Nationals Arm Race

Justin Verlander is one of the most important home-grown players in the 2012 playoffs. Photo unk via rumorsandrants.com

Every year I do a bit of “Team Construction” analysis to kind of gauge the trends in roster construction.  Last year’s post is here, and the links to the side have the underlying spreadsheet of player acquisition methods so you can see the pure details.  This topic was also covered in-depth by John Sickels on his minorleaguebaseball.com blog for another viewpoint.

Borrowing from last year’s post, there are four main ways teams can acquire players:

1. Draft: The player is with the original team that drafted him.  In the case of international free agents, if they’re signed as 16-year olds they are considered in this category as well (i.e., Ichiro Suzuki is not a developed player, but an international Free Agent).  It could be better defined as “Club developed players.”  Simple examples for the Nats: Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper.
2. Traded MLBers: The player was acquired by the team by virtue of trading an established MLB player.  Most of the time these days, this means the player was acquired as a prospect (since most trades seem to be of the prospect-for-established player kind).  Example for the Nats would be Michael Morse, who was acquired by our trading an established MLB player in Ryan Langerhans for Morse while he was still (essentially) a minor leaguer.
3. Traded Prospects: The player was acquired by the team by virtue of trading prospects.  This is essentially the reverse of #2.  The Nats key example is Gio Gonzalez.
4. Free Agent: The player was acquired in free agency.  This category also includes two other types of acquisitions: waiver claims and cash purchases.  These three categories are lumped together since all three indicate that a team has acquired a player with zero outlay in terms of development or prospects.  Examples for the Nats: Edwin Jackson, Adam LaRoche.

Here is the summary of roster construction and “Construction Strategy Category” that we’ll talk about next.  Note that I only count the “core players” on a team for this analysis.  The core players is defined as the 5-man starting rotation, the setup and closer, the 8 out-field players, and the DH for AL teams.  I didn’t extend this all the way to the 25-man roster, figuring that these core 15 players are the main reasons teams win and advance.  That and huge chunks of the bullpen and the bench are either fill-in FAs or draftees and it would skew the analysis of how teams really got to the playoffs.  Here’s the summary (the table is sorted by count of Draftees):

So, what are the four construction methods I’ve identified? Again borrowing from last year’s version of this post, they are (with this year’s examples).  The complication this year is that some of the 10 playoff teams don’t fall neatly into one specific category.

Method #1: Build from within 100%: (Cincinnati, Atlanta).   Atlanta, amazingly, didn’t use a single Free Agent among its core 15 this year.  They made a couple of key trades to acquire a few starters, but the rest of their lineup is home-grown draftees.  That may change next year as they try to replace Chipper Jones, Michael Bourn and possibly Brian McCann, who may leave via free agency.  Meanwhile Cincinnati has just a couple of free agents and mostly rely on guys they’ve grown as well.

Method #2: Ride your developed Core and use your prospects to acquire big names: (Washington, San Francisco and Detroit to an extent): The Nats have transformed themselves over just a couple of seasons, relying less on FAs to plug holes caused by an awful farm system to having most of their core team developed at home (See the table further below to follow the transformation of our team over the past few seasons).  Those spots they couldn’t depend on have been filled by trades (three guys acquired by flipping prospects for them; in addition to Gonzalez Kurt Suzuki and Tyler Clippard also count here).  San Francisco has seen their payroll skyrocket as they extend their home-grown talent, but for the most part they have stayed true to the team development concept.  Their one major Free Agent (Barry Zito) is notoriously one of the worst contracts in baseball and it is somewhat surprising to even see him on the post-season roster.  He wouldn’t be if Tim Lincecum was pitching in 2012 like he has regularly done in previous seasons.  Detroit was entirely in method #2 until they decided to spend money like the Yankees; we’ll revisit in #4.

