{"id":2646,"date":"2011-09-30T09:45:53","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T13:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=2646"},"modified":"2011-09-30T09:48:51","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T13:48:51","slug":"my-dc-ibwa-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=2646","title":{"rendered":"My DC-IBWA Ballot&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nationals News Network blogger Dave Nichols runs a few polls beginning and end of season, hitting up all the Nats bloggers out there for opinions.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s the <a href=\"http:\/\/natsnewsnetwork.blogspot.com\/2011\/09\/dc-ibwa-announces-2011-player.html\">2011 post-season results<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how I answered his questions, with some thoughts added in.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Nats MVP<\/strong>: Morse, Clippard and Zimmerman.\u00a0 For me clearly Morse was this team&#8217;s most valuable player this year, going from 4th outfielder to 30 homer clean up hitter in short order.\u00a0 Clippard was your all-star but Morse was the more deserving candidate.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Starter of the Year<\/strong>: Zimmermann, Lannan, Marquis.\u00a0 I think Zimmermann&#8217;s come-back was fantastic, and he was clearly your best arm in the rotation (at least until September).\u00a0 Lannan continued his boring-if-effective career, and everyone seems to forget that Marquis was pretty good the first couple of months.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Reliever of the Year<\/strong>: Clippard, Storen, Coffey (though it pained me to say it).\u00a0 Finding the first 2 was easy; finding a third reliever candidate who wasn&#8217;t mostly awful this season was really tough.\u00a0 Burnett struggled mightily but turned it around.\u00a0 Henry Rodriguez has been lights out in September, but September only.\u00a0 Slaten was awful all year.\u00a0 Broderick and Gaudin couldn&#8217;t exit quickly enough.\u00a0 Perhaps Mattheus was more deserving of the year-long award.<\/li>\n<li><strong>All around Hitter of the year<\/strong>: Zimmerman, Morse, Hairston.\u00a0 Probably could have switched the first two here as well, based on Morse&#8217;s excellent BA with power.\u00a0 Hairston&#8217;s contributions over the course of the season were pretty understated, but he was a solid member of this team.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Slugger of the year<\/strong>: Morse, Espinosa, Nix.\u00a0 Morse is obvious.\u00a0 Espinosa showed some pretty rare power for a 2nd baseman.\u00a0 And Nix&#8217;s homer\/ab ratio puts him on nearly a 30-homer pace for a full season.\u00a0 Can&#8217;t beat that.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Defensive player of the year<\/strong>: Zimmerman, Espinosa, (amazingly) Desmond: pretty obvious candidates.\u00a0 However <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fangraphs.com\/winss.aspx?team=Nationals&amp;pos=all&amp;stats=fld&amp;qual=0&amp;type=1&amp;season=2011&amp;month=0&amp;season1=2011\">UZR\/150<\/a> was not kind to this team generally this year. \u00a0 Espinosa is a plus defender at 2nd and Desmond made huge strides.\u00a0 Probably in retrospect should have included Ankiel, who has the best UZR of any near-regular in the lineup.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Comeback player of the year<\/strong>: Zimmermann, Wang, Flores: 3 pretty obvious candidates.\u00a0 We&#8217;ll save Strasburg for the 2012 version.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Humanitarian of the year<\/strong>: Zimmerman, Desmond, Storen.\u00a0 I&#8217;m only even aware of Zimmerman as someone who has a charity or a foundation.\u00a0 Desmond was the team&#8217;s Clemente nominee, so he must be doing something right.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Lastly:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Minor League player of the year<\/strong>: Peacock, Lombardozzi, Moore.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong> <\/strong>The phrasing of this question threw me off.\u00a0 The minor league \u201cplayer of the year\u201d is DIFFERENT from \u201cplayer most destined for big league success,&#8221; which was the explanatory text Nichols put into the survey.\u00a0 Clearly Peacock and Lombardozzi were our minor league players of the year and were so awarded by the team, but I\u2019m not sure either is really a top-ceiling MLB prospect.\u00a0 \u00a0Our three best prospects most destined for success in the majors (&lt;2011 draft version) are probably Harper, Cole, and either Solis or Ray. \u00a0Throw in the 2011 draft and that list probably becomes Rendon, Harper, Purke.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Additional Questions<\/strong>: here&#8217;s a few add-on survey questions.<\/p>\n<p>1. Players we&#8217;re parting ways with after 2011: Livan, Coffey, Balester, Slaten,     Pudge, Cora, Gomes, Elvin Ramirez.\u00a0 This implies we&#8217;re going to keep Gorzelanny, Wang, Bixler, Nix, Ankiel and Bernadina.\u00a0 I&#8217;m guessing Bernadina passes through waivers and stays.\u00a0 Gorzelanny becomes a long reliever.\u00a0 Wang resigns, Nix stays on as the 4th outfielder and Ankiel sticks in CF.<br \/>\n2. Does Zimmerman sign an extension this coming off season?\u00a0 No; he&#8217;ll sign it AFTER the 2012 season.<br \/>\n3. Biggest Surprise: Morse clearly.<br \/>\n4. Biggest Disappointment: LaRoche.\u00a0 Maya 2nd.\u00a0 Lots of people will say Werth, but in the end we all kinda knew the contract was a mistake and he&#8217;s struggle to live up to it.\u00a0 LaRoche was supposed to at least contribute, and he did nearly none of that.<br \/>\n5. Favorite pro beat writer: Zuckerman<br \/>\n6. Favorite Nats blogger: Love Sue Dinem&#8217;s work; my blog would be twice as hard without     it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nationals News Network blogger Dave Nichols runs a few polls beginning and end of season, hitting up all the Nats bloggers out there for opinions.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s the 2011 post-season results. Here&#8217;s how I answered his questions, with some thoughts added in. Nats MVP: Morse, Clippard and Zimmerman.\u00a0 For me clearly Morse was this team&#8217;s most [&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":[17,185,35,232,164,233,37,135,80,52,114,42,234,112,39,43,177,166,136,179,18,86,36,19,38,142,172,128,235],"class_list":["post-2646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-aj-cole","tag-anthony-rendon","tag-brad-peacock","tag-brian-broderick","tag-bryce-harper","tag-chad-gaudin","tag-chien-ming-wang","tag-danny-espinosa","tag-doug-slaten","tag-drew-storen","tag-ian-desmond","tag-jason-marquis","tag-jerry-hairston","tag-jesus-flores","tag-john-lannan","tag-jordan-zimmermann","tag-laynce-nix","tag-matthew-purke","tag-michael-morse","tag-rick-ankiel","tag-robbie-ray","tag-ryan-mattheus","tag-ryan-zimmerman","tag-sammy-solis","tag-stephen-strasburg","tag-steve-lombardozzi","tag-todd-coffey","tag-tyler-clippard","tag-tyler-moore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646","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=2646"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2651,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646\/revisions\/2651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}