I looked back at my posts recently … and less and less do I even bother to write about the Nats themselves. In the bad years, i’d post much more frequently and with frustration about the big league team, the decisions made, etc. But I feel like I fell into a trap of sports-writing (if that’s what i’m doing here), where its easier/more interesting to write critical stuff than it is to write positive stuff when the team is good.
I think, for me, this culminated in the 2019 season, where I posted on May 28th a big post discussing who we should be trading. And then, of course, the team rebounded, and honestly I never felt like I could celebrate their success b/c I was almost rooting for them to fail b/c i’d given up on them so early and didn’t want to be proven wrong.
So, since I have spoken almost nothing of the Nats themselves this year, I thought i’d take stock of where we are just ahead of the All Star Break/Draft/halfway point, and put in some color about what we may expect the rest of the way, what’s coming in terms of prospects (haha), and where we may be going next year.
As I write this on Friday July 8th, the team is 30-55, a .353 winning percentage that puts them on pace for a season-ending record of 57-105. And they’re getting worse: they’re 10-20 in their last 30 and will look to move everyone not tied down at the trade deadline. They’re currently sitting with the 3rd worst record in the league and are just a couple of games “ahead” of the two worse teams (Oakland and Cincinnati) in the race for the #1 overall pick in 2023. For comparison purposes … a 57 win team is actually worse than when this franchise bottomed out in 2008-2009, when they went 59-102 and 59-103 in successive seasons. However this year, this team is managing to do this with a $160M payroll and several guys getting paid as if they’re among the best in the league.
So, we knew they’d be bad. They barely spent any money in the off season to improve the roster. But what’s happened? Lets look at the culprets:
Starting Pitching
Amazingly, the Nats have already seen an entire rotation of starters hit the DL so far, and we’re only halfway through the season.
- Strasburg started on the DL, made one start, and might be done for the season (or career). He’s just made his 16th career trip to the DL.
- Sanchez never made it to Washington.
- The guy who initially replaced Sanchez (Josh Rogers) got hurt.
- Seth Romero was called up just to be put on the 60-day DL, which mean’s he’s getting MLB pay. How does that make you feel about your job, the fact that this guy got nearly $3M in a bonus after he was basically fired from his college team, then has been “rewarded” for multiple team rule violations by being socially promoted, and now is set to earn another season’s full-salary (north of $700k) for doing nothing. Good work if you can get it.
- Joe Ross had a spring injury that’s turned into a second TJ surgery.
- They brought up Evan Lee, gave him a start and he got hurt.
- They called up Tetreault to cover for the completely ineffective Adon (who’s now back, natch), and four starts later he’s got a frigging stress fracture in his shoulder.
The starters who have managed NOT to get hurt have been … underwhelming mostly:
- Corbin: a 5.68 ERA and for a time the 2nd worst ERA among qualified starters in the league, behind only …
- Adon, who now sits 1-12 with a 7.10 ERA. The fact that he’s back in the big leagues and being given starts is patently ridiculous at this point, but what choice do they have (see below).
- Espino, a 35-yr old minor league lifer who is now sticking as a starter … and has the best ERA+ of the entire bunch. They should trade him just to give him a shot at a contender since he’ll be 40 by the time we’re good again.
- Fedde, who I thought should have been non-tendered last fall, but is now our 2nd or 3rd best starter and has thrown 3 straight effective starts to lower his ERA from 4.80 to its current 4.29. Shows you what I know.
- Grey, who I somewhat worry is having one of his control years completely wasted right now, given that he’s one of the hall mark pieces of return for the Scherzer/Turner deal. His starts are up and down, but he’s showing some solid progress. In an ideal world, he’d be an awesome #3 starter behind two studs (Cavalli and Henry anyone?) and a couple of veteran mercenaries on a playoff team.
All this being said, at this point there’s basically nobody left to call up. Waiver claim Abbott has struggled in AAA so far (5.55 ERA). So has 2022 MLFA Verrett (5.07 ERA). So has long-time Nat farmhand Jefry Rodriguez (6.47 ERA). So has former rule-5 trashed-us-on-his-way-out-the-door-betcha-hes-super – happy-to-be-back Sharp (5.77 ERA). So has long-man-pushed-into-rotation Carson Teel (4.91 ERA). Henry has been spectacular … but is on the DL. Even Cavalli‘s numbers are rough (4.54 ERA despite last night’s gem (7ip, 2 hits 0 walks, 0 runs). In fact … how the heck does Rochester have a winning record?? They’re 43-38 despite a team ERA of 4.73 and almost no effective starters. Anyway.
The point is this: There’s nothing on the horizon that’s coming up to save the MLB rotation. Maybe Sanchez (who is doing rehab assignments) could come up and send Adon back to AAA where he belongs. But the next injury likely means Abbott up (he’s the only other 40-man guy), or one of the aforementioned guys with AAA ERAs in the 5s. It’d be malpractice to call up Cavalli (or Henry) but maybe they earn it with a string of better results by season’s end.
Bullpen
The Nats collective relievers have a 4.50 ERA this year, ranking them 26th out of 30 teams. The 4 worse teams are, of course, also fellow-tanking teams in 2022 (Colorado, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati). Why invest in middle relievers if you know you’re going to suck?
Fun Fact: NOT ONE current member of the Nats bullpen was home grown. Look it up on the big Board.
- Rainey: trade acquisition in 2019 for Roark. Should be trade bait in july as a closer with 3 years of control; he could actually net a decent prospect. Last place teams don’t need closers.
- Cishek: 2022 FA
- Finnegan: 2020 FA, which was kind of amazing b/c he had exhausted his 3 arb seasons without getting a single appearance with his former team, but we gave him a MLB-guaranteed deal. So this was basically a minor league FA that’s really paid off well.
