's a recent article from BP about it) . The Nats primarily have young pitchers who either haven't really been injured (Gio) or haven't suffered any game skipping injuries since their major surgeries (Detwiler- hip, ZNN Stras - TJ). They haven't overly stressed any of their arms, keeping the # pitches out of the high end.  But you have to think other teams probably had the same circumstances. As well as the Nats have set themselves up it isn't very likely the Nats will have this kind of health in 2013, and it's nearly impossible they will have it over the next two years.

Exactly how likely is a major injury? That's hard to say. A lot of stuff goes into injury risk and even then it's not hard and fast. To put down a number for the Nats would be just major speculation.To give you an idea though of how unlikely it is - let's say you think Haren has a 25% chance of having a major injury, and Detwiler, Strasburg, and ZNN have a 10% chance, and Gio 5%.  That doesn't seem crazy does it, maybe a little skewed to the Nats even? Well given those numbers it's basically 50/50 the Nats make it through the season with none of these guys having a major injury. A coin flip.

I would say this - it's pretty likely that the Nats will suffer a major starting pitching injury next year. I'd say Haren is the most likely (obviously), followed by ZNN (shoulder issues last year), then probably Detwiler (I worry about the hip more than TJ), then either Gio or Stras depending on whether you care more about pitches (Gio) or the TJ (Strasburg).  But we went over this in the Gio "suspension" article, something like that alone isn't going to derail the Nats season.  What they need to avoid is the scenario where 2 or more arms go down for major time. That isn't very likely (with the completely made up numbers above - I figure the chances are around 15% and nearly all that is the "2" scenario, 3 or more is less than 2% of the time), but it happens to a few teams every year.

While the Nats have set themselves up pretty well for it NOT to be them the move from Haren (32 with recent injury issues) from Jackson (29 and one of baseball's most dependable arms) does increase the likelihood. It's up to the baseball gods now.

Walking in place

The "big news" of last night for the Nats was the ESPN story that told us... well it told us nothing new in regards to Gio.  Two sources said Gio didn't receive banned substances, which matches up with what Gio said and more importantly matches up with the facts we already knew about the case. It's really a lack of news, but when you are following an investigation, even a lack of news is news.

Gio looks good mainly because it's rare in these type of investigations that things don't get worse.  They have for A-Rod. They have for Braun. They have for all those other players not originally named.

However, as the same facts seem to exonerate Gio, the same questions remain. Did Gio really know nothing about this clinic as he claims? If so, why does the clinic seem to know him? And if he's lying, why, as it seems so far that he has nothing to hide? And what about this "coach"? 

Really though, just like the story around Gio is spinning in place, so are the Nats and their fans. Nothing matters until MLB hands down their sentence (or lack there of).

I wouldn't worry about Espinosa. I might worry about the pen.

Just a quick one today as I battle various ailments.

One of the big concerns in the off-season is how Danny Espinosa will play through his rotator cuff injury. It's scary sounding, mainly because history has show that if a pitcher gets that injury in his throwing arm you might as well call it a career. Danny has three things going for him though.  He's not a pitcher, he plays 2nd base. He's youngish (26 in April) which means he should recover better than someone on the wrong side of 30.  The injury is in his left shoulder, not his throwing arm. Basically if you had to have someone on your starting team get this injury, that is what you would ask for - an injury to the off-arm of a young position player.

But what about his numbers last year?  Clearly that shows that he was being bothered by his injury, right? Not really. While his numbers were down last year a lot of it had to do with an absolutely terrible start.

April : .205 / .300 / .369
Rest of Year :  .254 / .317 / .422

As unimpressive as you might see those "rest of the year" numbers as, they're actually enough to maybe squeak him into the Top 10 offensive 2nd basemen in the majors. Add in his defense and he might just be a Top 5 2nd basemen. The competition is weak here.

Month by month you'd call his offense : TERRIBLE!, good, bad, great, good, fair.   That doesn't look like someone bothered by his injury.  Sure he says he was but so would you if given an easy excuse for what looks like an off year.

So I wouldn't worry about Danny.  I wouldn't necessarily expect him to have a Desmond like break-out, but simply a little above average should make him one of the better second basemen in the league.

Now what I worry about in the back of my head is the bullpen. While we all talk about how young the Nats are, their bullpen is of pretty average age.  Drew Storen is the only young one at 25. Clip will be 28 this year, Stammen and Mattheus 29, and Soriano 33. I'm not saying that's old.  It isn't. Outside of Soriano none of these guys are at the age where you'd expect a drop in production. But at the same time they aren't in a age range where you can reasonably expect improvement. 