Method #3: Go Young and grow up Strong (Baltimore, Oakland and Texas to an extent): Baltimore acquired a massive chunk of their rosters by flipping major leaguers for prospects and watching them blossom into a surprise playoff team.  Oakland has made a habit of getting rid of guys before they hit arbitration; fully 7 of their squad was acquired this way.  The difference is that Oakland has been forced to buy a big chunk of their core group on the FA market, depending on cast-offs like Brandon Inge and Jonny Gomes to plug leaks and get production on the cheap.  I’m guessing that Oakland will transform more into Category #1 as the vast amount of prospects they’ve landed lately continue to matriculate.  Lastly Texas was entirely in this category before they dropped major money on the likes of Adrian Beltre and Yu Darvish, transforming them into a spending power to go with their still-excellent farm system.

Method #4: Spend what it takes to win: (New York fully with St Louis, Texas and Detroit partially here): The Yankees are the class-A example of this method (along with Boston and the Dodgers frankly), but the spending that St. Louis, Texas and Detroit cannot be overlooked.  The Yankees more and more are depending on expensive FA purchases to replace what their farm system is not developing, and the problem is only being brought into more focus this off-season.  Their 3 primary starters are FA acquisitions, their biggest FA is looking like a contract catastrophe, and their developed guys are not stepping up and taking over major roles (especially on the pitching staff).  The other three teams mentioned here are mostly built on home-grown talent, but have spent so much money on the FA market lately that they are broaching into the upper echelons of MLB payroll.  St. Louis is almost entirely built from within (as noted by other columnists doing this same type of analysis) but still has depended on a couple of key FAs to advance as far as they have.

Conclusions:

• There’s no real formula to building a playoff team, as we see from the spread of the 10 teams among the four methods defined.
• I think its safe to say that the most difficult methods to depend on are #1 and #3.  You need to have a very good farm system to depend on the #1 method to work for you, and over the past few years only a couple of teams really have had success using this method (Atlanta and Tampa Bay).  Kansas City has tried #1 for years and has gone nowhere.  The #3 method is also frought with issues, since it requires a ton of patience from your fan base and may not be sustainable.  Would anyone be surprised if both Oakland and Baltimore collapsed next season?  Probably not; you really need to build on a base of players once you’ve established yourself as a good team and continue to augment, either through trade or through FAs.  But even that can be dangerous; just ask Philadelphia this year, owners of the 2nd biggest payroll in baseball and just a 3rd place team.
• Is Category #1 and #3 the same?  No, not really. #1 teams rely much more heavily on personally developed prospects, while #3 teams purposely set out to acquire prospects in trade to combine with their own development mis-fortunes.  If Baltimore had a better farm system, they wouldn’t have needed to jettison so many established MLBers to acquire prospects, and they’d probably be closer to a #2 team (a wealthy team who supplements developed players with key FAs, much like what Washington is doing).
• Oakland is really a unique case; they do develop players but get rid of them because of a self-imposed incredibly restrictive salary cap.  Imagine what Billy Beane could do with that team if he could have purchased just $30M of players on the open market (which would have still left Oakland in the bottom third of payroll).
• Buying your way to a team (method #4) can work, but only if you have nearly unlimited money and everything goes right for you.  There’s almost no excuse for a $175M payroll to get beat to the playoffs by a $55M payroll team (Oakland).  That is unless you overpay for poor FA targets, install the wrong manager and saddle yourself with the worst clubhouse in baseball.  In case you were wondering, the 2012 Boston Red Sox were a classic case of why money cannot buy happiness, and why unlimited funds do not necessarily guarantee playoff baseball.  The Angels are another example; owing most of their season’s turnaround and success to Mike Trout and his MLB minimum salary providing nearly 10 WAR despite having the 3rd largest payroll in baseball and having just purchased the games pre-emminent hitter in Albert Pujols.
• Frequent commenter Clark has a good point; classifying Mark Teixeira and Raul Ibanez as the same type of player (acquired via free agency) is a bit mis-leading.  Clearly a $150M player isn’t the same as a $1M player.  But, for the purposes of analyzing how much of your team is “bought” versus “developed” the point remains the same whether its a bargain basement guy or a $20M/year player.

