Nationals Arm Race

While attending a fantasy football draft, I missed the melee from last night.  But certainly I was not surprised to hear that Nyjer Morgan was in the middle of it.  Borrowing from an email conversation between friends Jamos and Droopy this morning, here’s some point by point thoughts on all of Morgan’s various transgressions lately.

1) Nyjer shouldn’t have gotten into it with the Phillies fans. (isn’t anything involving the words “tauning” and “Philadelphia sports fans” always going to end in disaster?).  Fans are antagonizers, and drunken late-inning fans close to the field who are purposely talking to the players are only looking for a reaction.

2) Nyjer was wrong to give the shoulder bump to the Cardinals catcher.  Agree; Nyjer wrong to hit the St Louis catcher, but that’s a Washington-St Louis issue and i’m sure it will come up next  year if Morgan is still on the team (big “if” here; see later)

3) Nyjer needs to keep his trap shut to the Media when asked about batting 8th and being sat by his manager.  Riggleman is old school and rightly sat Morgan so he wouldn’t get a ball in his ear from Wainwright after the questionable behaviors the previous night.  As for batting eighth … well Nyjer, when you have an OPS+ of 72 and a puny OBP of only .317 on the season, you can’t really complain when you’re put in the 8th spot can you?  How about you perform to your 2009 levels (OPS+ of 121, .396 OBP) and let your bat do the talking?

4) Nyjer should have slid into home against the Marlins, but you can’t fault him for what he did.  As Riggleman was quoted in the post-game, it is incredibly hard to 2nd guess sliding versus body blocking at home plate.  You’re trying to get a read on the catcher’s body language and his positioning as you’re racing down the base-path to try to score the winning run.  You’re certainly NOT saying to yourself, “Hey I really want to hit this guy how can I do it?”  Nyjer made the decision that a collision was going to give him the best chance to score the run.  Riggleman supported him there.  It certainly wasn’t nearly as questionable a play as the Utley-Flores incident that essentially took out Flores for a season and a half.  The fact that Florida’s catcher suffered a season-ending injury is tough though, which led to the next point.

5) I don’t fault the Marlins for throwing at him—however, you’ve got to do it in his FIRST at-bat. You don’t wait until the fourth inning when you’re up 14-3 or whatever to throw at him. Florida could not have been more obvious about what they were doing.  The SECOND time you throw at a player?  That pitcher and coach should be fined and suspended.

6) I don’t think Morgan’s stealing falls into the realm of baseball’s “Unwritten Rules.” Yes, it was a blowout at the time, but the Marlins had their closer in the game in the 8th inning, as Zimmerman pointed out.  And by the way, the whole “you don’t steal when you’re up by 10 runs” never applies to the  LOSING team.  Whoever said that Morgan was showing them up was just looking to stir up trouble.

7) Lastly, I’m ok with Nyjer rushing the mound after getting a ball thrown behind him in his third at-bat. Agree wholeheartedly; the first time you get hit is payback.  The 2nd time is an attempt to damage a player’s career.  I’d support the charging of the mound and if i’m a vet on the Nats i’m going out there for blood.

Noooooow.  All that being said.

Nyjer Morgan’s performance this year, his lapses in judgment in the field and on the base-paths, and certainly his severe lapses in judgment in the past two weeks says to me that his usefulness to this franchise has reached an endpoint.  Rizzo has gone out of his way to rid the team of clubhouse lawyers, cancers, non-hustlers and problem children.  I think a 2011 outfield of Willingham, Bernadina, Morse with Maxwell as a backup is quite serviceable for the short term (without considering any FA pickups, which are a possibility in the OF in the off season).  Perhaps by 2012 we’ll have Michael Burgess or (hold your breath) Bryce Harper ready to take the field.  Perhaps the Nats go after someone like Jayson Werth and keep Morse as a super-sub.  In any case, the only reason to hang on to Morgan right now is if Rizzo was saving face and holding on to one of the key members of the 4-player deal with Pittsburgh.

An interesting day in the Nationals short franchise lifetime.  Lots of stuff went down yesterday: wunderkid Bryce Harper‘s introduction and BP show, Strasburg‘s career affecting arthrogram, the results of which (as we just have found out) probably means Tommy John surgery, and Jordan Zimmermann‘s first major league start since Tommy John surgery 13 months ago.

Lets talk about Zimmermann’s start.  A tough opposing team in the Cardinals didn’t help matters.  His final line wasn’t great.  4ip, 7 hits, 1 walk (the first batter he faced), one towering homer given up to this generation’s greatest hitter in Albert Pujols, and 5 earned runs.  70 pitches, 42 for strikes.  A bonanza of 9th inning scoring and 13th inning heroics earned the win for the team.

Zimmermann’s fastball was there for sure.  92-93 on the gun consistently, peaking at 94 a couple times per the Pitch f/x data.  Despite not giving up walks, he didn’t really have control of the fastball though.  His curve seemed waaaay too slow, floating in at 76mph for a delta from the fastball that I think is so distinct that hitters can adjust and swing strongly.  His strike zone map was all over the place.  Perhaps its rust, perhaps its more indicative that the AAA league (where he was absolutely dominant) is just not a good indicator of major league success.

Summary; its good to have him back, especially considering that he’s now just taken the reigns as next year’s rotational power pitcher for our team, and we hope that this is something he can build on.

