{"id":10222,"date":"2015-01-28T11:49:42","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T16:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=10222"},"modified":"2015-07-06T11:15:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T15:15:00","slug":"like-the-janssen-signing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=10222","title":{"rendered":"Like the Janssen signing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Janssen<\/a>

Janssen becomes the latest Nats signing. Photo via THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Chris Young<\/p><\/div>\n

I hadn’t necessarily verbalized it in this space, but after the Tyler Clippard<\/strong> trade it made sense to me for the Nats to go shopping on the FA market for a middle reliever to help bridge the gap.\u00a0 Its tough to lose two of your three late-inning options in one season (the other of course being the over-paid Rafael Soriano<\/strong>, who remains unemployed at this juncture), and a veteran one-year signing made sense.<\/p>\n

And that’s exactly what the team got today with the signing of former Toronto closer<\/a> Casey Janssen<\/strong> to a one-year $5M guaranteed deal with a mutual option for 2016.\u00a0 I like this deal a lot; not a ton of money, a closer-quality guy who immediately takes over the 8th inning role and can cover for Drew Storen<\/strong> if he stumbles in the closer role.\u00a0 Janssen’s numbers took a dive in 2014, which can be easily attributable to a violent bout of food poisoning<\/a> he suffered mid-season last\u00a0 year.<\/p>\n

This move makes the 2015 bullpen likely look like the following (in relative order from Closer to Long-Man): Storen, Janssen, Barrett, Stammen, Blevins, Thornton<\/strong> and Roark<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Which means that, save for a theoretical trade of a starter, Roark is the long-man and Blake Treinen<\/strong> is likely in AAA as a starter.\u00a0 If we move Zimmermann<\/strong>, Roark slides into the 5th starter and Treinen likely becomes a 7th inning option.\u00a0 The rest of the 40-man reliever options don’t seem like they’re really threatening this core group: Cedeno<\/strong> is out of options and is looking at a DFA unless Blevins\/Thornton gets hurt, Fornataro<\/strong> needs to re-establish himself in AAA, Erik Davis<\/strong> is coming off surgery and Matt Grace<\/strong> is freshly on the 40-man and (like Cedeno) won’t be an option unless there’s an injury.\u00a0 Yes forensicane; I love Rafael Martin<\/strong> too … but he’s not on the 40-man yet so he’s not an option yet either.<\/p>\n

I don’t mind keeping Treinen as a starter frankly; the Nats used 8 starters last year and likely will use that many this year.\u00a0 Past the core 5, you have Roark, Treinen and then your pick of 40-man candidates Jordan\/Cole\/Hill<\/strong> if we get bit with an injury bug.\u00a0 That’s plenty of decent starter depth for now; we can call up Treinen and Cole for middle-relief appearances in September ahead of a potential October series.<\/p>\n

How do you feel about our bullpen?\u00a0 Is the Barrett\/Stammen\/Thornton combination good enough to handle the 6th and 7th innings on a regular basis?\u00a0 Would you rather have Treinen as a sinkerballing hard-thrower in that mix?\u00a0 If so, who makes way?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hadn’t necessarily verbalized it in this space, but after the Tyler Clippard trade it made sense to me for the Nats to go shopping on the FA market for a middle reliever to help bridge the gap.\u00a0 Its tough to lose two of your three late-inning options in one season (the other of course […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[916,17,1693,1217,98,52,2718,61,2123,43,1228,2589,1398,77,197,24,128,1786],"class_list":["post-10222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","tag-aaron-barrett","tag-aj-cole","tag-blake-treinen","tag-casey-janssen","tag-craig-stammen","tag-drew-storen","tag-eric-fornataro","tag-erik-davis","tag-jerry-blevins","tag-jordan-zimmermann","tag-matt-grace","tag-matt-thornton","tag-rafael-soriano","tag-tanner-roark","tag-taylor-hill","tag-taylor-jordan","tag-tyler-clippard","tag-xavier-cedeno"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10222"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10225,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10222\/revisions\/10225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}