That in itself would be fine - they've all been good pitchers so they don't need to improve. And I like the fact that the three "middle inning" guys were all former starters (I think that means they can handle more innings - of course this is just a feeling) But each one has an issue you can pick out. Storen had his injury and his breakdown in the playoffs.  Clippard, who is among the most used pitchers over the past 3 years, completely washed out at the end of last season. Mattheus pitched his most innings as a reliever and battled through a foot issue early in the year. Stammen threw 88 innings, which is was the 2nd most for a pure reliever last year.  Soriano missed a good part of 2011 with injury.

If I'm looking for a place where a lot can go wrong fast it's here. A couple arms go down, one guy just doesn't pitch well this year, suddenly that strength becomes... well, it probably wouldn't be a weakness. The addition of Soriano means we're looking at five decent arms here and even just two decent arms can be ridden to an average season. But it wouldn't be a strength and given how the Nats pen held up last year, no one would be looking forward to a post-season where you didn't feel good about the pen.

Strasburg - last year revisited

Remember how last year we all thought Strasburg was just kind of off?  I don't think we give him the credit he deserves because last year was pretty awesome.

You know how many times a player in his first 3 seasons has put up 150+ innings where they struck out at least 10 per 9 innings and had a K/BB ratio of over 3?  7.  Seven times ever in the history of baseball.

Ok yes that is arbitrary number picking and the high strikeout totals certainly favor pitchers in the last 20 years* but still that's impressive, right? And it's not just a "first few seasons thing" His K/BB of 4.10 would have been 5th in the NL if he pitched enough innings to qualify.  He would have led the league in K/9.  He would have been around 25th in the league in BB/9.

You might be thinking "Ok that's good, probably very good, but we didn't expect this guy to be very good we expected him to be great"  First I'd say "That was great, you idiot".  Then I'd note that he didn't get lucky or pitch well (for him) in 2012. Last year was the wildest he's pitched in his admittedly brief career (but also wilder than his last college year). He had a .311 BABIP against him and an 11.5% HR/FB rate, which are both on the higher side of the expected ranges.  Things were probably working against him a little bit. And remember, this is all from a guy who was pitching his first full(-ish) season coming back from Tommy John. 

Strasburg is special. At age 23 in his first full season in the bigs, he came back from surgery, arguably had a little bit of bad luck, arguably didn't pitch to his capabilities, and still put up a season where if he pitched a full load of innings he would have been a Top 5 most valuable pitcher in the majors. It seems very likely that next year he'll improve in some way, healthier, more experience, better luck, and even a slight improvement in one of these would mean the Nationals would get one of the Top 3 pitcher seasons in the league.  If it all comes together, we'd be getting into the historic.

Other things may not work out for the Nats.  Maybe Danny is hurt.  Maybe Gio gets suspended or the whole thing effects him.  Maybe LaRoche does come back to Earth. But Strasburg and Bryce will work out and if things go as well as they could, hell, alone they could carry the Nats to the playoffs.

*4 of the non-Strasburgs were since 1995 : Nomo, Lincecum x2, Prior. The other two were Gooden's 1984 season and Dick Radatz '67 year (when he was 27)

The Gio cloud

Yesterday Gio answered questions from the media, and if you read different accounts you get a different story.  Some local accounts and a national one had a confident and happy Gio, answering questions straight fowardly and oh by the way did we mention he got invited to play for the USA in the WBC!? Other national reports took a more matter of fact approach ignoring impressions and relegating the WBC point to a mere sentence.  The local guys seemed inclined to let this sit on the back-burner, at least until the MLB investigation gives us a definitive response by baseball. The national guys have no such inclination.  Jayson Stark even went ahead and posted an opinion piece that questioned Gio.  The nerve!  

I don't necessarily agree with Mr. Stark but I'm very glad he wrote that up. The national reports - AP and ESPN's non-opinion piece are reporting the straight news. While it comes across as dry, it also is the most fair. Gio's attitude is not relevant. His call to the WBC is at best circumstantial evidence in his favor. Instead what we need to know is what happened, what Gio says about it and that MLB is looking into it. On the other side, the local guys come across as a bit soft toward Gio. They know Gio. He doesn't seem like a user. I assume there hadn't been hints or insinuations floating around. The hard evidence is not strongly aligned against him. As long as they keep on putting relevant information out there, what's the harm in not grilling the guy? Is the story a little unbelievable? Perhaps. But it's certainly not impossible so why not give Gio the benefit of the doubt?

Thing is, while Gio the individual may deserve the benefit of the doubt, Gio the ballplayer lost that benefit a long time ago. It wasn't his fault, but that's the truth. As a ballplayer there is zero tolerance now. You even associate with one dirty person and you are going to be questioned over and over about it until most people are satisfied. Above and beyond that, you are going to have to accept the fact that a few people are NEVER going to be satisfied. That's the life of a modern ballplayer. Stark comes from this other side, after seeing ballplayer after ballplayer flat out lie to our faces, he wants Gio to accept the fact he's going to be basically interrogated by the press. He wants us to see how silly Gio's story seems if you take it on face value so that if Gio is found to be guilty we don't sit around and talk about how shocked we are. It's may be a little harsh but that's reality now.

