{"id":17026,"date":"2021-04-21T11:23:35","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T15:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=17026"},"modified":"2021-04-21T11:25:22","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T15:25:22","slug":"nats-early-season-roster-trends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=17026","title":{"rendered":"Nats Early Season Roster Trends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"260\" height=\"197\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/strasburg-elbow-injury-260x197.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-272\"\/><figcaption>Well, at least it wasn&#8217;t an elbow this time.  Photo LarryBrownSports.com<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>As of 4\/21\/21, the Nats have already used 19 position players (Every single position player on the 40-man save <strong>Yasel Antuna<\/strong>, plus since-DFA&#8217;d <strong>Jonathan Lucroy<\/strong> and non-roster impacting call-up <strong>Cody Wilson<\/strong>).  They&#8217;ve already used 16 pitchers (of 22 on the 40-man).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks to the Covid scare ahead of opening day plus a spate of injuries they&#8217;ve already faced, no less than 14 players from their 26-man roster have already been on the DL this year.  14!  Plus some unknown\/unreported number of players from the alt site who may or may not have also been infected.  We have no earthly idea what&#8217;s going on with <strong>Romero <\/strong>(zero IP in spring training, which usually implies either an injury or a disciplinary problem), and the team curiously called up <strong>Paolo Espino<\/strong> instead of any from 5 alternative starters sitting in Fredericksburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amazingly &#8230; throughout all of this perhaps the team&#8217;s MOST fragile player (<strong>Ryan Zimmerman<\/strong>) has stayed healthy and productive.  Who would have guessed!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 2021 Nats were built using older players that we were hoping for bounce back seasons from.  The team needed its big three starters (who combine to earn $93.9M of their $183M in payroll) to throw 6-7 innings of competent innings nearly every time out in order to have any chance of being competitive.  Instead we&#8217;ve gotten up-and-down starts from <strong>Corbin <\/strong>and the DL list for <strong>Strasburg<\/strong>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The trend so far is &#8230; not good.  If the team is going to play whack-a-mole with injuries all year, filling in with a thinned 40-man roster, we&#8217;re going to end up with a similar record that we had last year.  Its early right now, and we had to play divisional rivals short handed early, but the prognosis is not good right now.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We need to catch some breaks.  <strong>Soto <\/strong>going on the DL is NOT such a break.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As of 4\/21\/21, the Nats have already used 19 position players (Every single position player on the 40-man save Yasel Antuna, plus since-DFA&#8217;d Jonathan Lucroy and non-roster impacting call-up Cody Wilson). They&#8217;ve already used 16 pitchers (of 22 on the 40-man). Thanks to the Covid scare ahead of opening day plus a spate of injuries [&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":[3881,2652,3314,2658,1855,36,3565,38,3265],"class_list":["post-17026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-cody-wilson","tag-jonathan-lucroy","tag-juan-soto","tag-paolo-espino","tag-patrick-corbin","tag-ryan-zimmerman","tag-seth-romero","tag-stephen-strasburg","tag-yasel-antuna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17026","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=17026"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17029,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17026\/revisions\/17029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}