{"id":13773,"date":"2017-04-30T13:22:54","date_gmt":"2017-04-30T17:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=13773"},"modified":"2017-04-30T13:23:32","modified_gmt":"2017-04-30T17:23:32","slug":"eaton-injury-reaction-holes-and-opportunities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=13773","title":{"rendered":"Eaton Injury reaction; holes and opportunities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"hate<\/a>

hate to see this. Photo via usatoday<\/p><\/div>\n

Just a placeholder post for discussion on the hot topic of the day\/weekend.<\/p>\n

Adam Eaton<\/strong>‘s ACL injury creates some short term and some longer term implications for the roster. \u00a0Lets talk and speculate while we wish him a speedy recovery.<\/p>\n

sidenote: With modern medicine ACL injuries take time, but also take *time* before the player is ever feeling “right” about his leg again, so this is certainly a bummer for both Eaton and the team. \u00a0Reported 6-9 month recovery time before he’s back on the field. \u00a0But by all accounts it really takes athletes two full years to “trust” the repaired ACL. \u00a0We’ll get to what I think this means for our roster longer term below.<\/p>\n

Short Term<\/strong><\/span>: obviously we’re seeing a like-for-like replacement in CF with\u00a0Michael Taylor<\/strong>. \u00a0We are all well aware of his short comings, and i’m guessing this may be his “last chance” to show that he belongs in a starting role. \u00a0Interestingly, the team opted not to call up\u00a0Brian Goodwin<\/strong> for the backup OF bench role, but untested\u00a0Rafael Bautista<\/strong>. \u00a0Neither are really tearing it up in AAA<\/a> this year; Bautista’s got a .291 BA but its rather empty, while Goodwin’s OPS is in the .640 range. \u00a0\u00a0Dusty Baker<\/strong> installed Taylor in the 2nd spot in the order inexplicably (lineup construction theory tells us that you want your BEST hitter in the #2 hole, not your worst) and he was rewarded with a 3-5 day from him. \u00a0But I’d much, much rather see Rendon or a hot Werth batting 2nd with Taylor buried further down (like, 8th).<\/p>\n

If Taylor fails to produce, there’s not a whole lot on the farm to draw from. \u00a0Victor Robles<\/strong> isn’t ready (and he’s hurt), nor is\u00a0Juan Soto<\/strong>. \u00a0 I’d probably dip to AA and pluck the hitting machine\u00a0Andrew Stevenson<\/strong> to backfill in center if a need arose. \u00a0But that’s a tough jump for Stevenson, who basically has a season and a half of pro ball experience.<\/p>\n

Trade market? \u00a0its probably too early for most teams to start thinking about a trade. \u00a0We’d have to ride out a sub-par Taylor for a couple of months before the trade waters started heating up. \u00a0But there’s definitely teams out there who are punting on 2017 who might have CF capable guys to flip<\/a>; looking at Kansas City (Lorenzo Cain<\/strong>) if they continue to struggle Oakland’s Rajai Davis<\/strong>, Toronto’s\u00a0Kevin Pillar\u00a0<\/strong>if Toronto can’t un-bury themselves, or\u00a0the Angels (Mike Trout<\/strong>) .. ok just kidding there. \u00a0I can’t really see any obvious trade candidate from an NL team; all the guys on floundering NL teams seem like prospects that they’d want to keep, not veterans or FAs-to-be worth flipping. \u00a0Anyway, we might not want to trade away more depth for a piece though, especially a rental.<\/p>\n

Lets hope for a Taylor career resurgence, or perhaps a Stevenson call-up.<\/p>\n

Longer Term<\/strong><\/span>: I wonder if this injury doesn’t make the Nats re-think their off-season strategy. \u00a0Will Eaton be able to play CF next season? \u00a0Will he have to move to LF while (as mentioned above) he learns to trust his knee again? \u00a0If Eaton has to move to Left, then there’s no possible way that\u00a0Jayson Werth<\/strong> continues his tenure here. \u00a0I realize you guys may not think Werth could re-up on a shorter term deal .. but if he has a nice season and we still have a need in LF, why not? \u00a0Anyway; Eaton in LF, Harper in RF (because apparently Baker won’t even think about moving Harper to CF like i’ve advocated in the past), which leaves us short a CF yet again. \u00a0It could happen. \u00a0Like our rotating door at closer, are we looking at more rotating doors in CF?<\/p>\n

Will Stevenson be ready for 2018 to man CF? \u00a0Will Taylor own it? \u00a0Will Eaton be ready? \u00a0Or are we looking at a FA stop-gap to Stevenson\/Robles tenure?<\/p>\n

Might be way early to worry about this stuff (ok, yes it is way early). \u00a0Just idle thoughts while we see if the Nats can salvage a win in this awful series.<\/p>\n

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

Just a placeholder post for discussion on the hot topic of the day\/weekend. Adam Eaton‘s ACL injury creates some short term and some longer term implications for the roster. \u00a0Lets talk and speculate while we wish him a speedy recovery. sidenote: With modern medicine ACL injuries take time, but also take *time* before the player […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3142,2814,257,845,115,3314,3558,277,708,456,2758,493,2757],"class_list":["post-13773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-adam-eaton","tag-andrew-stevenson","tag-brian-goodwin","tag-dusty-baker","tag-jayson-werth","tag-juan-soto","tag-kevin-pillar","tag-lorenzo-cain","tag-michael-taylor","tag-mike-trout","tag-rafael-bautista","tag-rajai-davis","tag-victor-robles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773","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=13773"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13777,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773\/revisions\/13777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}