Bryce Harper‘s last minute signing for something not quite as stratospheric as was requested by Boras ($6.25M bonus, $9.9M 5year contract) caps off a phenomenal draft for the Nats.  Going in, pundits were giving the team little chance to sign 4th rounder AJ Cole or 12th rounder Robbie Ray (both high end HS prospects with strong college commitments).   Even 2nd rounder Sammy Solis would be tough; his injury history knocked him out of the 1st round and there is always a chance with such guys that they’ll stick around for their senior year to increase their draft status (this is exactly what happened with our 14th rounder Timothy Smalling, a SS from Va Tech.  He has a shoulder injury, meaning he dropped from the 10th round and the nats weren’t offering 10th round signing money.  He’ll play his senior season and try to increase  his value).

In the end, the nats got 25 of their first 26 round draft picks to sign.  They paid overslot for Cole, far overslot for Ray and got them in the fold.  I say bravo to the Nats for ignoring the edicts from the Commissioner’s office to pay slot money (this the same commissioner who basically ran the team into the ground between 2002 and 2004, somewhat leading to our current predicament today in terms of lack of talent from those drafts), preferring instead to spend more money than ever before to get commits from players who can change the course of the franchise.

Great day today.

One last note.  I realize we’ll have this “signing day dance” no matter what actual calendar day is selected, and certainly this is a better system than what existed before a signing deadline day was picked (before, the benchmark was whether a player had begun to attend classes at whatever college they committed to, which led to all sorts of shenanigans and really wasn’t fair to Div-I programs who had a guy on campus ready to attend classes then suddenly was playing rookie league ball in florida 2 days later).  But the next collective bargaining agreement HAS to move this date up.

High end guys like Harper, Sammy Solis and Cole have now basically wasted an entire pro season of development because they knew they could squeeze more money out of teams by waiting til the end.  Plus, MLB “asks” teams to delay announcing over-slot deals so that there’s not a feeding frenzy of agents going “well player X got $2M so my guy should get $2.1M” all summer.  Here’s the current major dates on the GM baseball calendar:

• The draft is held the first week of June (June 5-7 this year)
• The all-star break is usually the 2nd week of july (this year it was july 11-15th)
• And then the (non-waiver) trade deadline is July 31st.
• The current draft signing deadline is 8/15 (unless it falls on a weekend, then its pushed out like it was in 2010).

From a GM perspective, a ton of work leads up to the trade deadline so you can’t put it between the all star break and the end of july.  Why not put the trade deadline somewhere in the first week of july?  The 2 weeks immediately following the draft are spent signing the low-end/college senior prospects already; once that is done why not just play the Scott Boras dance, get the kid signed by July 7th, and have the kid playing by mid july?

Boss

A 5-game losing streak, and having lost 7 of their last 10 games, has the Nats inching towards not meeting some pretty realistic goals for the season.

Most pundits thought a 70-win season was a good goal for this team after going 59-103 last year.  For the first time this season, the team is now projected to miss that goal.  Currently sitting at 49-66, they are on pace to finish 69-93.  We’re 71% of the way through the season and this losing streak is coming at a time where we are (finally) getting our presumed starters back.

More interestingly, the Nats are now inching closer to the “loser pack” of teams that are going to make up the top 10 of next year’s (talent-rich) draft board.  For months we have more or less been locked into the #9 pick in the 2011 amateur draft.  We are fully 5 games behind Milwaukee for the 10th pick.  Here’s how the draft order is shaping up (records as of 8/13/10):

9. Washington Nationals: 49-66
8. Houston Astros: 48-65
7. Chicago Cubs: 48-67
6. Cleveland Indians: 48-67
5. Kansas City Royals: 47-68
4. Arizona Diamondbacks: 46-70
3. Seattle Mariners: 44-71
2. Baltimore Orioles: 40-75
1. Pittsburgh Pirates: 39-75

Hey,  we’re only 3 games from drafting #4 next year!

You have to like this move that Rizzo pulled off.

He turned a guy who was flat out released by Pittsburgh last year into the #2 prospect in Minnesota’s system (Wilson Ramos, a major-league ready catcher
from a defensive standpoint and probably Pudge’s understudy in a few weeks) plus a lefty reliever with staggering K/9 ratios the last two seasons (but not
so much this season, where he’s struggled a bit in high-A).
I love this move.  Capps did great for us undoubtedly and some will say that he is the reason our bullpen has stabilized this year versus last, but reality is:

• – a closer is an absolute luxury on a last place team
• – a closer can be great one year (Capps in 2010) but awful the next (Capps in 2009) and you have to sell high.
• – Saves are overrated and even mediocre bullpen guys can serve as the “closer” for a team that’s not in a pennant race.
• – The nats have a couple of very lively arms in the bullpen now that can immediately step up and open the door for the next reliever to come up (Severino?) to work towards the future.  As a last place team, that HAS to be the priority.

Now, here’s an interesting question.  Why did we get yet another upper-end catching prospect?  Right now the catching situation for the Nats looks like this:

• – Pudge; coming back to reality after a great start, signed through 2011
• – Nieves; classic good D no hit guy who is hitting .187/.223/.252 in 134 plate appearances this year and is just killing the team when he spells Pudge.  Great guy; but he’s probably getting his release inside the next couple weeks.
• – Norris: Nats #1 prospect in the minors right now; struggling after having hamate bone surgery (same surgery Zimmerman had a few years back) in high-A.  He tore up low-A and short-A though so he’ll get it back.  Question remains about him though; does he stay at Catcher?
• – Flores; another setback reporeted recently. at this point in his “recovery” he’s throwing from 90 feet and hitting off a tee.  Which is exactly what he was doing in March.  Despite everything that we expected from this kid, you almost have to write him off as a complete injury loss at this point.
• – Harper.  Catching prospect but he’ll be far faster the majors as a right fielder (which we have a need for anyway).  Boras wants him out of the catching position because it will mean more money and longer career (and thus more commissions).

thoughts?

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.