{"id":15547,"date":"2018-12-05T11:38:37","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T16:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=15547"},"modified":"2018-12-05T13:40:35","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T18:40:35","slug":"patrick-corbin-thats-one-way-to-go-to-address-rotation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=15547","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Corbin; that&#8217;s one way to go to address the 2019 Rotation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_15549\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/CorbinPatrick-via-gettyimages.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15549\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15549\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-15549\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/CorbinPatrick-via-gettyimages-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"Nats make as big of a splash in FA as they can. Photo via getty images\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/CorbinPatrick-via-gettyimages-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/CorbinPatrick-via-gettyimages-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/CorbinPatrick-via-gettyimages.jpg 840w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-15549\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nats make as big of a splash in FA as they can. Photo via getty images<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Was walking into dinner last night and happened to glance at RSS sports feed &#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/news\/patrick-corbin-signs-with-nationals\/c-301455798\">and saw this shocker<\/a>:\u00a0<strong>Patrick Corbin<\/strong> signs with the Nats.\u00a0 6yrs\/$140M.<\/p>\n<p>And my first reaction was this: wow, the Nats just beat out the frigging New York Yankees for a player.\u00a0 In the FA market, straight up.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 Reports from earlier in the day had indicated Corbin was down to just the Yanks and the Nats and I figured, &#8220;well, he&#8217;s on record saying he has\u00a0dreamed about playing in New York, oh well.&#8221;\u00a0 Then a few hours later he&#8217;s wearing a Washington hat.<\/p>\n<p>I have a few immediate thoughts on this.\u00a0 Negative and positive.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Its not my money, but $23M\/year AAV does seem like a lot for a guy who posted a 5.15 ERA just two years ago.<\/li>\n<li>Its also a ton of money to commit to a player who really has only performed like a real Ace worthy of this level of financial commitment for\u00a0one year.<\/li>\n<li>That being said, he&#8217;s in-arguably the best pitcher on the FA market and the Nats got him.\u00a0 Before the winter meetings even.<\/li>\n<li>He&#8217;s a lefty too, nicely replacing the near replacement-level we got out of\u00a0<strong>Gio Gonzalez<\/strong> this past year.<\/li>\n<li>I daresay he might now be the best 3rd starter in the majors.\u00a0 \u00a0Houston&#8217;s rotation is half out the door in FA, Cleveland&#8217;s rotation is in the process of getting dismantled this off-season.<\/li>\n<li>Its worth mentioning that Corbin has been pitching in one of the better hitter&#8217;s park in the majors &#8230; and probably will benefit and get a bump in numbers by moving to the NL East and moving to a more neutral park in Nationals park.<\/li>\n<li>We get his age 29-34 seasons.\u00a0 That&#8217;s not too bad honestly, given what we know about player decline.\u00a0 He&#8217;s got less than 1,000 MLB innings on his arm, which is not a ton by age 28.\u00a0 By way of comparison,\u00a0<strong>Max Scherzer<\/strong> had 1,017 MLB innings through his own age 28 season.<\/li>\n<li>Corbin is also the kind of guy who seems like he&#8217;d age gracefully, in a similar fashion to a guy like\u00a0<strong>Tom Glavine<\/strong>.\u00a0 He doesn&#8217;t depend on a ton of velocity (vFA in 2018 of 91.3).\u00a0 Something obviously clicked with him in 2018 because his K rate skyrocketed, his walk rate fell, the value of his slider exploded, and he seemed to add a curve to his repertoire.\u00a0 He&#8217;s already had his Tommy John, so that&#8217;s nice that he&#8217;s gotten that out of the way.<\/li>\n<li>Is this yet another Rizzo-to-Arizona connection?\u00a0 \u00a0Maybe not: he was drafted in 2009 by the Angels, traded to Arizona in 2010 by which time Rizzo was in Washington.\u00a0 Hopefully we&#8217;re now completely out of that cynical view of player acquisition from Rizzo&#8217;s background.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Speaking of<strong>, Mike Rizzo<\/strong> is being incredibly aggressive this off-season.\u00a0 For all the concerns we may have had about\u00a0<strong>Bryce Harper<\/strong>&#8216;s signing possibly gumming up the works &#8230; this team is moving.\u00a0 \u00a0We had three-to-four major issues this off-season:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Catcher; he&#8217;s signed two guys, including the 2018 AL All-star<\/li>\n<li>Starters: he&#8217;s signed the best available hurler.