Nationals Arm Race

Harper and Trout’s rookie appearance in the 2012 game was so special: I hope Yasiel Puig makes it this year. Photo unk.

Here’s my annual Nationals All Star representative post.   As with 2012 and 2011‘s post, I’m including a retrospective on our “illustrious” All Star representative history from years past.  If you read on and it sounds familiar, that’s because a lot of it is cut-n-pasted from the annual version of this post.  Even so, reading backwards to see who our All-star representatives were in the lean years is an interesting exercise.

Here’s a link to the All Star Rosters for 2013.

2013

• Nationals All-Star representatives: Bryce Harper, Jordan Zimmermann
• Snubs: Stephen Strasburg, Ian Desmond
• Narrative: Harper comes in 3rd in the NL outfielder voting, ahead of some big-time names, to become only the second Nationals position player elected as an All-Star starter.  He was 4th in the final pre-selection vote, so a big last minute push got him the starter spot.   Harper also becomes the first National to participate in the Home Run Derby.   Zimmermann is 12-3 heading into the game and is on mid-season Cy Young short lists right now and is a very deserving pick.  Strasburg’s advanced stats are all better than Zimmermann’s, but his W/L record (4-6 as of this writing) means he’s not an all-star.  It also probably doesn’t help that he missed a few weeks.  Desmond loses out to Troy Tulowitzki, Everth Cabrera and Jean Segura.  Tulowitzki is having a very solid year and is a deserving elected starter (though he’s currently on the DL and I wonder if Desmond may still make it as an injury replacement), while Cabrera and Segura are both having breakout seasons.  Desmond is on the “Final vote” roster, but my vote (and most others’ I’m guessing) would be for Yasiel Puig there ([Editor Update: Desmond and Puig lost out to Freddie Freeman: I still hope Puig finds a way onto the roster).   Gio Gonzalez, Ryan Zimmerman,and Rafael Soriano are all having solid but unspectacular years and miss out behind those having great seasons.

Trivia: With his 2013 selection, Harper has been selected as an all-star in every season in which he has appeared in a game.  As far as I can tell in baseball history, there’s only TWO other players in Major League History who can say this.  Name them (discuss in comments).

2012

• Nationals All-Star representatives: Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez, Ian Desmond, Bryce Harper
• Possible Snubs: Adam LaRoche, Craig Stammen
• Narrative: The two starters Strasburg and Gonzalez were the obvious candidates, and my personal prediction was that they’d be the only two candidates selected.  Gonzalez’ first half was a prelude to his 21-win, 3rd place Cy Young season.  The inclusion of Desmond is a surprise, but also a testament to how far he’s come as a player in 2012.  Harper was a last-minute injury replacement, but had earned his spot by virtue of his fast start as one of the youngest players in the league.  Of the “snubs,” LaRoche has had a fantastic come back season in 2012 but fared little shot against better, more well-known NL first basemen.  Stammen was our best bullpen arm, but like LaRoche fared little chance of getting selected during a year when the Nats had two deserving starters.

2011

• Nationals All-Star representatives: Tyler Clippard
• Possible Snubs: Danny Espinosa, Michael Morse, Drew Storen, Jordan Zimmermann
• Narrative: While Clippard was (arguably) the Nats best and most important reliever, I think Zimmermann was a more rightful choice.  He was 10th in the league in ERA at the time of the selections and has put in a series of dominant performances.  Meanwhile Espinosa is on pace for a 28homer season and almost a certain Rookie-of-the-Year award (though a precipitous fall-off in the 2nd half cost him any realistic shot at the ROY), and perhaps both players are just too young to be known around the league.  Lastly Morse is certainly known and he merited a spot in the “last man in” vote sponsored by MLB (though he fared little chance against popular players in this last-man-in voting).

2010

• Nationals All-Star representatives: Matt Capps
  
• Possible Snubs: Adam Dunn, Josh Willingham, Ryan Zimmerman, Steven Strasburg
• Narrative: Capps was clearly deserving, having a breakout season as a closer after his off-season non-tender from the Pirates.  The 3-4-5 hitters Zimmerman-Dunn-Willingham all had dominant offensive seasons as the team improved markedly from its 103-loss season.  But perhaps the surprise non-inclusion was Strasburg, who despite only having a few starts as of the all-star break was already the talk of baseball.  I think MLB missed a great PR opportunity to name him to the team to give him the exposure that the rest of the national media expected.  But in the end, Capps was a deserving candidate and I can’t argue that our hitters did anything special enough to merit inclusion.

2009

• Nationals All-Star representatives: Ryan Zimmerman
• Possible Snubs: Adam Dunn
• Narrative: The addition of Dunn and Willingham to the lineup gave Zimmerman the protection he never had, and he produced with his career-best season.  His first and deserved all-star appearance en-route to a 33 homer season.  Dunn continued his monster homer totals with little all-star recognition.

2008

• Nationals All-Star representatives: Cristian Guzman
  
• Possible Snubs: Jon Rauch
• Narrative: The first of two “hitting rock-bottom” seasons for the team; no one really merited selection.  Zimmerman was coming off of hamate-bone surgery in November 2007 and the team was more or less awful across the board.  Rauch performed ably after Cordero went down with season-ending (and basically career-ending) shoulder surgery.   Guzman’s selection a great example of why one-per-team rules don’t make any sense.  Guzman ended up playing far longer than he deserved in the game itself by virtue of the 15-inning affair.

