{"id":16872,"date":"2021-01-19T09:23:01","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T14:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16872"},"modified":"2021-01-19T10:51:43","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T15:51:43","slug":"rizzo-gets-his-4th-starter-in-lester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16872","title":{"rendered":"Rizzo gets his 4th starter in Lester"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/LesterJon-cubs-via-grantland-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13011\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/LesterJon-cubs-via-grantland-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/LesterJon-cubs-via-grantland-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/LesterJon-cubs-via-grantland-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/LesterJon-cubs-via-grantland.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption>Lester to feature the curly W in 2021.  photo via Grantland<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>One of our most obvious roster gaps heading into the off-season was a veteran 4th starter, and today <strong>Mike Rizzo<\/strong> got his man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jon Lester<\/strong>.  3-time World Series winner, cancer survivor, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.winespectator.com\/articles\/red-sox-pitchers-play-ball-with-charity-wines-44711\">noted wine aficionado<\/a>, signs a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2021\/01\/nationals-jon-lester-in-talks.html\">one-year $5M deal<\/a> with the ubiquitous mutual option that is never mutually agreed to, to be our 4th starter for 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lester joins an esteemed list of &#8220;veteran 4th starters signed to pillow contracts&#8221; under the Rizzo regime.  To wit:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>2010: <strong>Jason Marquis<\/strong> (though to be fair he signed a 2 year deal to probably be more than our 4th starter).<\/li><li>2011: <strong>Chien-Ming Wang<\/strong><\/li><li>2012: <strong>Edwin Jackson<\/strong>, the first of the &#8220;real&#8221; 4th starter FA assassins<\/li><li>2013: <strong>Dan Haren<\/strong><\/li><li>2014: <strong>Doug Fister<\/strong><\/li><li>2018: <strong>Jeremy Hellickson<\/strong><\/li><li>2019: <strong>Anibel Sanchez<\/strong><\/li><li><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>To be fair here,  Fister was of course a trade acquisition, and was much more than a 4th starter, but his acquisition, plus Scherzer signing and the eventual rise of home grown products like <strong>Roark<\/strong> and <strong>Ross<\/strong> led to several years without a need to pursue the veteran 4th starter.  Not surprisingly, they made the playoffs 3 of 4 years in this timeframe &#8230; inexplicably missing the playoffs in 2015 in a season I hand squarely on the incompetence of  <strong>Matt Williams<\/strong>.  But I digress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clearly Rizzo&#8217;s strategy in building a rotation goes like this: splurge for the top of your rotation, sign a veteran for your 4th starter, let the kids compete for the 5th starter.  What I&#8217;d LIKE it to be is, grow a couple of stud starters, pair them with your $30M\/year guys, and dominate.   He&#8217;s had had a slew of misses in the 1st round in the last decade, gave up too early on others (ahem <strong>Giolito<\/strong>), and now seems to have put their eggs into the <strong>Cavalli\/Rutledge<\/strong> basket.  Lets hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway, back to this post.  What do I think of the Lester signing?  Well&#8230;. i think he&#8217;ll be a great clubhouse guy.  But i&#8217;m tempered on what I think he can provide on the field, unfortunately.  Lester went from being an #1\/#2 kinda guy to being a #4 starter right starting with the 2017 season.  He saw a sustained bump in his WHIP starting in 2017, which he somehow danced around in 2018 to put together a smoke-and-mirrors 18win season where his FIP was a full point higher than his ERA.  This run of luck came back to bite him in 2019, in the form of a .347 BABIP that ballooned his ERA to ugly territory.  2020 was a wash; he was bad across the board, which could be a pretty bad sign for 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now he&#8217;ll be in his age 37 season with a whole lotta mileage on his <a href=\"https:\/\/bleacherreport.com\/articles\/2626133-jon-lester-comments-on-bone-chip-in-throwing-elbow\">known torn UCL elbow. <\/a>  He&#8217;s also famous for his inability to keep runners on first base &#8230; which will put pressure on his catchers.  <strong>Gomes<\/strong> is pretty decent at caught stealing percentage (.305 pct in 2019, which was 6th or 7th or so of &#8220;regular&#8221; catchers in the league), but who knows about whatever backup we pick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do we think Lester is a bounce back candidate?  Can he flourish when he&#8217;s not &#8220;the man&#8221; in the rotation?  How much does he have left in the tank?  All interesting questions.  At the worst case its a very small price tag to take that gamble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Payroll implication; not a heck of a lot.  $5M doesn&#8217;t really change anything else the team might be doing, which makes this a positive.  I now have their projected 2021 payroll at $181M, leaving them a shade under $29M left to work with.  Notably, they have about $11.5M in deferred dollars this year, plus their &#8220;real&#8221; 2021 payroll (i.e. actual dollars heading out the door versus cap space dollar figure) is another $9.5M &#8230; so that&#8217;s $20M of money that the Lerners may be removing from consideration &#8230; which means they only want to spend about another $9m.  Maybe.  Just throwing that out there; there&#8217;s a real versus cap space payroll consideration here as the team starts to see a lot of its deferred dollar contracts catching up to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My conclusion; proceed with caution.  I would have liked to roll the dice with another candidate on the FA market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of our most obvious roster gaps heading into the off-season was a veteran 4th starter, and today Mike Rizzo got his man. Jon Lester. 3-time World Series winner, cancer survivor, noted wine aficionado, signs a one-year $5M deal with the ubiquitous mutual option that is never mutually agreed to, to be our 4th starter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[3948,4394,37,983,241,253,4181,42,239,2691,221,852,1314,129,77,2100],"class_list":["post-16872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","category-natsgeneral","tag-anibel-sanchez","tag-cade-cavalli","tag-chien-ming-wang","tag-dan-haren","tag-doug-fister","tag-edwin-jackson","tag-jackson-rutledge","tag-jason-marquis","tag-jeremy-hellickson","tag-joe-ross","tag-jon-lester","tag-lucas-giolito","tag-matt-williams","tag-mike-rizzo","tag-tanner-roark","tag-yan-gomes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16872","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=16872"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16879,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16872\/revisions\/16879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}