Nationals Arm Race

1. Atilano.  In 16 starts he’s now 6-7, 5.15 era, 1.49 whip.  The team is 6-10 in his starts. More telling: in 5 of his 16 starts now he’s given up as many earned runs as innings pitched.  That’s just not acceptable.  I realize there’s nobody really better (Chico?  Martis?) until one of Detwiler/Wang/Zimmermann/Marquis/Olsen recovers from injury but man.  Its brutal.

2. Leake.  Like this kid.  He looks a lot like Bronson Arroyo, even down to the stupid haircut. A ton of movement with a mlb-average fastball and decent control.  I know everyone is talking about the St. Louis rookie pitcher Garcia  but i like this guy.  Taken 2 picks before Storen; imagine if he had fallen to us at the #10 spot lastyear?

3. At what point in the season do we do what is obviously right for the team and stick Bernadina in center and Morse in right?  Morse is hitting .324/.375/.554 with 4 homers in 80 plate appearances.  That’s almost a 30 homer clip extrapolated out to a full season.  Have we found our right field solution by accident?  Bernadina is doing great; he has some power, hits for average, has some decent speed (7 sbs).  Maybe we stick him in center.  Morgan has easily the worst OPS+ on the team right now and has a .315 on base percentage at leadoff.  Unacceptable.  Even Guzman, he of the 4 walks in 600 plate appearances last season, has a better OBP this year.  And nearly as many walks as Morgan!

Nats currently on track for 69-93 season and the 7th overall pick.  And if we succumb to pressure and trade Dunn or Willingham or both, we may not score the rest of the season…

So, after skipping 5 weeks (and with a burning desire NOT to do any real work today), I’ve updated my little spreadsheet of starting pitcher performance.

Interesting results to be had, no doubt:

Nats performance going against Staff Positionals:

#1s (ie, the other team’s aces): 10-8.  that’s right; we’ve got a winning record against the staff aces on the season.  Amazingly Livan has pitched in 7 of these 18 contests
and will get his 8th ace tomorrow night going against Josh Johnson in Florida.  Strasburg has yet to face an “Ace.”

#2s: 6-12.  JD Martin seems to be taking the brunt of these losses, as  he’s taken over the Jason Marquis rotation spot apparently.  Martin isn’t pitching badly (3rd best ERA+ on the staff) but the Nats are 1-6 in his starts right now.

#3s: 5-11.  Strasburg seems to be in the #3 rotational spot right now though he goes tonight against Florda’s #2 starter in Nolasco in what should be a pretty good matchup.

#4s: 5-6.  Mostly Olsen starts.

#5s: 7-8.  Ironically Lannan usually faced up against #5 starters.  it is a testament to his bad season that he couldn’t get more wins against the #5 starters.

#5+’s: 6-5.  5+ means they were not in the original starting 5 rotation at the beginning of the season.  Sometimes this is a good thing (going against the 7th best starter in baltimore for example) and other times it means the right guy is finally pitching (like Dickey over Oliver Perez in NY).

Taking the “rotation order” out of the equation and just looking at the actual performance of the staff member at the time of the series shows a slightly different take:

#1s: 8-12
#2s: 10-9
#3s: 7-7
#4s: 5-10
#5s: 5-8
#5+: 3-4

We’re actually playing WORSE against the lesser pitchers!  how is that possible.  Ugh.

Of course, if we trade Dunn and Willing ham we’ll probably head into a tailspin and be closer to 60 wins than 70.  Currently the team is on pace for exactly 71-91.

boss