2007

• Nationals All-Star representatives: Dmitri Young
• Possible Snubs: Ryan Zimmerman, Shawn Hill (though I wouldn’t argue for either)
• Narrative: Young gets a deserved all-star appearance en route to comeback player of the year.  Zimmerman played a full season but didn’t dominate.  Our rotation featured 6 primary starters, none of whom are still in the league now, though Hill showed flashes of dominance throughout the year.

2006

• Nationals All-Star representatives: Alfonso Soriano
• Possible Snubs: Nick Johnson, Ryan Zimmerman
• Narrative: Soriano made the team as an elected starter, the first time the Nats have had such an honor.  Our pitching staff took massive steps backwards and no starter came even close to meriting a spot.  Cordero was good but not lights out as he had been in 2005.  Soriano’s 40-40 season is a poster child for “contract year” production and he has failed to come close to such production since.  The team was poor and getting worse.  Johnson had a career year but got overshadowed by bigger, better first basemen in the league (a recurring theme for our first basemen over the years).

2005

• Nationals All-Star representatives: Livan Hernandez, Chad Cordero
• Possible Snubs: Nick Johnson, John Patterson.
• Narrative: The Nats went into the All Star break surprisingly in first place, having run to a 50-31 record by the halfway point.  Should a first place team have gotten more than just two representatives?  Perhaps.  But the team was filled with non-stars and played far over its head to go 50-31 (as evidenced by the reverse 31-50 record the rest of the way).

Ian Desmond; trouble-maker. Photo Drew Kinback/Natsnq.com

Another month, another .500 record for the Nats.  At the halfway point they’re 41-40, on pace for a fantastic 82-80 record.  Well, the Cardinals won the World Series a few years back making the post-season 83-79, so maybe all is not lost (sarcasm).  Though, the last couple days have seen unprecedented offensive output (they’ve scored 10+ runs twice in a row after only having done it once prior).

Bryce Harper is back after missing nearly 5 weeks of games (and hitting badly through another 4 weeks in May of them before that), and promptly hits a homer in his first AB off the D/L.   With Harper’s inclusion, we’ll finally see the “ideal offensive lineup” that I touched on last week.  On paper, a 2-7 of Werth-Harper-Zimmerman-LaRoche-Desmond-Rendon looks really, really good.

In this light, lets see what kind of baseball questions Tom Boswell took in his pre-holiday chat on 7/1/13.  As always, I’ll write my answer here before reading his to avoid bias and edit questions for clarity (since a lot of the “questions” he takes are rambling complaints about this or that).

Q: Are the Nationals as a team missing the “spark” they need to rally for the playoffs?

A: I’ve talked about the outflow of “chemistry” this team lost when Michael Morse was dealt before.  I’ve also speculated in this space before about whether or not this team has too many “uber serious” players.   In many ways winning consistently creates “chemistry” but I also think the reverse is true if you don’t have the right guys with leadership voices in the clubhouse.  Is the return of one hitter (albeit their best) going to change the tune for this team?  Boswell notes that the team faces a significant hole: 6.5 games in the division, 5.5 games just for the wild-card coin flip game.

Q: Thoughts on Taylor Jordan?  Does he get a 2nd Start?

A: See here for my post over the weekend on Taylor Jordan, and Yes he gets a 2nd start.  He only gave up one earned run.   Lets see what Boswell said: Boswell has a good point: he liked Jordan, thought he had potential .. but then noted that this team needs to go 50-31 to make the playoffs and you’re not going to go 50-31 with a rookie as your 5th starter.  

Q: With Werth appearing to be injured, do you see Davey moving Harper to right and Werth to left field?

A: Well, this is one of those “veteran manager” moves from Davey Johnson that gets me sometimes.   I believe that Jayson Werth is inarguably a lesser fielder than Harper (who would be playing center for nearly every other team in the league by virtue of his range and arm).  Harper’s arm is one of the best in the league.  He’s younger, faster and covers more ground (excellent range per UZR/150 numbers in center last year).  So why is Werth in right?  Because he’s the vet.  Harper won’t take over RF until Werth advances in age or gets a new manager who isn’t afraid to move him and his 9 figure salary to the position he should be in.  I disagree with Boswell’s opinion on this one; he thinks Werth is the more polished OF and that Harper got hurt playing RF.  As if he wouldn’t have run into a wall eventually playing elsewhere.

Q: Do we need alterations to the Balk rule?

A: At some level yes.  I think there’s a huge difference between some slight bobble in your motion and a blatant attempt to deceive the runner by “flinching” or doing a purposeful stop-start head motion.   Its the difference between inadvertant and purposeful deception.  And the embarassing umpire “Balking” Bob Davidson needs to be reigned in.  Plus, nearly every left-handed pitcher uses a “balk move” to first on a regular basis, almost never stepping directly at the bag.  And when was the last time you saw a right-hander get a balk call for throwing over to first while bending his right leg?  But, in the grand scheme of things I’m not sure the Balk rule is the great scourge of our modern game (see ball-strike zone consistency, instant replay, ongoing PED issues, and salary discrepancies making the league a group of haves and have-nots).  Boswell doesn’t understand the Balk but loves it.

Q: At what point do Zimmerman’s errors accelerate the conversation to move him to 1B?

