{"id":6853,"date":"2013-06-05T16:42:02","date_gmt":"2013-06-05T20:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=6853"},"modified":"2013-10-06T10:32:56","modified_gmt":"2013-10-06T14:32:56","slug":"so-while-i-was-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=6853","title":{"rendered":"So, while I was out…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Rodriguez DFA long overdue. Photo via humorfeast.blogspot.com<\/p><\/div>\n

What a great time to have a 30-hour server outage. \u00a0Just as soon as the hammer drops on the Nationals Roster my site went kaplunk and I couldn’t post or host comments. \u00a0Grrr. \u00a0Moving the site next month to some place more stable.<\/p>\n

So, focusing on the obvious, the Nats made a series of moves that some argue were overdue by about a couple years. \u00a0Some quick thoughts (since by now everyone’s weighed in so my comments are nothing obvious):<\/p>\n

1. Henry Rodriguez<\/strong> DFA <\/strong>16 walks in 18 innings<\/a> this year in almost entirely low-leverage situations. \u00a0Long overdue move; if you can’t rely on a reliever, you need someone else. \u00a0I think the team hung on to him for far too long, and I struggled with\u00a0 the acquisition<\/a> to begin with as has often been repeated here. \u00a0Will he catch on with another team? \u00a0Probably; 100mph fastballs don’t grow on trees. \u00a0 \u00a0He can go be someone else’s Steve Dalkowski<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

2. Zach Duke<\/strong> DFA: you had to see this coming; the Nats are paying the price for not tendering Tom Gorzelanny<\/strong> and thinking they could get by with Duke in that spot. \u00a0I did too; he was decent in AAA and great in September 2012. \u00a0But he’s been god-awful this year, and it looks like Rizzo is going to start spinning arms through the bullpen to find someone that can stick. \u00a0Unlike Davey Johnson<\/strong>, I don’t believe he’s going to get picked up off waivers and he’ll likely take his AAA assignment.<\/p>\n

3. Danny Espinosa <\/strong>to the D\/L and then (by assumption of his locker being cleaned out) banished to the minors: it was a-coming. \u00a0If he was hitting .230 with power and walks, he could have stuck on. \u00a0But you just cannot cost a struggling offense the kind of at-bats he was. \u00a0He’s got more than 1500 MLB plate appearances now; is this who he is? \u00a0I think Espinosa’s 2013 season may end up with him spending the rest of the year in AAA relearning how to hit before the team has to make a hard decision next year.<\/p>\n

4. Anthony Rendon<\/strong> back up and at 2b: had to happen. \u00a0He’s ready for the MLB. \u00a0He had nothing left to prove by slicing up AA. \u00a0Can he play second? \u00a0Yeah I think he can; it isn’t rocket science. \u00a0If Rendon played shortstop in HS, he can make that transition. \u00a0Stick him at 6th or 7th in the order and let him play.<\/p>\n

5. Ian Krol<\/strong>: this move came out of nowhere for me. \u00a0Suddenly mr “we don’t need a left handed reliever” Mike Rizzo<\/strong> has two of them in his bullpen. \u00a0He’s also managed to already call up both guys added to the 40-man roster last fall ahead of the rule-5 draft. \u00a0I’m sure both Krol and Erik Davis<\/strong> will struggle here and there, but should hold their own in short stints.<\/p>\n

Summary: like the moves. \u00a0It is almost as if the Nats fanboy blogosphere got to play GM for a day and rid the team of all its issues in one fell swoop. \u00a0The timing couldn’t be better; 6 games against non-descript teams and even more non-descript starters. \u00a0Lets hope the combination of new blood and bad opponents sparks this team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a great time to have a 30-hour server outage. \u00a0Just as soon as the hammer drops on the Nationals Roster my site went kaplunk and I couldn’t post or host comments. \u00a0Grrr. \u00a0Moving the site next month to some place more stable. So, focusing on the obvious, the Nats made a series of moves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,2039],"tags":[185,135,137,61,181,1695,129,1197,176,906],"class_list":["post-6853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","category-natsgeneral","category-rule-5","tag-anthony-rendon","tag-danny-espinosa","tag-davey-johnson","tag-erik-davis","tag-henry-rodriguez","tag-ian-krol","tag-mike-rizzo","tag-steve-dalkowski","tag-tom-gorzelanny","tag-zach-duke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6853","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=6853"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6856,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6853\/revisions\/6856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}