{"id":3890,"date":"2012-02-21T19:29:41","date_gmt":"2012-02-21T23:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=3890"},"modified":"2012-08-23T10:57:10","modified_gmt":"2012-08-23T14:57:10","slug":"is-there-any-spring-training-pitching-competition-for-the-nats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=3890","title":{"rendered":"Is there any Spring Training pitching competition for the Nats?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3893\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/gonzalezgio-122211-unknown-via-cbssports.com_.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3893\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3893\" title=\"109238919TH003_LOS_ANGELES_\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/gonzalezgio-122211-unknown-via-cbssports.com_-300x214.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"214\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/gonzalezgio-122211-unknown-via-cbssports.com_-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/gonzalezgio-122211-unknown-via-cbssports.com_.jpg 630w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3893\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Is it too early to guess who starts the Home Opener?  My guess is newly acquired Gonzalez.  Photo Thearon W. Henderson\/Getty Images via cbssports.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>We&#8217;re getting reports of players getting to Viera early, and we&#8217;ve had a slew of off-season moves.\u00a0 Beat reporters are starting to talk about the 25-man roster (here&#8217;s WT&#8217;s <strong>Amanda Comak<\/strong>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/blog\/nationals-watch\/2012\/feb\/18\/taking-one-last-crack-projecting-nationals-opening\/\">take<\/a>).\u00a0 The Nats pretty much took care of every off-season need the had:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Top-end Starting Pitcher: <strong>Gonzalez<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Backup Outfielder: <strong>Ankiel <\/strong>and <strong>Cameron<\/strong> (though, apparently Cameron is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.masnsports.com\/nationals_buzz\/2012\/02\/cameron-tells-nationals-hes-retiring.html\">retiring<\/a> instead of competing for a spot&#8230;)<\/li>\n<li>Lower-end Starting Pitchers: Re-signed <strong>Wang<\/strong>, signed <strong>Jackson<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Utility Infielders to replace Cora, Bixler, Hairston: signed <strong>DeRosa<\/strong>, claimed <strong>Rivera<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Bullpen arm depth (to replace Coffey, Kimball): signed <strong>Lidge,<\/strong> traded for <strong>Perry<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The notable exception to the off-season shopping list, of course, is a lack of a proven center fielder.\u00a0 Perhaps one could quibble that a shortstop should have been on that list; it seems the team is giving another year to the <strong>Ian Desmond<\/strong> experiment, hoping he builds on the strong end of 2011 (he hit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/split.cgi?id=desmoia01&amp;year=2011&amp;t=b\">.294 in Aug and Sep of 2011<\/a>).\u00a0 The backup infielders and backup outfielders listed here, to go along with a slew of minor league\/invite to  spring training signings, should be where most of the competition for  roster slots occurs.<\/p>\n<p>The big question for me is; Is there any real competition for pitching spots this spring?<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Starters<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>We all know the narrative; we now have 6 starters with multi-million dollar commitments for 5 spots, and someone has to give.\u00a0 The <strong>Edwin Jackson<\/strong> signing has pretty much made <strong>John Lannan<\/strong> the odd-man out of this rotation.\u00a0 <strong>Mike Rizzo<\/strong> likes power arms, and has gone to great lengths to acquire guys who throw more than 89-90 to replace what he inherited in 2009.\u00a0\u00a0 <strong>Wang <\/strong>and Jackson can&#8217;t be moved until June 15th without his consent by virtue of the FA signing rules (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/blogs\/article974706.ece\">as discussed in this article here<\/a>), <strong>Gonzalez<\/strong> just signed a long-term deal, and <strong>Strasburg\/Zimmerman <\/strong>are our future.\u00a0 To me, there&#8217;s no mystery who&#8217;s going to be in the rotation, and frankly articles that say there&#8217;s going to be a competition for the 5th starter between Wang, Lannan, <strong>Detwiler<\/strong> and <strong>Gorzelanny<\/strong> are not really paying attention to the contract realities of the situation.\u00a0 Barring injury, your opening day rotation will be (in this order):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Jackson and Wang.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Should someone go down with injury, Lannan steps in to take the 4th or 5th rotation spot (depending on whether <strong>Davey Johnson<\/strong> likes to mix up LHSP\/RHSP in any fashion).\u00a0 Otherwise, Lannan is trade-bait and should be moved during the spring.\u00a0 There are plenty of teams that could be trade partners if we wanted to focus on a center fielder (see this article I did in November talking about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=3123\">CF market for the whole of baseball<\/a> for some thoughts).\u00a0 Barring a trade, it seems inconceivable but Lannan does still have a minor league option left and could be sent down, but a $5M pitcher toiling in Syracuse (to go along with $2M bust <strong>Yuniesky Maya<\/strong>) could make the Nats AAA team the most expensive minor league rotation in the league.