{"id":7071,"date":"2013-07-16T10:04:23","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T14:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com.\/?p=7071"},"modified":"2013-07-17T08:09:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T12:09:30","slug":"interesting-trade-season-rumor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=7071","title":{"rendered":"Interesting Trade Season rumor…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Could<\/a>

Could the Nats trade LaRoche? Photo: Rob Carr\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

In a recent column, Jayson Stark<\/strong> floats an interesting trade scenario<\/a>: basically the Nats trade Adam LaRoche<\/strong>, move Ryan Zimmerman<\/strong> to first base, move Anthony Rendon<\/strong> to his natural third, and\u00a0<\/strong>recall the hopefully back-on-track Espinosa.<\/p>\n

In other words, the exact future scenario envisioned for this team before locking in LaRoche for 2 years at first base, necessitating the jettison of Michael Morse<\/strong> (and his offense) this past off-season.<\/p>\n

He wouldn’t have reported it if he hadn’t heard some rumblings in the industry about it; how seriously would the Nats consider such a \u00a0move?<\/p>\n

Major issue with this situation?\u00a0 You’re losing LaRoche’s bat.\u00a0 This team needs all the offense it can get; it doesn’t need to trade their cleanup hitter away. \u00a0In this scenario you’re replacing LaRoche like-for-like in the rotation with\u00a0Danny Espinosa<\/strong>, not exactly an even deal.<\/p>\n

We’ve already heard that the team is playing\u00a0Espinosa\u00a0at short in AAA, in what most believe is a show-casing of Espinosa’s skills at the position.\u00a0 He’s far more valuable to teams as a career .240 shortstop with 20-homer power than he is putting up those same numbers at second base.\u00a0 However, as others have noted, trading Espinosa after the start he had in 2013 would be the definition of “selling low.”\u00a0 So I’m guessing he’s just filling in where needed in Syracuse for now.\u00a0 Once a short-stop, always a short-stop. \u00a0After a horrible start in Syracuse, reports are that Espinosa is tearing it up as of late. \u00a0Is he ready to come back up?<\/p>\n

Another issue with this scenario is Zimmerman’s improved defense at third lately. \u00a0Is it possible that all his throwing issues were lingering effects of his off-season shoulder surgery? \u00a0You know, the surgery that was supposed take just a few weeks to recover from but whose recovery period is now well into the 2013 season? \u00a0Despite Rendon’s reputed skills at the hot-corner, you don’t lightly move Gold Glove-winning fielders off their positions.<\/p>\n

What if LaRoche was packaged with Espinosa and moved to a team that could provide the Nats back with a bigger bat who plays first base but who is making too much money for the team in question? \u00a0I can’t think of someone like this off-hand, but the scenario would be the Nats providing payroll relief for some bad contract.<\/p>\n

Thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent column, Jayson Stark floats an interesting trade scenario: basically the Nats trade Adam LaRoche, move Ryan Zimmerman to first base, move Anthony Rendon to his natural third, and\u00a0recall the hopefully back-on-track Espinosa. In other words, the exact future scenario envisioned for this team before locking in LaRoche for 2 years at first […]<\/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":[184,185,135,986,136,36],"class_list":["post-7071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-adam-laroche","tag-anthony-rendon","tag-danny-espinosa","tag-jayson-stark","tag-michael-morse","tag-ryan-zimmerman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7071","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=7071"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7219,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7071\/revisions\/7219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}