{"id":420,"date":"2010-12-03T14:27:28","date_gmt":"2010-12-03T19:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=420"},"modified":"2013-02-07T11:13:33","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T16:13:33","slug":"nats-free-agency-and-payroll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=420","title":{"rendered":"Nats, Free Agency and Payroll"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_433\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/PH2010081300229.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-433\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-433\" title=\"PH2010081300229\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/PH2010081300229-300x243.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"243\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/PH2010081300229-300x243.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/PH2010081300229.jpg 518w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-433\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nats fans have seen Adam Dunn do this for the last time.  Photo: seasonticketdc.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Several years ago, I began a rant about the Nats payroll levels vis-a-vis our market size that essentially continues through to today.\u00a0 Washington DC as a market is clearly a large market:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We are 7th in total population (when measured by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.census.gov\/population\/www\/cen2000\/briefs\/phc-t29\/\">Metropolitan Statistical Areas<\/a>); just behind Miami\/Ft. Lauderdale and Dallas and just ahead of\u00a0 Houston and Detroit.<\/li>\n<li>We are 9th in terms of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tvb.org\/rcentral\/markettrack\/US_HH_by_DMA.asp\">DMA TV households<\/a> (just behind Atlanta\/Boston and just ahead of Houston and Detroit again).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And yet, in 2010 we had the 23rd ranked payroll of the 30 teams, spending just $66M in salary (<a href=\"http:\/\/mlbcontracts.blogspot.com\/2005\/01\/washington-nationals_01.html\">2010 opening day number<\/a>).\u00a0 Meanwhile the teams located in comparable cities spent much much more.\u00a0 Houston had a $92m payroll, Detroit $122M, Atlanta $84M.\u00a0 Miami and Boston are outliers for separate and obvious reasons (Boston essentially services the entire NE area while the Florida Marlins owners are the worst examples of owners taking advantage of the revenue sharing system in the league).<\/p>\n<p>According to my estimates (available <a href=\"https:\/\/spreadsheets.google.com\/ccc?key=tFWcnShZdOl6BlFEuIS-AtQ&amp;authkey=CPf6g4ED#gid=0\">here<\/a> or via the link in the Nats Creations section to the right), the Nats (as of publication) have $29M  committed for 2011, and likely will have a payroll that is around $46.5M  once all arbitration cases are settled.\u00a0 Notice this is almost exactly  $20M less than in 2010 (<strong>Dunn <\/strong>at $12M and <strong>Guzman <\/strong>at $8M neatly equal the  delta).<\/p>\n<p>Clearly, the Nats need to be increasing payroll.\u00a0 I&#8217;m pretty sure this is one of the reasons <strong>Kasten <\/strong>left the team frankly; I don&#8217;t think he saw eye to eye with the <strong>Lerners <\/strong>in terms of payroll outlay.\u00a0 Certainly not in terms of the 2009 opening day roster team, which was an abomination of a roster and successfully gutted the season ticket base and fan satisfaction leading into the new stadium.<\/p>\n<p>BUT, and this is a large But, we should not just arbitrarily spend money just to spend it.\u00a0 So we have a conundrum.\u00a0 With <strong>Vazquez <\/strong>and <strong>De La Rosa <\/strong>off the market, the FA pitcher market is, as <a href=\"http:\/\/sports.espn.go.com\/mlb\/hotstove10\/columns\/story?columnist=stark_jayson&amp;page=rumblings101201\"><strong>Jayson Stark<\/strong> put it<\/a>, a disaster area.\u00a0 With the exception of an experimental flyer on <strong>Webb<\/strong>, I wouldn&#8217;t want a single guy left.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/sportsillustrated.cnn.com\/2010\/writers\/jon_heyman\/11\/10\/cliff-lee-free-agents\/1.html\"><strong>Jon <\/strong><strong>Heyman<\/strong> ranked the top 15<\/a> or so FAs and it has to be one of the weakest FA markets ever.\u00a0 Of the hitters out there, we definitely could use them (especially <strong>Werth <\/strong>in right and <strong>Crawford <\/strong>in center, as well as the probable eventual signing of <strong>Pena <\/strong>for 1B), but the question is, will they come to Washington?\u00a0 Why come to the Nats if a perennial playoff contender comes calling with more money and longer guaranteed contracts?\u00a0 Isn&#8217;t that why Dunn just left?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tom Boswell <\/strong>put out a post <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/12\/01\/AR2010120106224.html?nav=rss_opinion\/columns\">expressing some worry<\/a> about the Nats and this off season, only somewhat alluding to the  payroll issue.\u00a0 And I agree.\u00a0 Who knew that we&#8217;d be seeing a spending  spree this off season, after two relatively frugal off-seasons preceding  it.\u00a0 Now that Dunn has left, one has to wonder what the team really should do.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m afraid the Nats are stuck frankly.\u00a0 We have money to spend, and NEED to spend money to show some good will towards a fan base that clearly sees the Lerners as incompetent, penny pinching and too cheap to really deserve a $600M baseball team.\u00a0 But, who are we going to spend this money on?\u00a0 At this point the best moves seem to be to try to acquire guys via trade ( <strong>Greinke <\/strong>or <strong>Garza <\/strong>come to mind) but these guys will cost us what few prospects we actually have right now.\u00a0 Is it worth it to give up 4 upper end guys to acquire 2 years of Greinke&#8217;s services?<\/p>\n<p>As much as I hate to say it, I believe the best course right now is to NOT spend money, play out 2011 with what we have (and perhaps a couple of lower end, one-year FAs) and regroup for 2012.\u00a0 Let our prospects play and get experience, find out if the likes of <strong>Espinosa<\/strong>, <strong>Desmond<\/strong>, <strong>Morse<\/strong>, <strong>Morgan<\/strong>, <strong>Bernadina<\/strong>, <strong>Ramos<\/strong>, <strong>Zimmermann<\/strong>, <strong>Maya <\/strong>and the rest of the bullpen are really quality guys.\u00a0 Trade <strong>Willingham <\/strong>for more kids. Wait for <strong>Strasburg<\/strong> to get healthy. And go firing into NEXT off season with a vengeance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Several years ago, I began a rant about the Nats payroll levels vis-a-vis our market size that essentially continues through to today.\u00a0 Washington DC as a market is clearly a large market: We are 7th in total population (when measured by Metropolitan Statistical Areas); just behind Miami\/Ft. Lauderdale and Dallas and just ahead of\u00a0 Houston [&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":[139,353,251,362,1219,135,114,341,986,115,302,43,729,580,131,136,122,167,463,38,366,125,147,883,254],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-adam-dunn","tag-brandon-webb","tag-carl-crawford","tag-carlos-pena","tag-cristian-guzman","tag-danny-espinosa","tag-ian-desmond","tag-javier-vazquez","tag-jayson-stark","tag-jayson-werth","tag-jon-heyman","tag-jordan-zimmermann","tag-jorge-de-la-rosa","tag-josh-willingham","tag-matt-garza","tag-michael-morse","tag-nyjer-morgan","tag-roger-bernadina","tag-stan-kasten","tag-stephen-strasburg","tag-ted-lerner","tag-tom-boswell","tag-wilson-ramos","tag-yunesky-maya","tag-zack-greinke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","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=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5943,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions\/5943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}