So, if I had just purchased a new team, what construction method would I follow?  I guess it depends; if I thought I had a patient fan base, I’d probably do exactly what is going on in Houston.  I’d gut the MLB roster, trade every tradeable asset and start over payroll-wise.  I’d follow strategy #1 until I was at least competitive, and then i’d probably switch over to a #2 strategy or a #3 strategy, depending on just how good my developed players were.  You hope for #3; it implies you’ve got so much in-house talent that all you need to do is keep extending your key guys and you’ll keep winning.

I don’t think #4 is a sustainable way of building rosters.  The Yankees have gotten away with it for years, but only because they initially had a banner crop of developed players (the “core four”) to depend on up their spine.  Would anyone be surprised if the Yankees fail to make the playoffs next year?  Alex Rodriguez looks incredibly old, Derek Jeter just broke his ankle, they’re losing a number of hitters to FA and they only have a couple of starters locked up.  Where’s their starting pitching for 2013?  And what happens if they finally get hit with injuries to their rotation to the extent that Boston did this year?  I think this is why you see $80M payroll teams beating out $170M payroll teams all the time; teams get bloated, they over pay their own players and suddenly are old, inflexible and unable to adjust financially to buy what they need.

Lastly, here’s what the Nats roster has done over the past few seasons:

The team has been slowly replacing Free Agents with home-grown or acquired talent, and as we all know is well on its way towards a strong, home grown team.  This year’s core team only uses 3 pure FAs: Adam LaRoche, Jayson Werth and Edwin Jackson.  We could very well see LaRoche replaced outright with the home grown Tyler Moore, and if the team replaced Jackson with someone like John Lannan (not that we’ll possibly see that happen), we could be down to just one FA in the core squad.

We miss you Tommy; Glad to see you're doing well. Photo AP/Ben Margot via dailyrepublic.com

Nationals farm system observers certainly knew we gave up a ton of talent to acquire Gio Gonzalez back in late 2011.  Most of the pundits I read at the time thought the Nats overpaid for a high-walk guy who overly benefited from playing in the “pitcher friendly” Oakland Coliseum (I say that in quotes since the multi-year park factors for that stadium can be nearly neutral depending on which statistic and which time period you choose).  We know what we’ve gotten in Gonzalez so far; a gregarious, pro-team guy who pitched lights out in 2012, increasing his K/9 and decreasing his BB/9 from both last season and from his career norms and who led the majors in wins.  He struggled in the playoffs of course, but his 21 wins were a big reason we were in the playoffs in the first place.

How about our 4 former Nats?  How are they doing so far?  In rough order of impact:

1. Tommy Milone: 13-10 with a 3.74 ERA and 1.279 whip in 31 starts after winning Oakland’s #5 starter job out of camp.   His debut was a sterling 8-inning 3 hit gem, and his season was a series of sterling outings interrupted by blow-out starts.  Scouts routinely pegged him as a 4-A starter, with not enough stuff to last in the majors, but he got results for us last year and continued to get results this year.  He helped lead Oakland to an improbable AL West crown and was the team’s #2 starter in the playoffs.  For a guy that I thought was a 4-A starter, Oakland has to be happy to have him on their squad.

2. Brad Peacock: Oakland is keeping him as a starter for now, and he toiled the entire season in AAA in Sacramento.  However, Peacock took a significant step backwards in 2012, posting a 12-9 record with an astounding 6.01 ERA.  Even accounting for the known hitters parks in the Pacific Coast League, to go from a 3.19 ERA in Syracuse to nearly double that in Sacramento spells issues.   I still think he’s bound for a middle-relief role on account of his only really having two pitches, and on account of the amazing starter depth Oakland possesses in their system.  But, starter or reliever, Peacock has to pitch better in 2013.