A: We can start talk about moving Ryan Zimmerman the moment that Adam LaRoche‘s contract runs out.    Anthony Rendon can play 2B in the interim and eventually move back over to his natural position.  Before then?  Somebody would have to get seriously hurt or traded in order to make any modifications to our infield.   Boswell points something out I didn’t think about: Zimmerman is playing very shallow because his arm strength is shot … hence why he made those two errors in the saturday Jordan start.

Q: Should we look to trade for Nolasco?

A: I had to laugh; the questioner also asked if the Marlins would pick up his salary.  Haha.  Have you not see the M.O. for Jeffrey Loria by now?  Hoard every nickle in every deal.   That being said, I think we’d have the biggest chance of trading intra-division with Miami versus anyone else; they seem to be amenable to take back less in return for taking salary off their hands (see the Willingham/Olsen deal a while back).

A better question; should we be forcing a trade for pitching at all?  Even with the Dan Haren issues all year the team is 5th in the majors in ERA (10th in adjusted ERA+).   Of course, the four teams above us are all either divisional rivals or challengers for the wild card.   But the point is this: you need to fix what’s wrong, and the pitching overall isn’t what’s wrong.  Its offense.  Its bench production.  Its hitting.  Trade for something that helps fix the problem.  Boswell just talks about how we have enough money and how we shouldn’t give up any decent prospects.

Q: Is there a stat that shows how many a player’s errors relate directly to runs scored?

A: Unearned runs?  Except I’ve never seen someone directly tie the two together.  Therefore probably not, because this type of research likely will have a Sabre-tinged analyst immediately say, “I’m not doing that because Errors are not the best way to measure fielders.”  Then they’ll point at (in this case speaking of Zimmerman) his UZR/150 (an awful -20.2 for 2013 thus far), his Defensive Runs Saved (strikingly he’s actually cost the team 2 runs so far, projecting for a -4 rDRS for the year) or his Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA) which measures out at 3.0 so far in 2013, slightly above average.   My narrative on Zimmerman’s steep decline this year in range and defensive metrics goes as follows: nursing leg injuries and forced to play further up, Zimmerman’s not making the plays he normally would, which is being reflected in his UZR decline.  Meanwhile FRAA correctly measures that he’s still a slightly above average fielder.  Boswell doesn’t know.

Q: With Harper coming back, I’m assuming that Rendon slides down to seventh. Is that the best place for him? Also, is he too good of a hitter to bat seventh? With Ramos coming back soon, does this make the Nats a much more dangerous offensive team?

A: I’m not so sure I’d move Rendon down; he’s the absolute prototypical #2 hitter.  He hits to all fields, he’s especially good at hitting to right, he’s got a .360 OBP, and is a great tablesetter for the 3-4-5 guys.  No, I think you move everyone else down a spot.   Of course, that being said, if you had a manager with any cajones, he’d move Werth to the #7 spot since everyone else in this equation is a better hitter right now.  But it won’t happen, so either Ian Desmond or Rendon likely moves to #7.

With Wilson Ramos back as I’ve noted in this space, yes this should finally let the Nats put out their best, strongest lineup.   Boswell says Werth bats #2, pointout his OBP is .330.  I’ll now point out that that OBP is 10% less than Rendon’s right now.  But I can’t argue with Boswell’s point that Rendon could use the pressure taken off of him … until you remember that Harper didn’t seem to have any issues batting #2 all year last year.   Update: Boswell called it right: Werth is batting #2 upon Harper’s return.

Q: Why would Davey claim the Lerners want him out?

A: That’s a reasonable conclusion from reading Mike Wise‘s article over the weekend.  He seems to intimate that the ownership group is frustrated with the team’s performance this year and puts some of it at Johson’s feet.  At least that’s the way Johnson interprets it.  Boswell has an interesting point; he says this is a young team and the owners want a manager who can be here for 5-10 years … Johnson is 70 and they don’t see him as the solution.

Q: Should Yasiel Puig be an all-star?

A: If it were me, absolutely yes I’d make Yasiel Puig an all-star, give him an at-bat later in the game.  He’s been electric, he’s been the best hitter in the league for half this season.  He’s still hitting .436 through 100 at bats!.  Having him at the game just makes it more of a fan draw.  Boswell thinks he’ll be a late injury replacement.  I hope so.

Q: Which team has more wins at the end of 162, O’s or Nats?

A: Easy; the Orioles.  They’ve already got a 10 game head start.  I don’t think the Nats are going to be 10 games better than Baltimore in the 2nd half.  Boswell punts.

Q: Did Desi violate the unwritten code yesterday by slamming a home run into the restaurant when the Mets had a position player on the mound?

A: No way.  Of all the unwritten rules out there, the one that is unassailable is that a batter gets a legitimate chance to get a good swing in at the plate no matter what the score.  There’s limits (you can’t swing out of your shoes on a 3-0 pitch when winning by 10 runs) but I don’t see how Desmond’s bomb counts.   Boswell says Desmond’s HBP earlier negates all rules.  Not sure I agree with that reasoning unless the HBP was in any way possible deliberate.  Later on another questioner notes that he thought the Desmond HBP was definitely deliberate; I turned the game off when the Nats knocked out Wheeler, figuring they had it sewn up, and didn’t see the fracas.

Q: Why haven’t media such as yourself chastised the Nats for the foolish contracts given to Werth (injury prone, strikeout prone, shaky defensively), Soriano (too much to pay a closer who is not automatic), and Haren? In Philadelphia, all three contracts would have been regarded as somewhere between bad and stupid.

