{"id":838,"date":"2011-03-16T12:51:36","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T16:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=838"},"modified":"2013-05-29T14:55:53","modified_gmt":"2013-05-29T18:55:53","slug":"what-to-do-with-brian-broderick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=838","title":{"rendered":"What to do with Brian Broderick?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_839\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/BroderickBrian+Washington+Nationals+Photo+4mUsAE8d2W4l.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-839\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-839\" title=\"BroderickBrian+Washington+Nationals+Photo+4mUsAE8d2W4l\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/BroderickBrian+Washington+Nationals+Photo+4mUsAE8d2W4l-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/BroderickBrian+Washington+Nationals+Photo+4mUsAE8d2W4l-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/BroderickBrian+Washington+Nationals+Photo+4mUsAE8d2W4l.jpg 396w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-839\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brian Broderick on Media Day.  Photo by Al Bello\/Getty Images North America\/zimbio.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Commenter Mark L asked whether or not I was &#8220;ignoring&#8221; rule-5 draftee <strong>Brian Broderick<\/strong>&#8216;s performance thus far when considering the bullpen competition in response to a post <a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/article.jsp?ymd=20110315&amp;content_id=16971856&amp;vkey=recap&amp;fext=.jsp&amp;c_id=was\">previewing the Nats 3\/15\/11 game against the Mets<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know if i\u2019m \u201cignoring\u201d Broderick\u2019s performances thus far \u2026 I  just have a reaaaaaaly hard time believing he\u2019ll be on the 25-man roster  based on the inflexibility of keeping a rule5 guy, given the roster inflexibilities we already have with several other players.\u00a0 Here\u2019s my  reasoning:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We have 3 guys who already essentially HAVE to stay on the 25-man  roster because of a lack of options: <strong>Clippard<\/strong>, <strong>Burnett<\/strong>, and <strong>Henry  Rodriguez<\/strong>.\u00a0 Two of these guys are bullpen mainstays and would have been there anyway, but the acquisition of Rodriguez has complicated matters for the team.\u00a0 As mentioned before, he showed up late for spring training and has not necessarily looked fantastic so far.\u00a0 If we could possibly find a way to DL him if he&#8217;s not ready to go on April 2nd (&#8220;tired arm?&#8221;) , a lot of problems would be avoided.<\/li>\n<li>We have a 4th guy in <strong>Coffey <\/strong>who signed a major league deal and has  enough service time that he could (and probably would) refuse a AAA assignment, so he either  stays on the 25-man roster or we light his $1.35M on fire.<\/li>\n<li>We have to have a loogy; <strong>Slaten <\/strong>seems almost certain to be that guy.\u00a0 I guess you could argue that we really don&#8217;t need a loogy, that Burnett could be that guy or even <strong>Gorzelanny<\/strong> if he gets bumped out of the rotation.\u00a0 But Burnett&#8217;s value is not as a one-out guy and Gorzelanny is a starter.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Storen <\/strong>is supposed to be \u201cthe closer.\u201d  He may be struggling this  spring but there\u2019s nothing about his 2010 performance that says he does  NOT deserve to be in that position for this team.  Admittedly he does  have options and can be sent down but i\u2019d be awfully mad if we sent a  first round draft pick down so we could keep some untested minor leaguer  on the active roster.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, if we keep Broderick, he\u2019s the 7th guy in the pen and has to stay there all season.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s your 7 spots essentially wrapped up.  So now here\u2019s the rest of the picture and why this could become rather complicated for the team:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If Gorzelanny struggles in the starter\u2019s role, he has no options and would have to go to the bullpen.  Who makes way?\u00a0 We can&#8217;t really cut Gorzelanny out right without admitting that the move backfired greatly for the team, having given up 3 decent prospects just a few months ago.<\/li>\n<li>If we want to use <strong>Gaudin<\/strong>, who has looked great so far in spring training, he\u2019d have to be first  added to 40-man (and then we\u2019d have to drop someone else or move them to  60-day dl).  And then he\u2019s more or less stuck on the roster too; he\u2019s  got 5+ years of service time, no options and can reject an assignment  back to AAA. Based on the fact that he signed a minor league deal with us, one could assume that he is ok with starting the season in AAA, but other teams have scouts too and might be taking notice of his achievements so far.\u00a0 However again, if Gaudin is the 7th guy who makes way for him?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Balester<\/strong>: he certainly performed well last year; 28ks in 21 ip in the same role we&#8217;re talking about here.\u00a0 Before the rule5 draft I had him locked into  that long-man role.  Has he done anything this spring to cost him this  spot?\u00a0  No but he has one more minor league option and may lose out nonetheless.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Stammen<\/strong>; he clearly can give you innings since he\u2019s always been a  starter, and his advanced stats last year were not THAT bad.  But he too  has options and seems to be pitching his way to AAA this spring.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Honestly, I think what the Nats need to do is make a deal with StL,  trade them someone for Broderick and then stash him at AAA til you need  him.  Return him to the starters role where he was 11-2 last year in AA  and maybe we\u2019ve found a real cheap 5th starter for the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Commenter Mark L asked whether or not I was &#8220;ignoring&#8221; rule-5 draftee Brian Broderick&#8216;s performance thus far when considering the bullpen competition in response to a post previewing the Nats 3\/15\/11 game against the Mets. I don\u2019t know if i\u2019m \u201cignoring\u201d Broderick\u2019s performances thus far \u2026 I just have a reaaaaaaly hard time believing he\u2019ll [&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],"tags":[232,233,101,98,80,52,181,108,172,176,128],"class_list":["post-838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","tag-brian-broderick","tag-chad-gaudin","tag-collin-balester","tag-craig-stammen","tag-doug-slaten","tag-drew-storen","tag-henry-rodriguez","tag-sean-burnett","tag-todd-coffey","tag-tom-gorzelanny","tag-tyler-clippard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838","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=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":849,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions\/849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}