3. Derek Norris returned to the hitting form that we all knew and loved a couple years back once he reached Oakland’s AAA squad.  He hit .271/.329/.477 in about a half season in Sacramento and was then called up.   His MLB numbers weren’t great (.201/.276/.349) but he’s young and the team traded away its 6 year starter in Kurt Suzuki (to the Nats as we all know; sending Oakland yet another catcher prospect in the process) so Norris could be getting his chance sooner than later.

4. AJ Cole, the “gem” of the trade completely melted in the High-A California league, with a 0-7 record and a 7.82 ERA in 8 starts.   He returned to form upon his return to low-A, going 6-3 with a 2.07 ERA in 19 starts in the Midwest league.  All is not lost; he’s only 20, and there’s no shame in a 20-yr old failing at his first shot at high-A (where you see a lot of college draftees in their second pro year).

One year later, how does this trade look for both teams?  My trade reaction post from December 2011 talked about how this trade would come down to how closely the four traded guys came to matching their “ceilings.”  One year later, I think its safe to say that Milone has surpassed his ceiling, Peacock is in danger of never even fulfilling his “floor,” Norris is somewhere in the middle and its just way too early to judge Cole.

Meanwhile Gonzalez has surpassed what anyone could have hoped for in his first season; I thought he was a #2 starter but he put in an “Ace” year.  He may not win the Cy Young but he’ll be in the top 3 in voting.  He’s clearly a great clubhouse guy, a skill that you cannot put a dollar figure on.

I think both teams probably do this deal again.  There were no “winners” and “losers” thus far; both teams got exactly what they wanted out of the trade.

Not the best outing for Storen. Photo Andrew Harnik/washingtontimes.com

What a gut-wrenching game.

It started out as great as you could hope; scoring 3 runs in the first inning and igniting the largest crowd in Nats history.  The offense finally strung together a series of big hits from the top of our order against the same pitcher (Adam Wainwright) who shut us down so easily in the first game of the series.  The Nats offense woke up again in the 3rd and bounced Wainwright (the same guy that pundits expected to completely shut the team down again).  You can’t blow a 6-0 lead, can you?  Here’s a stat; on the Season the Nats were exactly 45-6 when scoring 6 or more runs.  But they’ve also coughed up larger leads; they blew a 9 run lead in Atlanta in July in a game that looked eerily similar to last night’s game; get a big lead, your starter gives up a few innocuous runs, then the bullpen slowly leaks runs until its all over.

Gio Gonzalez wasn’t really that effective, all told.  His final line: 5ip, 5 hits, 4 walks and 3 runs (all earned).  In the first inning he honestly looked startled on the mound, scared to be there.  He scuffled through the first inning looking tentative and got bailed out by some slightly over-aggressive hitting from the top of St. Louis’ order.  He did pitch with better confidence the next couple of innings (who wouldn’t with a 3-0 first inning and 6-0 third inning lead?).   He was definitely commanding his curve ball far better than in game 1 and was keeping St. Louis at bay.  However a lead-off walk burned him in the 4th for the first run, and then a complete meltdown in the 5th from Gio turned into two more runs.   His 5th inning line is as ugly as it gets for a starter; Double-Single-Walk-run scoring wild pitch-walk-walk to force in a run before finally getting the 3rd out.

Here’s where the bullpen just failed to get the job done.  Edwin Jackson walks the lead-off guy and he scores, making it 6-4.  The Jordan Zimmermann experiment from game 4 couldn’t be replicated, costing the team a run.  I can’t second-guess the move though; it had worked so well the night before.  Tyler Clippard gives up a home-run to Daniel Descalso to make it 6-5.  And of course we know what happened to Drew Storen, who picked a really bad time to match his career worst outing, giving up 4 runs on 3 hits and 2 walks in the 9th.  And the big hits didn’t come from the middle of St. Louis’ order; it was Descalco and Pete Kozma of all people getting the clutch hits.