A: Wow.  Well, not to re-hash the same reasoning we’ve had over-and-over about these guys, but here goes:

• The Werth deal was an over-pay but also re-established Washington as a player in the FA market, reestablishing credibility that had been destroyed by years of Loria and MLB ownership incompetence.  Remember, the same off-season Carl Crawford signed for MORE money and has produced a total of 1.8 war in the last three seasons combined, yet we don’t hear as much about how “stupid” the Boston organization was for that signing.  Why does Boston get a pass but Washington doesn’t?
• Rafael Soriano was a luxury item, but I’m not sure its fair to say he’s “not automatic.”  He’s blown 3 saves in 24 chances.  Jim Johnson leads the league in saves and he’s blown 5.  Craig Kimbrel has a 1.48 ERA and he’s blown three himself.  I have no problems with Soriano and his contract (other than my general stance against paying top dollars for closers in general … but it wasn’t my money).
• Haren looked like a good signing at the time, was a good risk, and frankly there’s no such thing as a bad one year contract.  It wasn’t like we were the only people bidding on him; he was in demand.

Giving power hitters on the wrong side of 30 5 guaranteed years at $25M each?  Now that’s a “stupid” contract.    Boswell chastises the Philly fan for his media’s overreaction to anything, defending the moves as I have.

Here’s a fun little statistical exercise.  What would the Nats record be right now if it actually had all its guys healthy at the same time?

Lets use a short hand stat (OPS+) to take a quick look, and then make some runs scored analysis adjustments to see some expected W/L records.  Assuming both Bryce Harper and Wilson Ramos were healthy and continued to hit at their current OPS+ rates once they return (which frankly is a rather conservative statement; Harper was hitting far above his seasonal OPS+ rate before he started running into walls at the end of April),  here’s what our lineup could look like:

That’s nearly an entire lineup of guys above 100 OPS+ (which indicates league average production) and from 2-6 are significantly above 100.  I dare say, this lineup of guys, with an average OPS+ of 118, should produce runs at about 18% above the league average.  Now, the pitcher spot and our crummy bench production will drag this team number down; lets say for sake of argument that this lineup will produce at an average of a 110 OPS+ when they’re all present and accounted for.

What does that mean?   Through 6/28/13’s games, the league team average of Runs Scored is 330.    The Nats have scored, to date, 275 runs, which ranks them 29th in the league and only above the AAA team the Miami Marlins are running out every night.  Lets look at two scenarios for our offense from a Pythagorean Record perspective to show where this team could have been with a league average offense and with the above described 10% above league average offense:

First, where are we right now:

We’ve scored 275, allowed 303 and are playing 3 games above our Pythagorean record.  Mostly because of a handful of specific blowouts (15-0 loss to Cincy the first week, a 9-0 loss in Atlanta, 10-1 loss in New York, back to back 13-4 and 8-0 beatings in San Diego and San Francisco), this team is playing a few games better than its expected record based purely on RS/RA.  We don’t have enough reverse-blowouts where the Nats have won by a large score to really counter balance it.

(Fun fact: did you know the Nats have only scored 8 or more runs in a game 3 times in their first 78 games?  The Red Sox have scored in double figures 9 times already including one 17 run outburst a few weeks back.  It seemingly takes the Nats a WEEK to score 17 runs.  I digress).

How about if the Nats just had a league average Offense right now, scoring 330 runs instead of 275?

We’d be at a Pythagorean record of 42-36 but (for reasons listed above) they’d likely have a record of 45-33.   45-33 would have us essentially tied for the divisional lead right now.

Last scenario; what if we were scoring at 10% above the league average, inline with the production of the 2012 offense and in line with the assumptions made on the OPS+ analysis above?

Pythagorean record of 45-33, likely actual record three games better at 48-30, which would have us tied with St. Louis and Pittsburgh for the best record in the game.  Right back where the team was last year in terms of league-wide record.

Interesting.

Conclusion: its all about the offense.  Maybe my own personal doom and gloom can get turned around if we get our guys back healthy, start hitting, continue pitching as well as we have, and get this turned around.

Lots of grief for Espinosa and Haren this week. Photo Nats official.

We’re now almost 3 months in, the team is still stuck at .500 and the natives are getting restless (see Haren, Dan‘s forced D/L trip as penance for his performance lately and Danny Espinosa‘s forced demotion to work on his batting).  I wonder what the tone of Tom Boswell‘s weekly chat questions on 6/24/13 will be?

As always, I answer here before reading Boswell’s answers and edit questions for clarity.

Q: Should the Nats move Ian Desmond up in the order?

A: Ian Desmond has mostly been batting 5th or 6th (depending on injuries to the 3-4-5 guys).   Frankly there’s no place else to put him.  They bought Denard Span so he could bat lead-off, and now suddenly Anthony Rendon is the prototypical #2 hitter; hits to all fields, good bat control, high average and some pop.  3-4-5 are set in stone when they’re healthy.   The only question is whether Desmond merits batting before or after Jayson Werth.  I’d say he will stay in the #6 hole.  Boswell says #6 is the best spot for him and he’ll stay there until Adam LaRoche‘s contract is up.

Q: Why do fans boo home-town players who are struggling?