It's not that I expect the beat guys to be doing this. I would imagine in any town we'd see the same type of... let's not say kid's gloves, maybe "older teen's gloves", treatment for a nice guy who has given no indication of guilt where the current known evidence does not clearly convict him. But this type of colmun should have already been out there* already. 

Gio's name was in a book of a known dealer of banned substances, where nearly every other player name in the book is someone who is strongly connected to banned substances. His father's name is in there. The name of the guy he identified as his off-season strength coach is in there. There's far more circumstantially linking him to banned substances, than putting him on the side of angels.

*If we really want someone to put Gio and the team to task about this, it's Boz who should be doing it. It's a columnist thing. But God knows the Unofficial Mascot of the Washington Nationals is not going to be doing that anytime soon.

Pitchers AND catchers?

Sometimes we're grown-ups and sometimes we're kids.  Pitchers and Catchers is totally a little kid thing to get excited about.  It's like when they turn the calendar over to December, see the 25th sitting there, and start screaming "It's almost Christmas!" while running around the house. That's cute, right?

Of course pitchers and catchers turns into Spring Training which is the equivalent to the same kid, 90 minutes later, still running around and screaming.  Worse, when you tell them to calm down they scream  "IIII caaaaan't stoppppp myselffffff!!!!" while bouncing from couch to couch. Yes you can, dammit.

Nats fans are waiting on two things right now. Is Gio going to be punished in some way for his association with that Florida clinic?  Does Danny Espinosa look healthy? That's about it. Everything else is either better left to when the season begins, or mostly inconsequential.

Of course, it's up to you how much of this you want to absorb.  Maybe you love it, and to each his own. I'll just be writing the same random stuff until the off-season becomes the in-season.

Micah Owings

Rizzo is on the way to his final goal.  No, not winning a World Series, turning the Nats bench into the 2008 Arizona Diamondbacks! Recently he signed a couple more D-back guys to get closer to this goal.  Chris Snyder is organizational depth.  The guy has NEVER played more than 115 games in a season. (ok he played 122 games in the minors in 2003.  You got me!) If you can discount last years horrific performance, he's not a terrible bat.  At only 32 he might have something left.  Really nothing to see here, just a guy that if the Nats are down to their 4th string catcher because of injury and such, you can accept starting him for a week.

But people are fascinated by Micah Owings. Micah was a pitcher/hitter who was great at both in college.  not good - great. Led the team in homers, SLG, and RBIwhile batting .354.  Had a 9.6 K/9 and a 6.24 K/BB ration. You could argue that he was the best hitter AND best pitcher in Conference USA that year (you'd lose the argument - but it's impressive it could be argued). He ended up in Arizona where they focused on making him a pitcher. While doing that he was still raking the ball as a hitter, putting up a .319 / .355 / .552 line, mostly from the pitcher spot.

What happened then?

Well he wasn't a good major league pitcher. To get guys out he had to dial things up and when he did that he lost his control. Plus he was prone to the gopher ball. He has some success converting to relief but in very limited trials.

Who cares about that though.  The Nats signed him as a hitter! Yeah well he hasn't been much of that either the past few years. .236 / .250 / .438 since 2009 and that pop is all before 2011. The hope is the problem with his batting the last couple of years is simply a combination of small sample size and the lack of repetition. (so small (15, 33, and 11 PAs in the past 3 years)  I don't feel there is any point in looking at the fancy stats)  Give him enough regular at bats as a hitter and he'll shine again. Is that a false hope though?

Probably. Yes, he did hit well in the past, but that was in very limited at bats 4 years ago. Yes, Rick Ankiel made a successful switch but he did it at age 25. Micah is trying it at an old 30. At that age you are at the beginning of your decline years. You get slower, and your body fights you. Micah has suffered through a bunch of injuries the past couple years, including season ending elbow surgery last year. For the sake of argument I took a look at guys who were 26/27 in 2009 and hit with an above average OPS+.  Out of roughly 20, only 4 had a better year last year than in 2009. (If you must know Wright, Cabrera, Cano, and for some reason Aaron Hill).  Yeah I know that's kind of a skewed look at things but we're looking at Owings in a skewed way.  "He was good in 2009 so he must be able to be good today!". It's tough to bet on some one switching positions while coming back from a major injury at this age.  Even guys not doing that can't keep up production.

