Short version of this post: we are going to be absolutely awful this year.
Longer Version….
At the end of Spring Training, the 2022 Nats are heading into battle with a 28-man roster that breaks down like the following:
- 4 NRIs signed to minor league deals this past off-season (as per the most recent post: (Sanchez, Arano, Franco, and Strange-Gordon)
- 2 Waiver claims (Fox, Murphy)
- 8 players who are essentially rookies: (Ruiz, Thomas, Adams, Grey, Adon, Thompson, Machado, Espino)
And, despite playing this many brand new players … we’re NOT going to be playing either of our top two positional rookies (Garcia, demoted mid-spring, and Kieboom, who may miss the entire season with a blown UCL) or any of our top pitching prospects (Cavalli got lit up, Henry wasn’t even at Spring training, Rutledge was an NRI for some reason but, lest we forget, was in LowA last year, etc).
A huge chunk of our likely opening day lineup are guys signed to one-year deals, who have no history with the franchise and whom most fans couldn’t pick out of a lineup. We know who Nelson Cruz is of course, but could you name our starting infield? If i stood Cesar Hernandez, Alcides Escobar, Maikel Franco, Lucious Fox, and Ehire Adrianza in a row could you put the correct name with each face? Every one of these guys seemingly was signed with the 2022 trade deadline in their minds … the likelihood of ANY of these guys finishing the year with the Nats seems very slim.
Our rotation includes an NRI (Sanchez), a guy who I thought was going to get non-tendered (Fedde), a Rookie with one MLB start to his name (Adon), a $30M/year guy who looked completely lost the last two seasons (Corbin), and a promising prospect who has a career 5.48 ERA in 14 MLB games (Grey). Strasburg may not pitch until July.
If i’m reading the Big Board correctly, just 6 of our opening day 28 man roster was originally drafted and developed by Washington (Robles, Soto, YHernandez, Fedde, Adon, and Voth). A damning indictment of our last decade of drafting and player development, especially in the top 2 rounds.
Not that spring training records matter … but we finished 4-11 and were outscored by 28 runs in the process (nearly 2 a game).
Its going to be a long season. We have the defending WS champs, a Mets team that’s going to spend $300M on payroll this year, a Phillies team that had a softball beer league lineup of sluggers who might average 8 runs a game, and a Marlins team that, well who knows what they’ll do but it won’t matter because we’re likely losing 100+ games with this lineup.
Discuss. Is anyone out there really optimistic?