A: The genesis of this question is the cascade of Boos rained down on Dan Haren after his latest meltdown.   I think fans are fans: they pay good money and expect this team to be successful.  When a guy lets in 7 runs in 3 and a third innings … well that’s a game spoiled.  Are they booing the player or the team, really?  Should they boo?  Eh; you certainly hear “good baseball town” crowds booing players.  Boswell says he’d have booed Haren too, but also notes what a class act and competitor he is.

Q: Where do we go with Dan Haren now?/Will Ohlendorf get the spot start?/Is Haren getting DFA’d?

A: Just answered a lot of this myself in a post yesterday.  Short answer; spot start from someone, extended rehab assignment for Haren, and probably a long-man role in the bullpen if we find a competent starter replacement.   I don’t think he’s getting DFA’d because any one of a number of pitching poor teams would snap him up in a heartbeat despite his crummy numbers.  Boswell thinks the team is going out on the open market to replace Haren and notes he’s hearing Taylor Jordan is getting a shot this weekend, and thinks that summarily demanding that a struggling player be released is cruel.

Q: Is Ian Desmond a flawed player?

A: The question arises because of Desmond’s small delta between his BA and his OBP (.280 and .318) and his approach in clutch situations.  I think Desmond has taken a small step back from last year’s break out season but otherwise all three of his slash line numbers are right where they were last year and in the same relative ratio as last year. His 2012 OBP was about 40 points higher than his average (same as this year), and his slugging is about at the same slightly lower figure.  He’s on pace to hit the same number of homers and actually increase his total extra base hits.  I see no issues here.  I’ll take a 120 OPS+ shortstop who plays plus defense anyday.  Boswell agrees, saying Desmond is a complete player and an all-star.  Nuff said.

Q: Is Werth’s groin strain another example of a Nats player coming back too soon?

A: It doesn’t seem so.  Different injury, and one that does tend to bedevil older players like Werth.  Lets just hope it isn’t too long.  Boswell does kind of scoff at Werth’s excuse of “playing dehydrated.”  As if there wasn’t enough ways for a professional athlete to hydrate themselves during the day.

Q: Will either Haren or Espinosa get another start in 2013?

A: I think the answer is likely yes.  This team has shown itself to be incredibly brittle so far (Saw a stat that the opening day lineup hasn’t played together since the 2nd week of April).  The odds of another guy going down with injury and requiring the return of either guy seems high.  The better question is likely what happens after 2013.  Haren’s one year deal is clearly over, and the Nats can’t possibly offer him a Qualifying Offer.  Danny Espinosa will be sans position and will be traded (even more proof of this?  The fact that Espinosa is playing SS in Syracuse).  Boswell interpreted the question more of a “rest of their career question” and said that Espinosa clearly has more career but Haren, maybe not unless he adjusts his approach.

Q: Why is there a disagreement between Harper and Johnson on his rehab?

A: Much to-do about nothing?  Either way, it doesn’t sound good when you have media members scurrying from one guy to another to play “he said, she said” in the papers.  Those two need to get on the same page, whether Bryce Harper is going on a rehab assignment Tuesday, Wednesday or three Fridays from now.  turns out: he’s going out on rehab tonight.  Boswell thinks its just Davey Johnson being too positive on how long it takes guys to come back.

Q: Why hasn’t Espinosa gotten surgery, if it has so clearly impacted his performance?

A: Probably two words: “Anthony” and “Rendon.”  I think Espinosa’s been reading the tea leaves and knew that his spot was the most likely destination for Rendon, and that Rendon (once arriving) likely wouldn’t give it up.  So far, that scenario is playing pretty much exactly as in Espinosa’s worst fears.  Boswell talks about how the Nats evaluated Espinosa’s injuries now and at the time.

Q: If the Nats were to pursue someone like Lee or Gallardo in the trade market, what would it cost them?  And who is untouchable?

A: Cliff Lee is owed so much money that it may not take as much in prospects as one would think.  But, the Philles have to declare that they’re out of it first … and they’ve got basically the same record as the Nats right now.  Gallardo is signed through 2014 with a 2015 option for about the same money we’re paying Haren right now .. and he has limited no-trade.  The thing is; is he worth trading for?  He’s only so-so this year, better the last two years.  I think Yovani Gallardo probably rates a bit below Gio Gonzalez on the trade market b/c of his salary  and being slightly less on the field, so perhaps two good prospects plus a young guy.

Who is untouchable at this point?  Rendon, Karns (they like him too much), Jordan (gotta see what they have now).  Brian Goodwin (he’s Span’s replacement in two years).  A.J. Cole (they worked pretty hard to get him back).  I don’t think they want to part with Matt Skole either.  But that’s not leaving a lot to work with in terms of prospects.

Boswell doesn’t really talk much about these guys or who the Nats are keeping … but fantasizes about getting David Price.  Dream on; the Tampa Bay Rays don’t trade unless they know they’re winning the deal.

Haren’s struggles earn a well-deserved D/L trip. Photo via Zimbio.com

Little surprise that the Major’s worst starting pitcher Dan Haren was sent to the D/L.  As of 6/24/13, out of 99 qualified Starting Pitchers he currently ranks 99th in ERA, 95th in FIP, 72nd in xFIP (so there’s that) and (interestingly, since it purportedly is the best of the analytical evaluator advanced pitching stats) 48th in SIERA.  As has been noted elsewhere, he’s tied for the league lead in HRs conceded.  The team has lost his last nine starts, and his latest meltdown clearly has forced the team’s hand.  Haren may not be the reason this team is mired at .500 (offense, offense, offense), but he’s clearly not helping either.

