Nationals Arm Race

Well, this is why he got $210M. Photo via sportingnews.com

Here it is.  Its Wild Card Tuesday.

The red-hot Brewers (winners of 22 of their last 30) couldn’t quite catch the Cardinals and thus travel to DC.  Meanwhile, the suddenly hot Nationals (winners of 9 of their last 10) finished the season in destruction mode and should be fired up for the game.

Pitching Match-up: Max Scherzer; 11-7, 2.92 ERA vs Brandon Woodruff, 11-3, 3.62 ERA.

Season Series: 4-2 in favor of Milwaukee, but with a caveat.  The Nats got swept in Milwaukee in early May, when they were awful.  Woodruff pitched the series finale and dominated the Nats lineup of the day, throwing 6 innings of 4-hit, one-run, 9-K ball.  We threw Jeremy Hellickson, he got shelled, and a rare error from Anthony Rendon accounted for 3 unearned runs on the night.

When Milwaukee came to Washingotn, it was in mid August and they faced a different team: Washington took 2 of 3 at home, one game of which was the amazingly odd 15-14 game on August 17th where a tired Sean Doolittle blew a 3-run 9th inning lead and the beleagured bullpen forced the offense to extend the game three different times.  (Woodruff didn’t pitch in this series because he missed two months with an oblique injury starting in July 2019).

Scherzer hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire since his return from the D/L: in his 5 starts in September his seasonal ERA has risen half a point.

Looking at the Brewer’s splits; they walk a lot (2nd most in league), but as a team don’t actually have that great of an wRC+ figure … and that’s playing most of the season with Christian Yelich.  They hit lefties and righties about the same, so no real advantage/disadvantage there.  Their bullpen is supposedly a strength, but their bullpen macro stats (ERA/FIP/fWAR) are all middle of the pack.

Prediction: two weeks ago I would have been more pessimistic about this team.  But with Yelich out and finishing as strong as they did and basically being at full strength, I like the Nats here.  I think they put a couple runs on Woodruff early, they let Max settle in and he goes 7 innings (he’s going to be fired up, lets be honest).  Then you go 8th/9th guys w/o screwing up the LAD rotation.  That’s the hope anyway.

Rendon; the unsung hero. Photo Nats Official via espn.com

I posted in this space at the end of May a post called “If we’re waiving the white flag...” , which led to a rather spirited debate as to whether the team could even rebound.

Well, here we are at the end of September, and the team has clinched a wild Card spot.

Arbitrary endpoints for this team:

• May 23rd: 19-31: 2nd worst record in the NL (trailing only Miami)
• Since?  67-38; best in the NL.

Here’s my mea culpa; I lost hope in this team in May.  I gave up.  I cannot believe they turned around the season so well.   They’re still going to lose the division by 10 games, but they made it to the coin-flip game.

We won’t know the particulars of the WC game; is it going to be here or on the road?  Is it going to be against Milwaukee (likely) or will the reeling Cubs or floundering Mets pull a rabbit out of their hat to advance (not likely).  So I’ll save predictions and analysis until we know who and where we’re playing.

Congrats to the team for making it to the post season in a trying year ahead of (likely) an off-season of transition.

Casey Mize was Detroit’s 2018 1-1 pick; who will join him next June? Photo d1baseball.com

So, with a week to go, who’s in the lead for the #1 overall draft pick/largest bonus pool for the 2020 draft?

http://www.tankathon.com/mlb

I love that there’s an official “Tanking” page now tracking this.

With a week to go, here’s how we stack up (records as of 9/24/19).  There’s really only four teams to discuss; there’s a 7 game gap to the 5th worst team right now.

1. Detroit: 46-109, projecting to 48-114.  Remaining Schedule: home to Min, away to CWS.  Likely getting swept by Minnesota, who is pushing for playoff positioning but may get some wins against CWS.
2. Baltimore: 51-106, projecting to 53-109.  Remaining schedule: away to Tor, away to Bos.  may end up picking up a couple of wins here since all remaining teams also playing out the stretch.
3. Miami: 55-101, projecting to 57-105.  Remaining schedule: away to NYM, away to Phi.  May very well lose out, given that these two teams are finishing strong.  but seems locked into 3rd spot.
4. Kansas City: 57-100, projecting to 59-103.  Remaining schedule: home to Atl, home to Minn.  hosting all playoff teams still pushing, might lose out.

So, here’s the top 4 of next year’s draft.  At this point, it seems pretty likely that this will be the tankathon finish too.  Detroit is locked in for #1, Baltimore is pretty well locked into #2.  We might see a flip between 3 and 4 but doubtful since both teams are playing motivated squads to finish up.

So, what’s the prize of the 2020 draft?  Well, unlike 2019, when the conesnsus 1-1 overall pick Adley Rutschmann was pretty well established even at this early date, the 2020 draft isn’t consensus for #1 overall yet.   But the top few picks likely will include names from this list:

College top candidates for 2020

• Spencer Torkelson, 1B/LF Arizona State.   3rd team AA PG/Rawlings 2018 as a freshman.   2nd team d1baseball AA 2018.  2018 Collegiate USA team as freshman.  Hit 25 homers as a freshman, 22 homers as sophomore.  2nd team d1baseball.com AA as sophomore.  2nd team NCBWA AA as sophomore.   2nd team BA AA 2019 as sophomore.  2019 Collegiate National team
• Emerson Hancock, RHP Georgia.  High-90s fastball, 3-pitch guy, great sophomore numbers for #3 team in the land.  2nd team d1baseball.com AA 2019 as sophomore.  2nd team NCBWA AA as sophomore.  2nd team BA AA 2019 as sophomore
• Austin Martin, 2b/ss/3B Vanderbilt.  Slashed .410/.502/.603 as a sophomore w/ speed.  1st team d1baseball.com AA 2019 as sophomore.  Plays 6 positions, should be primary SS in 2020.  1st team BA AA 2019 as sophomore.  2019 Collegiate National team

Or, if a prep player goes:

• Pete Crow-Armstrong, OF (CF) Harvard-Westlake HS, CA.  top all-around prep position player in draft.   Vanderbilt commit.  3rd team Baseball america AA in 2019 as junior.  Maxpreps 2nd team AA as junior
• Blaze Jordan, 1B/3B DeSoto Central High School (Southaven, Mississippi).  Re-classified/graduating early.   Mississippi State commit
• Dylan Crews, OF Lake Mary HS (Fla).  LSU commit.  PG has him as #2 prep player in class, long-time member of US national teams.

The last time Detroit picked 1st overall, they got a guy in Casey Mize in 2018 who dominated high-A in 6 starts to begin the 2019 season, then threw a no-hitter in his AA debut.  He finished off AA this year with solid numbers for a 22 yr old, and could be featuring in the Detroit rotation mid-next season … that is if the team doesn’t play service time manipulation games.