{"id":17800,"date":"2022-08-08T16:04:46","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T20:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=17800"},"modified":"2022-08-08T16:04:46","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T20:04:46","slug":"what-if-theyd-kept-the-band-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=17800","title":{"rendered":"What if they&#8217;d kept the Band together?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It occurred to me, now that the Nats have sold off all their pieces and continued the dismantling of their 2019 championship team &#8230; wow, we&#8217;ve parted ways with a lot of very expensive players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What would our team look like (in terms of payroll and lineup) had we kept all our big-time FAs over the past few years?  Here&#8217;s a fun exercise, using 2022&#8217;s salaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>C: <strong>Yan Gomes<\/strong>: $6M, flipped with Harrison for Millas\/Shuman\/Gausch in the 2021 purge<\/li><li>1B: <strong>Josh Bell<\/strong>: $10M.  Traded to SD with Soto in the 2022 purge for 6 player.<\/li><li>2B: <strong>Josh Harrison<\/strong>: $5.5M.  Traded away to Oakland with Gomes for Millas\/Shuman\/Gausch in the 2021 purge<\/li><li>SS: <strong>Trea Turner<\/strong>: $21M.  Traded to LAD with Scherzer in 2021&#8217;s big trade to get Grey\/Ruiz and assets<\/li><li>3B: <strong>Anthony Rendon<\/strong>: $36M.  Let walk as a FA, received a 2nd round supplementary pick that turned into <strong>Samuel Infante<\/strong>.<\/li><li>LF: <strong>Juan Soto<\/strong>, $17.1M.  Traded to SD with Bell<\/li><li>CF: <strong>Victor Robles<\/strong>: $1.65M.  He has remained our starting CF for four straight seasons now despite a carrer OPS+ figure of just 83.<\/li><li>RF: <strong>Bryce Harper<\/strong>: $26M.  Let walk as a FA, received a 4th round supplementary pick that was lost to the Corbin signing.  <\/li><li>DH: <strong>Kyle Schwarber<\/strong>; $19M.  Traded to Boston in 2021 for <strong>Aldo Ramirez<\/strong>.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Rotation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>SP: <strong>Max Scherzer<\/strong>: $43M.  Traded to LAD with Turner in 2021<\/li><li>SP: <strong>Patrick Corbin<\/strong>: $23M.  Still here, posting a 7 ERA this season.<\/li><li>SP: <strong>Stephen Strasburg<\/strong>, $35M.  Still here, might have a career-ending injury.<\/li><li>SP: <strong>Sanchez, Fedde, Ross <\/strong>all still here, a combined $6M or so.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The Bullpen is fungible, so we&#8217;ll just skip it from a salary and focus on the above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Total payroll for this set of players and starters?   $251M.   For 14 players, no backups, no bullpen and no 40-man.  Probably estimate $8M for  your backups, $15M for your bullpen, $3M for the rest of your 40-man, and $16M for benefits and that&#8217;s a payroll figure of $293M.  $60M more than the salary cap threshold, and still not as much as the Los Angeles Dodgers are spending this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Would we be a winning team with this lineup?  Well, we&#8217;d certainly still have a starting pitching problem, since $58M is going to two players who are actively hurting the club (Corbin has a -3.4 WAR this season!).  But the lineup would be a monster.  How&#8217;s this for a lineup: Turner, Soto, Harper, Schwarber, Rendon, Bell, Harrison, Gomes and Robles.  Phew.  Good luck getting through that lineup 4 times a night without giving up some runs.  Of course, some of these guys are hurt in 2022, so this wouldn&#8217;t actually be our lineup .. but hey, this is a fantasy post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just a fun thought exercise.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It occurred to me, now that the Nats have sold off all their pieces and continued the dismantling of their 2019 championship team &#8230; wow, we&#8217;ve parted ways with a lot of very expensive players. What would our team look like (in terms of payroll and lineup) had we kept all our big-time FAs over [&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":[],"class_list":["post-17800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17800","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=17800"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17804,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17800\/revisions\/17804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}