My dad pointed out an interesting question; Storen was sharp last night but not tonight; could it be because he threw three straight games?  Storen had appeared in 3 straight games twice before this season but didn’t pitch full innings each time.  In this series he threw an inning each in games 1, 3,4 and 5.  His pitch count by game?  10,11, 26, and last night’s 33 pitch debacle.  Dad’s specific complaint was about the use of Storen in the blow-out game 3.  Why waste an inning there when you pretty much well know you’re going to need your 8th and 9th inning stars both subsequent nights?   Is it possible that Storen was just a bit gassed from the cumulative effects of a 26 pitch outing the previous night AND having pitched three consecutive days?

Another pet peeve of mine; how do you let Descalso steal second base un-challenged in the 9th?  Yes there’s two outs, but that put him in scoring position to tack on an extra run on the subsequent single.  If you hold that guy on, maybe you throw him out and get the 3rd out right there before the Cards get the lead.  He certainly doesn’t score on a single to RF.  This isn’t a problem just with Storen; the Nats pitching staff is notoriously bad at holding runners.  In the end, that extra run didn’t really matter … but it could have mattered if Suzuki threw the guy out before the go-ahead single, right?

There’s not much else to say in the way of analysis; the Nats should have been able to hold onto a 6 run lead, and Storen just had a bad night.  The fact that it came in such an important game is a shame.  If we want to look at a critical issue with the pitching staff on the night, it is probably this; the Nats pitchers put the Cards lead-off guy on in SIX of the nine innings, and that runner scored 5 of those times.  They got the lead-off hitter on base every inning after the 3rd.  That’s just a failure to execute by your pitching staff.  Of course it’s also a testament to the hitting ability of this St. Louis team up and down the lineup.

There goes the season; I had tickets for Game 1 of the NLCS.  I guess we have to wait til next year.

Detwiler shuts down the Cards in Game 4. Photo Haraz Ghanbari/AP via federalbaseball.com

The movie The Matrix has been on the movie channel rerun cycle lately, so if I may quote the character Morpheus, “Life it seems is not without a sense of irony.”  The irony of Ross Detwiler being the guy who bails out the Nats with his stellar Game 4 outing is this; had Stephen Strasburg been active, it would most likely have been Detwiler who would have made way in the rotation.  Instead he (finally) gave the Nats an effective start, going 6 innings, allowing just 3 hits and an un-earned run in the Nats 2-1 walk-off win.

Using a sinking fastball with great effect, Detwiler controlled the powerhouse St. Louis offense and kept the ball on the ground; 11 of his 18 outs recorded were ground ball outs.  He was slightly wild on the night (3 walks and only 59 of his 104 pitches for strikes) but umpire Jim Joyce‘s wide and varying strike zone helped both pitchers put up excellent lines on the night.  Detwiler, the least experienced of any of our starters and a guy who most thought wouldn’t even be in the rotation this year (I certainly didn’t think so as spring training unfolded), was the one guy who has stepped up and pitched to his capabilities.

The game of course will be remembered for Jayson Werth‘s fantastic 13 pitch at-bat, culminating with a walk-off home-run off Lance Lynn for what had to be one of the more memorable games in the team’s brief history.  Good for Werth and great for this team.  I’ve already got the image saved as an iconic moment in this franchise.

Other odds-and-ends:

• Thanks for pre-empting the game for an HOUR, TBS.  This was an unanticipated problem of trying to DVR the game and watch it later.  In addition to avoiding all social media, news sites and phone alerts so as not to have the game outcome spoiled, now I may have to start taping on multiple channels.  So I completely missed the first four innings.   Hence not so much analysis of Detwiler’s outing.
• How about Jordan Zimmermann in the first relief appearance of his major league career?  He was throwing harder than I’ve ever seen him throw; touching 97 on more than a few occasions.  His mph was no stadium gun hype either: pitch f/x shows a max of 97.2 and an average of 96.73 for Zimmermann.   Meanwhile, here’s the pitch f/x data for his start on 10/8: average 94.08, max of 95.6.    That’s 1.6 mph more on his max effort fastball.  He absolutely mowed down the heart of the St. Louis order (aided again by a questionable strike 3 call on Matt Holliday that just left him laughing).  I figured Zimmermann was going for more than an inning, with Davey Johnson perhaps thinking the game might go long.  Instead, it seems he was playing the odds that Craig Stammen wasn’t up for the task.
• Meanwhile, how about 9 straight punch outs to end the game?  It was refreshing to “remember” what the back-end of this bullpen is capable of.

