{"id":16580,"date":"2020-06-02T10:31:34","date_gmt":"2020-06-02T14:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16580"},"modified":"2020-06-04T11:21:15","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T15:21:15","slug":"2020-nats-minor-leaguer-purge-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16580","title":{"rendered":"2020 Nats Minor Leaguer purge announced"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to\u00a0<strong>Luke Erickson<\/strong>, who culled through\u00a0<strong>Brittany Ghiroli<\/strong>s Athletic article and Baseball America minor league transaction details to list out the 39 players who got cut from the various Nats minor league affiliates on 5\/31\/20.<\/p>\n<p>Luke&#8217;s post at Nats Prospects here:\u00a0https:\/\/nationalsprospects.com\/2020\/06\/nats-backtrack-from-minors-pay-cut-releases-revealed\/ , The Athletic&#8217;s link here:\u00a0https:\/\/theathletic.com\/1847453\/2020\/06\/01\/nationals-make-cuts-drop-minor-league-pay\/ and BA&#8217;s here:\u00a0https:\/\/www.baseballamerica.com\/stories\/milb-releases-we-learned-about-today<\/p>\n<p>With this posting, we have completely updated both the major links for all these releases:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Big Board:\u00a0https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/186nm-v5F-zTCoR2Be7TFYM3e2cZ-gYi2WVqJLEkHdmc<\/li>\n<li>Draft Tracker:\u00a0https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/1Qd5DS9GlmkQOEh_zGhOvlhHK0EegqY1uJB4mLGmRBaY<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As always, if you notice an error\/omission on these two resources let me know.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to go through some notable releases, perhaps identify some surprises and speculate on the obvious ramifications going forward.<\/p>\n<p>Notable\/Surprise releases for me:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Luis Sardinas<\/strong>: mlb-experienced middle infielder who was relatively successful last year between AA and AAA; marginally surprised they cut him.\u00a0 But, they did NOT cut\u00a0<strong>Emilio Bonifacio<\/strong> so perhaps that&#8217;s the decision\/either or player.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Drew Ward<\/strong>: the highest draft pedigree of any player released, this 3rd rounder put 7 years into the org, and wasn&#8217;t too bad in AAA last year.\u00a0 He&#8217;s only 25; its not like he&#8217;s in his upper 20s.\u00a0 I think he gets another chance somewhere, perhaps with us, perhaps elsewhere.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tyler Mapes<\/strong>; one of my favorite Nats draft stories of all time.\u00a0 30th rounder, cruised through the minors and was the best starter on our 2016 AA team.\u00a0 What a steal.\u00a0 But then he got hurt, missed 2017, and couldn&#8217;t regain his old AA glory.\u00a0 Now he&#8217;s too old to keep around.\u00a0 He&#8217;s a perfect example of a guy who perhaps gets one more shot with someone&#8217;s AAA team in 2020, but the loss of the season cuts his career short.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Bobby Milaki<\/strong>: drafted as a favor to a staff member, he was effective in the lower levels.\u00a0 Why cut him now?\u00a0 Why not see what he can do in low-A as a 25yr old?\u00a0 Don&#8217;t get this release.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jorge Pantoja<\/strong>: I never understood the team&#8217;s usage of Pantoja.\u00a0 Four years straight he was in High-A; in 2019 he was actually good.\u00a0 So why cut him now?\u00a0 Why not after 2016 season when he posted a 6 ERA in Potomac?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hayden Howard<\/strong>; two straight solid seasons in high-A; why cut him now?\u00a0 Why not see what he can do in AA?\u00a0 Oh yeah that&#8217;s right; there won&#8217;t be a AA this year.\u00a0 He&#8217;s a great example of a player who was released for no other good reason.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ryan Williamson<\/strong>: man the team was patient with this guy; drafted in 2016, did not appear professionally for another two seasons.\u00a0 Put up acceptable numbers in low-A in 2019, but was way too old for hte level and I guess his time was up.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Derek Self<\/strong>: cut loose after 8 full seasons in our system.\u00a0 Drafted in 2012, re-signed as\u00a0 MLFA, a long serving org arm.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Stating the obvious.<\/p>\n<p>Clearly the team is anticipating the loss of two full teams going forward.\u00a0 Covid19 couldn&#8217;t have come at a better time in this respect for MLB&#8217;s wishes to gut the minor leagues.\u00a0 We cut 40 players, add just 5 in the draft and voila; you have most of the legwork done to cut lower minor league levels.\u00a0 Next spring training you have tryouts for the lowest full season team and we&#8217;ll see another huge round of cuts.<\/p>\n<p>And then there&#8217;s this: the cost of keeping a player is $400\/week for the rest of the season versus cutting them right now, so we&#8217;re not talking about a ton of money to keep them under contract.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>Last thing: fun facts.\u00a0 After cleaning up\/updating the draft tracker for all these releases, here&#8217;s some useless information.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Ryan Zimmerman\u00a0<\/strong>remains the longest serving player by tenure from draft day obviously, being the first player drafted by the team in 2005.<\/li>\n<li>Next up?\u00a0\u00a0<strong>Michael Taylor<\/strong> and\u00a0<strong>Stephen Strasburg<\/strong>, 2009 drafteees.\u00a0\u00a0<strong>Aaron Barrett<\/strong> did not get cut with this purge; he&#8217;s a 2010 drafteee.<\/li>\n<li>Oldest serving non-40 man player?\u00a0\u00a0<strong>Jakson Reetz<\/strong>, 2014 3rd rounder.\u00a0 There&#8217;s now basically nobody left from the 2013, 2012, 2011 drafts on the team.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to\u00a0Luke Erickson, who culled through\u00a0Brittany Ghirolis Athletic article and Baseball America minor league transaction details to list out the 39 players who got cut from the various Nats minor league affiliates on 5\/31\/20. Luke&#8217;s post at Nats Prospects here:\u00a0https:\/\/nationalsprospects.com\/2020\/06\/nats-backtrack-from-minors-pay-cut-releases-revealed\/ , The Athletic&#8217;s link here:\u00a0https:\/\/theathletic.com\/1847453\/2020\/06\/01\/nationals-make-cuts-drop-minor-league-pay\/ and BA&#8217;s here:\u00a0https:\/\/www.baseballamerica.com\/stories\/milb-releases-we-learned-about-today With this posting, we have completely updated [&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":[916,4359,4317,938,1813,3215,2466,2885,4358,850,708,3255,36,38,2936],"class_list":["post-16580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-aaron-barrett","tag-bobby-milaki","tag-brittany-ghiroli","tag-derek-self","tag-drew-ward","tag-hayden-howard","tag-jakson-reetz","tag-jorge-pantoja","tag-luis-sardinas","tag-luke-erickson","tag-michael-taylor","tag-ryan-williamson","tag-ryan-zimmerman","tag-stephen-strasburg","tag-tyler-mapes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16580","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=16580"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16586,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16580\/revisions\/16586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}