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…

This is the Nats Farm authority draft tracker.  with the signing of their #3 and #8 round picks, the Nats have really locked in basically every non-marquee draft pick of their 2010 draft.  Who is left?

#1: Bryce Harper.  Thanks to Mr. Boras, don’t expect any movement until August 15th at 10:30pm.

#2: Sammy Solis, a Jr Lefty from USanDiego.  6’5″ 240 big lefty, #48 Baseball America prospect so perhaps a slight overdraft on our part at the top of the 2nd round.  Slight injury concern (ruptured disc in back cost him his sophmore season).  9-2, 3.00 era with 87/26 k/bb in 87ip.  Sits 89-92, touches 93.  Sounds kinda like a Detwiler with more bulk and thus less injury prone.

#4: AJ Cole; the most interesting of our draft picks.  Cole was a 1st round talent projected, signed with Miami.  He’s drawing comparisons to Justin Verlander in terms of his size/frame and his fastball (93-94, reportedly touching 98).  This is a great test of the ownership group; will they offer overslot money on a high-end talent?  Keith Law thinks its 50-60% that they sign him.

This would make for a pretty good drafting class if they get all three of these guys remaining.

They’ve already signed #3,5,6,7,10 positional players (all college juniors) and they’re all in Vermont playing short-A ball right now.

I was looking at the spreadsheet of draft picks and wonder though.  Why does any team bother drafting a High School kid in the 40th-50th round who has a division 1 college scholarship commit?  Is it just to impress the kid and make him feel good about himself?  I guess some of these guys pan out; 2006 we drafted Brad Peacock in the 41st round out of High School, probably gave him $1000 to sign, and he’s still plugging away.  He’s in Potomac now and isn’t doing too badly.

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

Before you read this article, here’s the question (the answer is in the article).

How many Major League Baseball players or Managers in 2009 had completed a 4 year college degree?

30 teams, 25 players on active roster plus 30 managers = 780 or so population base.

Screwing around at cnnsi.com while eating, here’s their list of top 10 most unbreakable baseball records:

1. Cy Young’s 511 career victories
2. Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak
3. Ty Cobb’s career .366 batting average
4. Rickey Henderson’s season SB record of 130
5. Babe Ruth’s career .690 slugging pct
6. Barry Bonds’ season record for walks: 232.
7. Nolan Ryan’s career Ks of 5,714.
8. Jack Chesbro’s season record for complete games: 48.
9. Ted William’s lifetime OBP of .482
10. Hank Aaron’s 25 career all-star games (somewhat aided by multiple games for several years, but he still played in an all star game in 21 of his 23 seasons).

Most of these I tend to agree with … but there are certainly other records out there that are in a similar vein to Cy Young’s career victory record.  Single season wins, single
season innings pitched, starts, complete games, etc all are basically obsolete benchmarks.  Hell, I’d be willing to wager against someone ever winning 30 games in a season ever again.

Not sure i’d say that a 56-game hitting streak is unassailable.  Yes it’s been a while since it happened, but it routinely gets approached.  You see 30, 35, 40 game streaks
with some frequency.
Plus, i think the stolen base is coming back into vogue.  Maybe not close to 118 or 130 in a season, but i think its just a matter of time before we start seeing higher totals.
There seems to be a dearth of quality defensive catchers these days.
anyway, random thoughts.

Welcome to nationalsarmrace.com!

Not that the moribund Washington Nationals necessarily needed another blog, but I couldn’t resist.

Ever since the Nats rolled into town in 2005, I’ve developed an unhealthy obsession with the team, and more interestingly its rotation, bullpen, farm system and player development.  Over the past couple of years specifically, I’ve begun to track the pitchers (mostly the rotations) of our various farm systems and take interest in the development of pitching talent as it rises through the ranks.  Hence the name of the blog “Nationals Arms Race.”  I do periodically write for Brian Oliver and his standard-bearing natsfarm.com blog and do not wish to replicate what he does in the least.  But periodically i do like to talk about the major league rotation instead of the prospects and never felt comfortable with those topics on a prospect-centric blog.

I hope to have a pitching-focused blog that talks about the current Nats MLB rotation, the 40-man spotholders, prospects and who may be coming up next month or next year.  I’ll talk about pitching in general, some observations and some advanced stats.  I will post random musings about the Nationals in general and hope that my close friends with whom I regularly converse about baseball will chime in and offer their 2 cents about their own favorite teams (generally, the Phillies, Yankees and Dodgers).  I’ll talk about pitchers around the majors and baseball in general here and there.

I hope you find my writing interesting and topical.  You can always unsubscribe I suppose 🙂

Thanks, todd