{"id":15333,"date":"2018-07-26T14:35:55","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T18:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=15333"},"modified":"2018-07-26T14:50:34","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T18:50:34","slug":"strasburg-to-dl-again-is-this-the-official-white-flag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=15333","title":{"rendered":"Strasburg to DL again; is this the official white flag?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_15335\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/scherzerstrasburgargumentjuly2018.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15335\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15335\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-15335\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/scherzerstrasburgargumentjuly2018-300x228.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;My Neck hurts.&quot; &quot;Oh yeah, something always frigging hurts with you, you snowflake.&quot; -- photo via WP\" width=\"300\" height=\"228\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/scherzerstrasburgargumentjuly2018-300x228.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/scherzerstrasburgargumentjuly2018-768x583.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/scherzerstrasburgargumentjuly2018-1024x777.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/scherzerstrasburgargumentjuly2018.jpg 1230w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-15335\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;My Neck hurts.&#8221; &#8220;Oh yeah, something always frigging hurts with you, you snowflake.&#8221; &#8212; photo via WP<\/p><\/div>\n<p>At some point, you have to stop performing CPR and just call it.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder if we&#8217;re at that point.\u00a0 Today we learned that #2 starter\u00a0<strong>Stephen<\/strong> &#8220;the Orchid&#8221;\u00a0<strong>Strasburg<\/strong> is heading back to the D\/L for what will be his 50th* career D\/L trip (* estimated).\u00a0 I just don&#8217;t see how this team goes on the run it needs without one of its best starters.<\/p>\n<p>Even given\u00a0<strong>Tanner Roark<\/strong>&#8216;s wonderful start yesterday, the team (as of this writing) sits at 50-51.\u00a0 They&#8217;re 7 games out of the Division lead, 5.5 games out of the WC, and face a massive uphill climb to make the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>To get to 90 wins (often regarded in the 2-wild card system as the minimum you&#8217;ll need) the team needs to go 40-21 in its remaining games.\u00a0 That&#8217;s a .622 W\/L percentage.\u00a0 I suppose they could go on a 20-7 rampage like they did in May and make it up&#8230; but it seems less likely the longer this season goes along.<\/p>\n<p>Of their remaining 61 games&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>7 against Atlanta<\/li>\n<li>9 against Philly<\/li>\n<li>7 against the Cubs<\/li>\n<li>7 against the Cardinals<\/li>\n<li>3 more against Milwaukee<\/li>\n<li>3 in Colorado to end the season<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So that&#8217;s 36 of the remaining 61 games against teams that I think are patently better than us.\u00a0 And we&#8217;ll have to play .622 ball against them AND hold serve against the scrubs we&#8217;re playing too.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and now we&#8217;re doing it with, by my count, our #9 starter in\u00a0<strong>Tommy Milone<\/strong> called up.\u00a0 <strong>Scherzer, Strasburg, Gio, Roark, Hellickson, Fedde, JRodriguez, Voth<\/strong> ahead of him in the pecking order.\u00a0 I&#8217;m sure things will go great; lest you forget, Milone&#8217;s ERA in 2017 was 8.56 in 27 innings.\u00a0 Actually, with an ERA like that, he&#8217;ll fit right into this team.<\/p>\n<p>So yes, the Braves have scuffled recently and the Phillies are treading water.\u00a0 And yes our Pythag record shows we&#8217;re better than 50-51.\u00a0\u00a0All fair points.\u00a0 But we&#8217;re nearly to August and are still playing .500 ball, with no signs of getting better.<\/p>\n<p>And, as become apparent this week, thanks to the Nats doing such a bang-up job with payroll management this year, they snuck over the luxury tax threshold so the comp pick they&#8217;ll get for a once-in-a-generation player leaving next year via FA in\u00a0<strong>Bryce Harper<\/strong> will be &#8230; voila!\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/mlb\/2017\/11\/07\/mlb-free-agency-compensation-rules-draft-picks-qualifying-offer\">A\u00a0supplemental 4th rounder<\/a>??\u00a0 Are you frigging kidding me?\u00a0 That&#8217;s all we&#8217;ll get by offering him a Qualifying Offer??\u00a0 Wow, that\u00a0<strong>Matt Wieters<\/strong> contract just keeps looking better and better doesn&#8217;t it?\u00a0 I sure hope\u00a0<strong>Scott Boras<\/strong> enjoys the boat he bought off of that commission that he screwed the Nats out of.\u00a0 Can someone change the Lerner&#8217;s cell phone number so Boras can&#8217;t go over\u00a0<strong>Mike Rizzo<\/strong>&#8216;s head to make bad deals any more?<\/p>\n<p>Nats should trade Harper and hope to get a MLB top 100 pick for the rental.\u00a0 They should also shop around basically every other guy set to leave in FA.\u00a0 That means <strong>Murphy, Gio, Madsen, Wieters, Kelley,<\/strong> heck lets through in <strong>Benoit<\/strong> and <strong>Reynolds<\/strong> and <strong>Adams<\/strong> and all the one-year MLFAs we&#8217;ve got too.\u00a0 \u00a0Its bargain basement shopping time in DC.\u00a0 First come, first served.<\/p>\n<p>Will this leadership team admit defeat and make these trades?\u00a0 Probably not.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll probably do something dumb in the next few days like trade a top prospect for 2 months of a dead-arm starter or a catcher we can just go buy next off-season with the $80M of saved payroll.\u00a0 \u00a0They&#8217;ll leverage the farm system yet again so they can be an 86 win team instead of an 81 win team.<\/p>\n<p>But I could be wrong.\u00a0 We&#8217;ll see what happens.<\/p>\n<p>ps: I managed to write this whole post without mentioning the manager.\u00a0 My <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=14509\">stance is as clear now<\/a> as it was the day they let\u00a0<strong>Dusty Baker<\/strong> go, and nothing that\u00a0<strong>Dave Martinez<\/strong> has done has made me think that he was in any way a better choice to manage this team and this set of players in the year 2018.\u00a0 Any argument about the manager is tough to quantify &#8230; i prefer arguments I can back up with stats frankly, so my opinion on his handling of veterans, of\u00a0<strong>Ryan Zimmerman<\/strong>, of the bullpen, of baserunning strategy, of lineup-construction, and of his seeming inability to stand up to the veterans on this team will stay with me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At some point, you have to stop performing CPR and just call it. I wonder if we&#8217;re at that point.\u00a0 Today we learned that #2 starter\u00a0Stephen &#8220;the Orchid&#8221;\u00a0Strasburg is heading back to the D\/L for what will be his 50th* career D\/L trip (* estimated).\u00a0 I just don&#8217;t see how this team goes on the [&hellip;]<\/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":[1815,164,1859,2425,385,1876,239,2749,2772,3946,2094,3945,1037,129,180,3277,38,77,34],"class_list":["post-15333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-austin-voth","tag-bryce-harper","tag-daniel-murphy","tag-erick-fedde","tag-gio-gonzalez","tag-jefry-rodriguez","tag-jeremy-hellickson","tag-joaquin-benoit","tag-matt-adams","tag-matt-reynolds","tag-matt-wieters","tag-matt-witers","tag-max-scherzer","tag-mike-rizzo","tag-scott-boras","tag-shawn-kelley","tag-stephen-strasburg","tag-tanner-roark","tag-tommy-milone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15333","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=15333"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15340,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15333\/revisions\/15340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}