Davey Johnson has already called for them. Jordan Zimmermann‘s innings limit necessitates one of them. Livan‘s woes beg for one of them. Who are they? Starting Pitching prospects. And when the calendar hits September 1st, the day MLB rosters can expand, we should be seeing a few of them make their way to the Nats roster. We’re probably going to see guys already on the 40-man make appearances (Chris Marrero? Corey Brown?), but who else?
But, the signings of Anthony Rendon and Matt Purke filled the two empty slots on the 40-man roster created by the trades of Jerry Hairston and Jason Marquis. So if you believe reports that the Nats are calling up the likes of Steve Lombardozzi, Brad Peacock and Tom Milone (in addition to adding Stephen Strasburg back to the active roster for a September 6th or 7th re-debut), then we’ve got some 40-man moves to make.
Here’s my predictions on how the team will make room for 4 new 40-man players (remember, Strasburg is currently on the 60-day DL and does not count towards the 40 active players on the “40-man” roster).
- Move Adam LaRoche and Cole Kimball to the 60-day DL. These are procedural moves that could have been done weeks ago, but the team hasn’t had the need. Both are clearly done for the season and can easily be moved off.
- Move Doug Slaten to the 60-day dl. We’ve heard very little news on Slaten since he was put on the DL, which means he’s probably not featuring in the team’s plans for 2011 and can be moved off the 40-man. We may end up flat out releasing the guy too; he performed so badly this year in terms of WHIP and allowing inherited runners to score that the team certainly would go looking elsewhere for a loogy. Update: he’s just starting to do rehab stints now; I’m guessing he’ll just be released upon finishing his rehab, as we did with Chad Gaudin.
- Re-call Adam Carr to the majors, then 60-day DL him. He’s been out since June and this procedural move would mean that nobody needs to be released. We can add all these 60-day DL guys back to the 40-man once all our free agents and non-tenders go through.
If there are other non 40-man guys to consider adding, I don’ t know who they may be at this point. Brad Meyers may be reaching an innings limit (based on analysis of his usage in AAA). There don’t seem to be any relievers in AAA (Mandel, Wilkie?) worth calling up. We have 2 catchers active and a third (Pudge) getting ready presumably to come off the DL, so we’re set there.
Who would get dumped off the 40-man if we needed to make space? The leading candidate would have to be the enigmatic Garrett Mock, who has put up startling bad numbers at various levels this year. Atahualpa Severino is another candidate; having spent 2 full years on the 40-man with exactly one day in the majors.