<\/li>\n<li>2B: nothing yet &#8230; but this was always going to be the easiest position to fill in FA thanks to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2019-mlb-free-agent-tracker\/positions-3__status-0\">glut of available players<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Relievers: he&#8217;s traded for a solid middle-relief RHP and has signed a high-upside former dominant closer to a reasonable contract.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Other information about this transaction that may have other implications:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Nats roster now at 38\/40.\u00a0 Still room on the broom.<\/li>\n<li>Payroll implications: before this move I had the team with $43.8M available under the luxury cap.\u00a0 \u00a0This moves cuts them to about $20.5M under the cap.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve read stuff in the press saying the team wants to stay a bit under the cap to allow for mid-season upgrades &#8230; so maybe we&#8217;ll see another $10-$15M in spending.\u00a0 That should be enough to buy what they still need:\n<ul>\n<li>5th starter reclamation projects<\/li>\n<li>starting 2B (<strong>Marwin Gonzalez<\/strong>, <strong>Lowrie, LeMahieu, Dozier, Kinsler, Phillips, Walker<\/strong> &#8230; <strong>Daniel Murphy<\/strong>?).\u00a0 Lots of options, not all of which will cost a lot<\/li>\n<li>lefty bench bat (<strong>Justin Bour<\/strong>?\u00a0 just got non-tendered, is from the area, would fit in perfectly)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>This move will shred the 2019 draft for this team, costing them\u00a0their second- and fifth-highest picks (as well as $1 million in international bonus pool money).\u00a0 Poor cap management comes back to bite them.\u00a0 Definitely an &#8220;all-in move&#8221; throwing draft caution to the wind.\u00a0 They better really hit on that 4th round comp pick \ud83d\ude42 (update: well technically if Harper leaves, then that 4th round comp pick would be the 5th highest pick &#8230; so it&#8217;d instantly disappear like it never got awarded.\u00a0 Just to clarify).<\/li>\n<li>Rotation now projected to be Scherzer, Strasburg, Corbin, Ross and Roark.\u00a0 All 5 with guaranteed deals, four of them with 8-figure deals likely for 2019.\u00a0 No room for\u00a0<strong>Erick Fedde<\/strong> here, despite his Winterfest statements.\u00a0 That&#8217;s got to be a tough nut to swallow for him, even given the fact that he hasn&#8217;t really earned it.\u00a0 But, as we all know teams end up giving starts to 8-9 guys generally, and he&#8217;s first in line right now, so he still has hope.\u00a0 But our SP depth is ugly: Fedde, Voth, McGowin, fresh-from-the-Mexican-league\u00a0<strong>Henderson Alvarez<\/strong>, and then whatever MLFA reclamation project we can find in the\u00a0<strong>Jeremy Hellickson<\/strong> ilk.\u00a0 I do think this signing makes it a lot tougher for the Nats to find this role since they really can&#8217;t promise that player a non-injury shot at a 5th starter 25-man role.\u00a0 So we&#8217;ll be looking at players who will be willing from the go to accept an AAA assignment &#8230; and one in Fresno to boot.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Any other thoughts?\u00a0 Is this the move that pushes the team back to the top of the NL East and really makes them a contender in 2019?<\/p>\n<p>My official take: the Nats bought the best arm they could.\u00a0 This is better than the alternatives they faced this off-season.\u00a0 It only cost them money, not more prospects, and in that respect its a complete win.\u00a0 They&#8217;re using the payroll that they earned by virtue of 2018 expiring contracts well.<\/p>\n<p>Does this move preclude them now from signing Harper?\u00a0 Well, unless the team plans on trading away Scherzer &#8230; it should.\u00a0 \u00a0Or if the\u00a0<strong>Lerners<\/strong> decide to go Boston-style and really blow out payroll and say &#8220;F it completely,&#8221; then they still can (and always could).\u00a0 But if i&#8217;m\u00a0<strong>Scott Boras<\/strong> i&#8217;m kinda shaking in my boots today, knowing that the likelihood of Harper&#8217;s baseline pillow 10yr\/$300M deal from this team is likely gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Was walking into dinner last night and happened to glance at RSS sports feed &#8230; and saw this shocker:\u00a0Patrick Corbin signs with the Nats.\u00a0 6yrs\/$140M. And my first reaction was this: wow, the Nats just beat out the frigging New York Yankees for a player.\u00a0 In the FA market, straight up.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 Reports from earlier [&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":[398,1942,164,1859,2662,385,794,1826,3982,1037,129,1855,180,366,169],"class_list":["post-15547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-brandon-phillips","tag-brian-dozier","tag-bryce-harper","tag-daniel-murphy","tag-dj-lemahieu","tag-gio-gonzalez","tag-ian-kinsler","tag-jed-lowrie","tag-marwin-gonzalez","tag-max-scherzer","tag-mike-rizzo","tag-patrick-corbin","tag-scott-boras","tag-ted-lerner","tag-tom-glavine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15547","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=15547"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15556,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15547\/revisions\/15556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}