So the Nats have found a “soft tissue” issue with Haren (this time?  a “Shoulder Strain”) and have sent him to the D/L.  This isn’t the first time the Nats have used a dubious soft-tissue injury to “stash” an inflexible contract (see Rodriguez, Henry and Wang, Chien-Ming repeated D/L trips over the past two years), and while I kind of laugh at the blatant manipulation of the rules, it benefits the team to be able to remove him from the active roster but not lose him to the open market, so we’ll let it slide.  (btw, how do I know that the team is playing shenanigans with the D/L trip?  Read CSN Chase Hughes‘ tweet about what Haren said when informed he was going on the D/L.   Haren didn’t even know what injury he was supposed to have!).

So what happens next?  Adam Kilgore‘s WP article on the topic seemed to indicate that the Nats and Davey Johnson are not considering either Ross Ohlendorf or Craig Stammen for spot starts.  Which I have a hard time believing frankly; both guys demonstrated their ability to pitch longer outings in the last two days in relief of failed starters.  Ohlendorf has been starting all year and is exactly the kind of 4-A/6th starter that the Nats envisioned him to be when they signed him in the off-season.  Why would the team do something rash like call up Taylor Jordan (as Kilgore suggested and as others are reporting) when we’ve already seen what a more polished and experienced AA-pitcher (Nathan Karns) can do when jumped far above his head too soon?  Yeah, I’m excited about Jordan and what he’s done this year; but I think Ohlendorf or Stammen are better options.  I’d start Ohlendorf on Saturday and see what happens.

Of course, perhaps the Nats talent evaluators are convinced that a guy (Jordan) with exactly 49 innings above A-ball is ready to replace a $13M veteran.   If so, I can’t wait to see him pitch live.  Even if it starts his service time clock too soon, he was a guaranteed 40-man addition ahead of the coming Rule-5 draft anyway based on his domination so far in 2013.  What’s a few extra months at this point?  He’s already past Super-2 status so the team has guaranteed all the control they could get over him.

As for Haren, here’s what we’re likely going to see:  he’ll pay lip service to his “injury,” get an MRI, see a couple of specialists, get a shot.  That’ll take a week or so.  By that time we’ll know whether or not whoever gets his Saturday 6/29/13 start is worth giving another start to.  If Ohlendorf or somebody pitches 6 shutout innings in Haren’s place … then Haren’s going on a long “rehab” assignment in Syracuse.  And frankly, even though he’s making $13M and was supposed to be our former ace acting as a 4th starter FA acquisition, he may struggle to get his starting gig back.

Is it time to pull the plug?  Well, baseball is a performance-based industry.  Haren has just not performed.  Is it truly because he’s pitching through injuries?  Somehow I don’t think so; he was ineffective last year, he’s yet to really have a truly dominant outing this year, and the question is out there as to whether Haren is officially washed up.  For as much as I looked forward to Haren’s time here when we signed him, I now feel like we can’t give him more starts unless he starts throwing shut-down outings in AAA.

PS: read this interesting nugget too: Danny Espinosa is playing short-stop in Syracuse.  You know what this tells me?  The same thing that Kilgore concludes: Espinosa is being showcased so that he can be shopped as a Shortstop on the trade market.  Read the link; I can’t disagree with any of his analysis.  Well, either that or the team is looking to move Ian Desmond and replace him w/ Espinosa.  Ha.

PPS: Also reading reports on NBCSports that Mike Rizzo is burning up the pre-trade market phone lines.  That’s a clear indication that this team is not ready to wave the middling .500 team flag.

So my dad calls me the other day and immediately exclaims, “What’s wrong with this team?!?”

Today, the season is 57 games old.  Two months old.  Almost exactly 1/3 old.  And the Nationals, the supposed power houses, next-coming-of the 1927 Yankees, the possible 110 win Nationals, are a .500 team.  Actually, a game under .500 with the weekend series loss to Atlanta.

We’ve talked about the Nats early schedule (as has Tom Boswell recently), chock full of 2012 playoff contenders.   But 2013 is a new season and in reality the Nats as of two months in have played the 14th ranked schedule of 30 teams (3 days ago it was 19th ranked … so these rankings move fast).   We’ve talked about the injuries, the offense in general, defense, the bench, Drew Storen, Danny Espinosa, and Dan Haren all as contributing factors. A couple of prominent national baseball writers pipped in on 5/31/13 on this topic: Jay Jaffe on si.com and then Rob Neyer on BaseballNation.com, offering some suggestions, possible trades (Ian Kinsler?) and possible call-ups (the obvious Anthony Rendon).

But here’s my scary thought, as proposed to my dad.  What if .500 is exactly what this team is?

The 2011 Nationals finished .500.  The 2012 Nationals surprised us all and won 98 games.  Now the team is back to its 2011 levels.  Is it possible that this was always a .500 team for whom everything went perfectly right in 2012?  All the stars were in alignment in 2012 in terms of hitting, bench play and coming out parties for guys like Ian Desmond and Bryce Harper and Gio Gonzalez.   Now in 2013 are we just seeing all these guys revert to their normal production levels?

Were we just spoiled by the amazing bench production we got last year?  Here’s a quick table (stats as of 5/31/13):

In other words, all four primary bench guys outperformed their career OPS+ values (mostly by a 25-30% factor) in 2012, and now all four guys are hitting so far below replacement level as to be drastically hurting the club.