This is the Nats pitching effort we’ve been accustomed to, and have waited for all series.  Now, suddenly, would you bet against this team in Game 5?  We have talked a lot about momentum and how the Nats had little heading into the post-season; they’ve certainly got it now.  Adam Wainwright should regress back towards the mean from his Game 1 start, and Gio Gonzalez should “egress” back towards his form of the bulk of the season.  Game 5 could be a pretty special experience.

The team escaped Game 1 with a victory despite Gonzalez’s struggles. Photo Joy Absalon/US Presswire via usatoday.com

Nats take Game 1 of the NLDS 3-2.

You know your pitcher is having a rough day when the score line reads “2-0-0.”  As in, 2 runs, 0 hits and 0 errors.  That was the score at the end of the second, an inning in which Nats starter Gio Gonzalez had walked no less than four batters, thrown a wild pitch and given up a sac fly for the second run despite giving up zero hits.

TBS broadcast a stat showing Gonzalez’s ERA on various days of rest; the key stat was that he had a 5.80 ERA when he had more than 5 days rest.  His days rest entering Game one of the playoffs?  Nine days.  He last threw in Philadelphia on September 27th.

Being able to rest your starters and “set up” your post season pitching rotation can be a blessing and a curse.  Today it was a curse; clearly Gonzalez was overthrowing, missing his spots, and his pitching line showed it.  He didn’t trust his curve early, was relying solely on his fast ball and couldn’t locate it to his desire.  To his credit he settled down for a couple innings, got a couple of very timely plays in the field, and exited having given up a sole meaningless hit to go with seven walks in 5 innings.  To me it looked like he was over-throwing, that he was “too strong.”  Starters are creatures of habit; throw one day, rest the 2nd, toss the 3rd, bullpen work the 4th, rest the 5th and then repeat.  When too many extra days are thrown in, younger guys can get off schedule.

In the first inning I thought perhaps Gonzalez was trying to “save” his curve for later in the game; a great strategy for professional pitchers who can do it.  Instead of showing guys your whole arsenal the first time through the order, pound them with fastballs and make them hit your pitch.  Then, in their 2nd and 3rd at bats mix in curves and off-speed stuff as out pitches as needed.  If you play your cards right, you can work through each hitter’s 3 at-bats keeping them off-balance and suddenly you’re deep into the 6th or 7th inning as a starter.   As it turned out, he wasn’t trusting his curve at all, and suddenly he was pressing to hit his spots.

Craig Stammen escaped an incredible jam in the bottom of the 7th, having loaded the bases with none out.  Usually that situation has a run expectancy of somewhere greater than 2 runs but the Nats defense came through; an Ian Desmond force out at the plate for the first out then a clutch 5-4-3 double play to end the inning.  Despite Tyler Moore‘s late inning heroics, this was the key of the win.

Adam Wainwright showed exactly why he’s a Cy Young candidate when he’s healthy; his curve-ball was absolutely fantastic on the night.  The already-strike-out prone Nats fanned 10 times, many times on a fantastic curve that Wainwright was controlling and commanding to the outside corner.  I was surprised when he got the hook despite being on 100 pitches; as it turned out he probably wasn’t going to finish 7 complete regardless.  You can’t really fault the bullpen management by Cards manager Mike Matheny; he had his 8th inning guy on the mound (Mitchell Boggs) and the Nats beat him.

