{"id":758,"date":"2011-03-07T12:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-03-07T17:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=758"},"modified":"2011-03-07T12:01:01","modified_gmt":"2011-03-07T17:01:01","slug":"why-exactly-did-we-acquire-gorzelanny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=758","title":{"rendered":"Why exactly did we acquire Gorzelanny?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Gorzelanny warming up; the closest we've seen of him on the mound. Photo: Copyright Ed Wolfstein<\/p><\/div>\n

As I said in my good\/bad\/indifferent<\/a> post over the weekend, I cannot fault a guy for getting sick at an inopportune time.\u00a0 But newly acquired Tom Gorzelanny<\/strong> needs to get caught up to his competition for the 5th rotation spot very quickly, before he loses out on the competition altogether.\u00a0 When two of your main competitors for the 5th rotation spot are showing up in Viera with crisp stuff and a good work ethic, and you cannot make it into a game because you\u2019re so far behind \u2026 well you better step it up when you do get some innings.<\/p>\n

I’m beginning to wonder though; Why did the Nats make the Gorzelanny acquisition?\u00a0 He’s out of options, meaning that if he does NOT win the 5th starter role he either has to go to the bullpen or be exposed to waivers to pass him through to AAA.\u00a0 Both scenarios are bad for the team; Gorzelanny would take away a bullpen spot from another deserving candidate if he is kept (likely Balester<\/strong> in the long man\/spot starter role), and odds are that he’d be claimed if we exposed him to waivers, basically meaning we gave up 3 prospects for a few weeks of his Spring Training time.\u00a0 Plus, Gorzelanny’s splits as a reliever<\/a> aren’t really that promising.\u00a0\u00a0 The number of innings he’s pitched in relief over the past few years are probably not enough to make a judgement but he certainly hasn’t been immediately lights out in the role.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the rest of the competitors for the #5 spot are taking big steps ahead.\u00a0 Maya<\/strong> looked great in the DWL and has looked good so far this spring.\u00a0 Detwiler<\/strong>‘s last outing was dominant, with lots of strikeouts and scouts raving about the speed on his pitches.\u00a0 Gaudin<\/strong>‘s overall numbers look bad but he pitched 3 strong innings against the Yankees.\u00a0 Only Wang<\/strong> seems to be out of the 5th starter competition for now (he’ll likely spend more time on the DL, which is fine for our roster construction purposes since he won’t burn a 25-man slot).<\/p>\n

I suppose it is possible (acceptable?) that we traded away three prospects for the chance to let him compete with Maya, Detwiler, Gaudin and Wang for the #5 rotation spot.\u00a0 But here’s the thing; if the Nats really though Wang was healthy and that Maya was improving and that Detwiler was going to live up to his promise … why sign a journeyman veteran without options, knowing that his inflexibility would affect the rest of your team’s construction?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I said in my good\/bad\/indifferent post over the weekend, I cannot fault a guy for getting sick at an inopportune time.\u00a0 But newly acquired Tom Gorzelanny needs to get caught up to his competition for the 5th rotation spot very quickly, before he loses out on the competition altogether.\u00a0 When two of your main […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758","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=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1390,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions\/1390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}