I think the answer to the above questions goes along the following, topic by topic:

• No, this is better than a .500 team.  The 2013 team is absolutely better than the 2011 team that rallied in September to finish 80-81.  The rotation now is leaps and bounds better than the 2011 rotation.  The offense (on potential anyway) is better.
• This team is by-and-large the exact same team as the 2012 98 win team.  You can quibble about the loss of Michael Morse‘s charisma and power versus the fire-starting abilities of Denard Span at the top of the order, but then you also have to acknowledge the runs-saved so far this season by having an additional plus-plus defender in the outfield.  Haren versus Edwin Jackson?  At least a wash.  Bullpen additions and subtractions?  Perhaps replacing Burnett, Gorzelanny and Gonzalez with just Zach Duke and Rafael Soriano has weakened the bullpen.  Perhaps not, considering Soriano’s pedigree as a closer and its cascading effect on the rest of the bullpen.
• The bench over produced in 2012 and is underproducing thus far in 2013, per career averages.  A bit of expected regression to the mean should indicate rising bench offensive production from here on out.  It almost has to; there’s just no way that these four guys are going to hit THIS badly the rest of the season.

But, the early season damage as been done.  At this point, just for the team to match its 2012 win total they’d have to finish the season 70-35.  That’s a .667 winning percentage.  That’s a 110-win pace for a season.  The NL Central right now has three teams with better records than either Atlanta or Washington, the two pre-season NL favorites, meaning there may not even be a NL Wild-Card to fall back on.  This team needs to focus on winning the division or there may not be an October.

This sounds like something Yogi Berra would say, but here goes: you have to score to win.  For me, if they start scoring runs and out-hitting teams, the issues we have with defense, the bullpen and injured starters will become secondary concerns.  As we speak, these Nationals are hitting .229 AS A TEAM.  That’s unbelievable.   Almost amazingly bad.  They’re 28th in batting average.  They’re dead last in team OBP (on a pace for a modern seasonal low OBP in fact), 27th in team slugging, 29th in wOBA and 28th in wRC+.

They need Werth back in the middle of the order.  They need a healthy Harper, who hasn’t been the same since the LA wall crash but really hasn’t been the same since hitting the wall in Atlanta in late April (from a tweet by Mark Zuckerman: Bryce Harper’s stats before April 29 collision in ATL: .356/.437/.744. His stats since: .183/.315/.350).  They’re finally getting LaRoche back on track, and Zimmerman is hitting well.  They need to stop giving at bats to Espinosa, and they need Ramos back to help spell Suzuki (he’s catching nearly every game and his offense has bottomed out in the last month).

I’m going under the assumption, by the way, that Strasburg misses at most one start and that Detwiler returns straight away.  I don’t think Nathan Karns is ready for the big time and the team needs to find another spot starter in the short term (Stammen?).

June is here; a weak schedule and an opportunity to get some wins.  If we’re still .500 on July 1st, then we’ll probably have run out of excuses and decided that we are who we are.

What's eating Gilbert Grape? Photo: howtowatchsports.com

Our Ace, and “Best in the League” by many pundits pitcher Stephen Strasburg is now 1-4 on the season with relatively pedestrian (for him) numbers so far (3.16 ERA, 3.32 FIP, 3.65 xFIP).

So what’s the problem?  Or, more importantly, what is NOT the problem?

First off; I think its safe to say we can ignore his inflated FIP and xFIP numbers for now.  As I pointed out in this April 4th post about my issues with fWAR, FIP focuses entirely on the “Three true outcomes” that a pitcher entirely controls and really does a poor job of measuring pitchers who induce a whole slew of weak ground balls (like Strasburg does).   This is easily seen by looking at the two example cases in the 4/4/13 post to see how FIP measures a guy who strikes out 9 but gives up 5 earned runs higher than a guy who strikes out just a few but gives up zero runs in an outing.

I also do not buy the opinions I’ve heard in various forums and podcasts that hitters are “squaring him up” a lot this year.  You heard this a lot after his 4/19/13 loss to the Mets, when he gave up back-to-back homers to Ike Davis and Lucas Duda in the 6th (two of the three homer’s he’s given up this year, the third being an out-of-this-world chest-high fastball just clubbed out by Evan Gattis).    I don’t buy this because observation has shown that he gives up a TON of bloops, dinks, infield nubbers, etc.  He also has a very low Line-Drive percentage right now; just 14.9% of the balls hit off of him so far this year have been classified as “line drives,” or hard-struck balls.

Dave Cameron of Fangraphs had a piece on ESPN talking about Strasburg and the Nats “pitch to contact” strategy that shows essentially that pitch-to-contact guys don’t really throw that fewer a number of pitches than guys who just try to strike you out.   Is Strasburg’s change in style leading to issues for him?  So far it doesn’t seem so: he’s averaging about 6 1/3 innings per start and has been right around 110 pitches each of his last four despite still going deeper into the game.  But his K/9 is absolutely down (from 11.1 last year to 8.0 this year).

No, I think Strasburg’s issues are these three items.

1. Bad first innings.  Tom Boswell had a great piece on this earlier this week, talking about how a lack of a first pitch strike has really cost Strasburg this year.  And he’s right; pretty much the absolute worst thing you can do as a pitcher is to show a hitter your fastball for a ball at 0-0.   Not only does the hitter get the timing down pretty well on your fastball, but he also gets ahead in the count.  Boswell is probably right in saying that hitters are now trying to jump on the first fastball they get, knowing that getting behind in the count against him is near-certain demise; but Strasburg has to make that adjustment too.  He can’t nibble on first pitch fastballs; he has to be smarter than that.