\u00a0 (We won&#8217;t say &#8220;most expensive ever,&#8221; since the Yankees kept <strong>Kei Igawa<\/strong> and his $46M commitment in the minors for most of his contract).<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Relievers<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>A recent post on <a href=\"http:\/\/nationalsprospects.com\/2012\/02\/another-confusing-post-about-options\/\">option status at Nationalsprospects.com<\/a> (the option status of every player is now kept on the <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheet\/ccc?key=0AmkEIm1TLiXQdHExYldZVUZJZk9uckFjeEVCSmR5Umc&amp;hl=en#gid=0\">Big Board<\/a>, which is good for me since I did this work last year and its a nightmare to keep track of), as well as a question asked of <strong>Bill Ladson<\/strong> leads to this conclusion: there literally is no question right now who your 7 bullpen members will be.\u00a0 <strong>Tyler Clippard, Sean Burnett, Henry Rodriguez, Tom Gorzelanny<\/strong> and <strong>Ross Detwiler<\/strong> ALL are out of options.\u00a0 <strong>Brad Lidge<\/strong> can refuse a demotion based on his service time and <strong>Drew Storen<\/strong> is your closer.\u00a0 There\u2019s your 2012 bullpen; not much room for anyone else.<\/p>\n<p>The only wiggle room may be with someone like Detwiler: he&#8217;s clearly a starter and seems set to be the first Spot starter to fill in for an injury (assuming we trade Lannan of course).\u00a0 Does the team keep him in the bullpen, where he basically fills the exact same role as Gorzelanny (ex-left handed starter long man\/spot starter in a pinch)?\u00a0 Or does the team cash him in to fill a hole?<\/p>\n<p>This configuration leaves newly acquired <strong>Ryan Perry<\/strong>, <strong>Ryan Mattheus<\/strong> and <strong>Atahualpa Severino<\/strong> in AAA.\u00a0 <strong>Cole Kimball<\/strong> starts on the 60-day DL (and, frankly, probably stays there; the odds of him coming back from that shoulder injury are low).\u00a0 Lastly <strong>Craig Stammen<\/strong> joins Maya in AAA as deep-need emergency starters.<\/p>\n<p>So, here&#8217;s your bullpen:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Closer: Storen<\/li>\n<li>Setup: Clippard<\/li>\n<li>7th inning guys: Lidge, Rodriguez<\/li>\n<li>Loogy: Burnett<\/li>\n<li>Long Men: Gorzelanny and Detwiler<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What&#8217;s nice about this bullpen is that, despite my naming players to roles, there&#8217;s lots of flexibility.\u00a0 Rodriguez on a good day has 8th or even 9th inning stuff.\u00a0 Lidge is a former closer and clearly can do the setup or closing roles.\u00a0 Clippard excels in the 8th inning role and doesn&#8217;t seem to aspire to replace Storen.\u00a0 Burnett is far more than just a one-out guy, but can serve that role in a pinch.\u00a0 Lastly both Gorzelanny and Detwiler can be anything from a one-out lefty to a 3-4 inning mop-up guy, given the day.\u00a0 I like the way this sets up and I think we go into 2012 with a better bullpen than in 2011 (when, if you recall, we wasted a spot on <strong>Brian Broderick<\/strong>, had the failure of <strong>Doug Slaten<\/strong> in the loogy role and watched <strong>Chad Gaudin<\/strong> pitch horribly).<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Who starts the Home opener?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Quick guess: based on the way the <a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/schedule\/index.jsp?c_id=was#y=2012&amp;m=4\">schedule plays out<\/a> it looks like our home opener will be thrown by our #2 starter Gonzalez.\u00a0 We play two 3-game series away to Chicago and New York, then open at home with what should be the #2 rotation spot up.\u00a0 There&#8217;s only one off-day in between, meaning the starters most likely stay on normal rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re getting reports of players getting to Viera early, and we&#8217;ve had a slew of off-season moves.\u00a0 Beat reporters are starting to talk about the 25-man roster (here&#8217;s WT&#8217;s Amanda Comak&#8216;s take).\u00a0 The Nats pretty much took care of every off-season need the had: Top-end Starting Pitcher: Gonzalez Backup Outfielder: Ankiel and Cameron (though, apparently [&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":[335,140,141,182,298,259,232,233,37,100,98,137,80,52,253,385,181,114,234,39,43,763,199,505,578,129,179,51,543,108,38,172,176,128,883],"class_list":["post-3890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","category-natsgeneral","tag-alex-cora","tag-amanda-comak","tag-atahualpa-severino","tag-bill-ladson","tag-brad-lidge","tag-brian-bixler","tag-brian-broderick","tag-chad-gaudin","tag-chien-ming-wang","tag-cole-kimball","tag-craig-stammen","tag-davey-johnson","tag-doug-slaten","tag-drew-storen","tag-edwin-jackson","tag-gio-gonzalez","tag-henry-rodriguez","tag-ian-desmond","tag-jerry-hairston","tag-john-lannan","tag-jordan-zimmermann","tag-kei-igawa","tag-manuel-rivera","tag-mark-derosa","tag-mike-cameron","tag-mike-rizzo","tag-rick-ankiel","tag-ross-detwiler","tag-ryan-perry","tag-sean-burnett","tag-stephen-strasburg","tag-todd-coffey","tag-tom-gorzelanny","tag-tyler-clippard","tag-yunesky-maya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3890","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=3890"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4393,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3890\/revisions\/4393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}