But what about both? He may not be able to have value as a pitcher or a hitter alone but what about as a hybird pitcher/hitter, with the pitcher part being limited to long relief or non-important innings? Well as this (way too optimistic) fangraphs post notes, if you are going to assume his hitting will improve with more focus, you have to assume his pitching will get worse.  If his pitching gets worse, you're not even looking at a mop-up guy.  You are looking at a guy that could pitch only in the biggest of blow-outs or in games entering the 15th inning. No, this won't be it.

I'm not knocking the signing. There's no such thing as a bad minor league deal.  You sign someone, roll the dice, and usually come up empty. Micah Owings is at best an interesting distraction, not the bench star of the future. 

Bryce Harper will break out

If he doesn't he'll be spitting in the face of history.

We looked a couple times last year at Bryce's place in history. Did he have the best offensive season ever from a teenager? Did he have the most WAR from a teenage position player?  These comparisons leave us with the obvious follow-up question : How did all these players we are comparing him to do in their sophmore seasons?  We often hear about "sophomore slumps" but does that apply to the true phenom?  

I'm going to look at guys that Bryce matches up with offensively (OPS+) and how they did offensively the next year.  Why? Well, defensive stats bounce around too much from year to year.  I'd hate to put up WAR, show all these guys improving but have it be because they lucked into awesome fielding years. Bryce is a very good fielder and is super fast.  Those are constants. He'll have value. The question is more how much that value will increase (or decrease).

Player : OPS+ at age 19, OPS+ at age 20
Mel Ott: 139, 165
Tony Conigliaro : 137, 133
Ty Cobb : 132, 167
Sherry Magee : 122, 134
Bryce Harper : 119, ???
Mickey Mantle : 117, 162
Cesar Cedeno: 114, 97
Ken Griffey Jr : 108, 136
Edgar Renteria : 103, 80

Three players, Ott, Cobb, and Mantle, broke out to full superstardom. Two more, Magee and Griffey, improved a fair amount and would break out themselves, just not at age 20 (Griffey at 21, Magee at 22). I think this is the group we expect Bryce to be in.  But what of the other three?

Cesar Cedeno is an odd case. His age 20 season would be his worst one until he was a hobbled 32-yr old trying to stay healthy enough to hang onto a job. He would then break out at 21 and would follow that with another superstar season at 22.  He then would be involved in a situation where his girlfriend was shot dead in a motel room. He still played well after that but never to the same level. It may have been injuries, which is a concern because he played in an all-out fashion much like Bryce does. Then again, dead girlfriend.  It's a cautionary tale in more than one way but probably not comparable to Bryce.

Edgar Renteria would show that that rookie year was kind of a fluke. (The BABIP was kind of high - though as a rookie you really don't know his level until he sets it).  He'd have several mediocre seasons after that and while he'd occasionally have another good year for the most part he was a below average hitter.  Edgar, though, was a completely different hitter than Bryce, dependent on high averages to make up for his lack of power. It's not a good comparison.

Tony Conigliaro is probably the most "worrisome" of comparisons. While he was still a good hitter he never really got past the level he had as a 19yr old. Now, there's a HUGE caveat here.  He was having a slightly better year at 22 when he got beaned in the face.  After that he was never the same player. Could he have been about to have his superstar year? Or was he just a "late" bloomer who would bust out at 24 or 25? We'll never know. Either way it's not like his 20-22 seasons were bad.  They were in fact very good. Just not superstar level.

So what do the comparables say about Bryce? Simple, he will break out. Yes, yes small sample size but Bryce is such an elite talent he's going to be in small comparison groups his whole career. It could be this year, maybe 2014, but at worst by the end of 2105 he should have that great season. Five out of eight comparables had that big year by the time they were 21, with one more having it at age 22, and one possibly on the way to it at that age before a tragic injury derailed his career.  Only Edgar Renteria, the last player on this list and not very comparable to Bryce, failed to make himself into a star. I have a hard time worrying about that.

Bored Monday post

I  don't remember the term "elite quarterback" used alot growing up, so I wanted to track down when exactly it started.  Of course that is kind of hard to do, but Harper of 12 hours ago didn't know that.

Here's a college reference in 2001. Notice the word doesn't even make it into the column. It's only in the title. In 2003, in the NFL, the same thing. Here's another from 2004. Can you imagine in 2013 a column about Brady getting to be seen as one of the best QBs in the NFL and the word "elite" not being used?  The copy editor would send it back for that glaring omission.

Near as I can tell it probably came up thorugh the college ranks thanks in no small part to Nike's Elite 11 camp.  But wherever it came from, it's certainly got a grasp on our group mindthink.



That first spike in "elite QB"* searches corresponds to that NYT article about the Elite 11. That's probably not a coincidence. The next year you get 2 months of big searches around the same time - then 3, then 4, and then it's all over.  It's done.  Elite QB gives the sports pundits something to blabber about so it is here to stay. 

*this search got me better results than "elite quarterback" or "elite NFL QB" etc etc.

Baseball tomorrow