Strasburg has given up 15 total runs in 5 games this year; fully EIGHT of them have come in the first inning.  That just cannot continue.

2. Bad luck; we’ve watched his games, and he’s not exactly getting pounded when he gives up most of these runs.   Check out the game-logs for his losses:

• April 7th; 6 runs given up to Cincinnati: in the first he gave up his runs after two infield singles and a walk turned into a 2-rbi double, the only well-hit ball of the inning.  He gave up 3 more in the 6th on some better hit balls and had one runner score after he departed.
• April 13th: 6 innings pitched, zero earned runs and a loss; Ryan Zimmerman threw away a routine 3rd out and the next guy up clubbed a homer.  Yes, he gave up a homer (it wasn’t as if he made a bad pitch there; Gattis just crushed it) but he never should have been in the position in the first place.
• April 19th: Two more unearned runs in the first when Desmond booted the first ball of the day; a weak dribbler up the middle.  He gave up two more hits in the 1st but only Buck‘s was really a line-drive.   By the 6th inning he gave up two bombed homers; no bad luck there.
• April 24th: the lead-off double was earned, but the rest of the hits in the first were opposite field shorter line drives, with the required Nationals infield error thrown in to ensure unearned runs contributing to his day.

Only four of his 15 runs allowed were deemed to be unearned, but we’ve watched the games.  Zimmerman’s error against the Braves decided that game.  Desmond’s error against the Mets set the tone.  The team went down 3-0 in the first against both Cincy and St. Louis at a time when the offense was struggling.  Just can’t do that.  Speaking of the offense…

3. Lack of Run Support.  In his five starts, Strasburg’s offense has scored this many runs for him: 2,3,1,1, and 2.  That’s 1.8 runs per game!  Maybe Bob Gibson in 1968 could have gotten wins with that little run support, but certainly not Strasburg.  The Nats YESTERDAY gave Gio Gonzalez nearly the same total run support that Strasburg has gotten all year.

Is Desmond really a 9-figure contract waiting to happen?? Photo Drew Kinback/Natsnq.com

A few days ago Elvis Andrus signed an 8yr/$120M contract with Texas that had some heads shaking in the industry.   Here locally, the immediate focus was on our own pre-free agency shortstop Ian Desmond and what his future FA value may be in light of this monster deal.

Sidenote: I just don’t get the Andrus contract.  You mean to tell me you can’t find another shortstop in the minors who can field nearly as well as Andrus and hit 15% below MLB replacement level (his career OPS+ is 84)?  Or at least find one who you can get away with paying just a couple million dollars a year at best.   What am I missing in Andrus that makes him worth this kind of money?  Is it all about his defense?  Meanwhile Texas has one of the best prospects in all of baseball (Jurickson Profar) in the minors featuring as a middle-infielder who could have naturally replaced Andrus at short … instead they’ll waste his talents at 2nd base and likely move Ian Kinsler to the outfield at some point in the future.  Dumb.

Does the Andrus contract really affect Desmond’s value?  So it may, according to The Washington Times‘ Amanda Comak.  MLBtraderumors weighed in on the topic as well, claiming that Andrus “may not have as much pop” as Desmond but is clearly better defensively, and has been consistently “good” for four years.

Is that all really true?  Is Andrus really that much better of a player than Desmond?  Lets take a quick peek at some value, hitting and defensive stats for both players.  I’m using 2009-12 for Andrus (all full seasons) and just 2010-12 for Desmond (again, just using full seasons for comparison purposes):

Using just the full seasons, we can see that Andrus has always been a weak hitter; even when Nats fans were burning Desmond in effigy for being such a bad hitter in 2011, he was still for the most part as good as Andrus ever was.  And that was before 2012 when Desmond broke out and hit like a middle-of-the-order guy.

How about Defensively?  Andrus’ career numbers at short show a very good defender while Desmond shows a defender on the improvement, nearly matching Andrus’ UZR/150 rating in 2012.  Is Desmond THAT much behind Andrus defensively at this point?

How about Value?  Note i’ve put in both WAR figures because this is one of those examples where I cannot defend baseball-reference’s war calculations; how does Andrus have a BETTER 2012 WAR than Desmond given that they’re nearly identical in defensive metrics but Desmond vastly outhit Andrus?  Fangraph’s war does show this accurately, putting Desmond’s war at 5.0 to Andrus’ 3.9.

Yes I get that Andrus has now performed ably for 4 straight seasons while Desmond has been exceptional for only one.  Is that a $100 million dollar difference?   But ask yourself this question; if Desmond hits at a 110-120 OPS+ clip for the next two years AND continues to be a positive UZR/150 defender … is he a 9-figure player?  I guess so in today’s market.

Kemp reacts to being Boss' first round pick in my fantasy league for the 2nd year running. Photo unknown via ladodgertalk.com

Editor’s note: feel free to stop reading now if you don’t want to read 4,400+ words on my fantasy baseball team.  I won’t blame you for it.  For those of you who do play fantasy, as I made picks I wrote down who I was considering and who was available per each pick to try to give some context for the pick.  I’ll insert a “jump” line here so that RSS readers don’t have to see this whole massive post 🙂

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