- Edwards: 2022 Minor League FA
- Garrett: 2022 Minor League FA
- Ramirez: 2022 Minor League FA
- Machado: 2021 Minor League FA
- Weems: 2022 Minor League FA
Even more amazing … of these 8 names, Five of them were MLFAs!! That’s 5 guys who couldn’t even get 40-man guaranteed gigs when we signed them. That means they were considered worse than 1200 other guys who are on 40-man rosters right now.
The fact that we don’t have a single home-grown reliever on the books right now is kind of ridiculous. We did have a few (Suero was non-tendered last November, Klobotis DFA’d and claimed, Voth the same) within the last 6 months or so, but given the sheer volume of pitcher’s we’ve drafted over the past 5 years, you’d think we would have more of a pipeline of guys converted to the bullpen and matriculating up as middle relievers/failed starters.
AAA doesn’t have much in the way of reinforcements either: just one home-grown player in AAA’s bullpen (a continuation of the above indictment of our player development); Matt Cronin who was just bumped up to AAA recently. Otherwise the AAA bullpen is filled with Rule-5 acquisitions (Brill and Taylor), Waiver claims (Murphy and Perez, who has been logging frequent flier miles all season between DC and upstate NY), and MLFAs (our old friend Clippard, who I can’t quite believe has not gotten called up yet with his 2.65 ERA, along with Baldonado, Avilan, and Burdi who is currently hurt). At the next bullpen injury … one of these guys has gotta go up. Meaning another guy laid onto the 40-man roster.
Side note, coming back to Clippard … he’s gotta be wondering if he pissed off Rizzo right now. The team has now added multiple relievers to the 40-man ahead of him: Arano, Ramirez, Edwards, Weems, and Garrett all were MLFA relievers who got the call before Tyler. Really? This guy gave his heart and soul to this team for years; you should have called him up well before randoms we signed out of the trash bucket last January just on principle.
I think the future of this team has to start including more home-grown arms. We cannot rely on veteran FAs and MLFAs as much as we have been. We have dozens of starters in the system; not all of them should be there. We need to start growing more relievers.
Offense
The good: By OPS+ or wRC+ we do have some bright spots: Bell is going to earn us a decent prospect at the trade deadline with his team-leading offensive performance. Soto and Cruz‘s batting averages may be low but they’re league average in run creation thanks to slugging on OBP. Ruiz is showing a near league average OPS+ as a full time starting catcher for the first time; can’t beat that. Plus he’s right in the middle of the order; he’s not an 8-hitter. Garcia has impressed upon his return to the majors; cross your fingers here (yes i know, he can’t field, that won’t matter when we stick him at 2B and neutralize his crap footwork). Yadiel Hernandez is found gold and finally seems to have the LF spot locked up.
The bad: The injury to Kieboom is a dagger for his career honestly. Luckily for him we’re probably going to suck in 2023 as well, so he’ll get one last chance to start in the bigs. Victor Robles continues to look lost; at least he plays a solid CF. Someone’s gotta bat 9th. But we need one of our CF prospects to pan out: going down the line Stevenson in AAA isn’t the answer, Jack Dunn is the starter in AA and is a 20th rounder hitting .230, Ricardo Mendez is hitting .220 in high-A, and then a bright spot in our system Jeremey De La Rosa in low-A tearing it up at age 20. Nothing is close; our latest IFA $5M guy Cristhian Vaquero is definitely a CF, but he’s 5 levels away in the DSL. We’ll likely need a CF option closer to the majors in a couple years. Trade market target.
More bad: Cesar Hernandez seems to be entrenched as the team’s lead off hitter: he’s got a .306 OBP!! I mean … Robles has a .304 OBP. The team seems to be splitting 3B starts between Franco and Adrianza, both of whom are posting sub-replacement level offense. Why did we release Strange-Gordon? I mean, he was hitting .300 while Adrianza is hitting .196 and frigging Fox is hitting .080. I mean, i get it, Kieboom was the plan, and they had to scramble, and the rest are just backups. But man, we can’t find backup infielders who can at least somewhat hit?
Not surprisingly, the Nats are near the bottom of the league in offensive WAR and wRC+ and what not as a team. And, like with the pitching, they seem to be set to get worse when they trade the best hitters (Bell and Cruz) and bring up reinforcements. And who are those reinforcements going to be? We’ll we do have a couple 40-man guys in AAA who will get the immediate call in Casey and Palacios and Fox.
There are a couple non-40-man guys who are in the presumed mix. Nick Banks has been hitting very well in AAA this year (.916 OPS). But unless he’s DH’ing he makes no sense to call up b/c the OF is full (which keeps Stevenson in the AAA as well). Meneses has been powering the ball in AAA and likely is Bell’s replacement the moment he gets traded. Another round with Jake Noll?
The FAs to be of position players are Bell, Cruz, Hernandez, Franco, and Escobar. The last three may not fetch much, but should be moved for whatever they can get, and will lead to a huge gap in the infield. We have some random MLFA middle infielders in AAA that might get the call at that point (guys like Vargas or Flores), plus Fox and his sub .100 BA. So … look out in Aug and Sept.
Not a lot on the near-term horizon either in terms of prospects for the infield: they’re mostly in Low-A.
Conclusion? We’re on pace for our worst ever season as it is, and stand to get a lot worse, meaning 110 losses is in play. And its likely we’re going to be just as bad next year, with little on the horizon and really serious injury concerns surrounding Strasburg. And there’s little in the way of interesting prospects to look for anywhere close, which is a big personal rooting factor.