Other thoughts from watching the game:

• I scoffed aloud when the TBS announcing crew spoke of Ryan Zimmerman‘s defensive prowness and said that “he rarely makes throwing errors.”  Really?  I know they don’t watch Nats games normally but the narrative behind Zimmerman’s throwing issues on non-pressure plays is well documented in DC.  He had 12 throwing errors on the year, and his 19 total errors tied him for 3rd in baseball.  Sure enough, a throwing error in the bottom of the 8th put the lead-off guy on board and caused the inning to be far more stressful than it needed to be for Tyler Clippard.  Guy on first with nobody out?  Roughly an 85% chance he scores.  For years I’ve defended Zimmerman and talked of the ridiculousness of “wasting” his defense by moving him to first, but the fact remains that every time he fields a routine ground ball I’m waiting for him to air-mail the throw.  When Anthony Rendon is ready to hit at the major league level, I think the talk is going to be about Zimmerman moving to first and not Rendon moving to another position.
• For as clutch as Moore, Ian Desmond and Kurt Suzuki were on the day, Jayson Werth and Danny Espinosa were the opposite.  TWICE Werth squandered bases-loaded situations with two outs, leaving a total of 7 guys on base.  He may be our current lead-off hitter, but he’s normally a middle-of-the-order bat and he needs to capitalize on situations like that.  In Werth’s defense (no pun intended), the over-the-shoulder grab was a game-saver in its own right, so on a day when he disappointed at the plate he made up for it in the field.  Meanwhile it was not really shocking that Espinosa whiffed over and over; he led the NL in strikeouts on the season and was batting from his clearly weaker side.
• How about Tyler Moore?  A fantastic job of hitting, hitting a pitcher’s pitch and not trying to do too much with it.  The old “game winning RBI” stat went the way of the Edsel, but tonight the clubhouse knows exactly who won that game.
• Here’s to the return of “Clip-Store-and-Save.”  Clippard escaped Zimmerman’s throwing error in the 8th and Drew Storen dispatched two of the best St. Louis hitters in a 1-2-3 ninth.  The team has to feel great about its bullpen on the night.  No worries about using your 3 best guys; they’ll all be able to go tomorrow then get a travel day of rest.
• The ridiculousness of the Hold stat: Boggs was credited with both a “Hold” and the Loss.  How is that possible?  Because he put on the go-ahead run that Mark Rzepcynski eventually allowed to score.  I think the Hold stat would carry more weight if it was withheld from relievers who don’t actually “hold” the game at bay and who contribute to the blown save and (if applicable) eventual loss.
• The sideline reporter couldn’t help but compare the handling of Wainwright to Stephen Strasburg; both had Tommy John surgery last year.  He said the Cardinals “trusted” Wainwright more and let him pitch 200 innings.  But they didn’t really talk about the real difference: Wainwright is into the club option portion of his FA contract and is no sure thing to stay with the team beyond 2013.  He’s also 30.  Compare that to Strasburg; he’s 23 and is under team control for at least four more seasons, and is likely to be offered a multi-year contract that buys out those arbitration seasons and a couple of FA seasons beyond that (similar to the deal Gonzalez signed).  The point is; the Nats know they’ve got this guy for years to come and clearly played it conservative with his re-hab.  Why this point is glossed over by pundits and bloggers is beyond me.  Every time I hear some know-it-all say things like, “there’s no proof that letting him pitch more than 160 innings will harm him” my blood boils.  Well, there’s no proof to the other side either!  The fact is you can either be reckless with your major investment and overuse him, or you can play it safe and hope for the best.  There’s no guarantees in life and thus there’s no guarantee that Strasburg won’t blow out his elbow again in 2013.  But on this point I can guarantee; had the team continued to ride Strasburg down the stretch, push his innings to 190-200, and then he re-injures himself in the last week of September?  You can guarantee all those know-it-alls would immediately be clucking their tongues about how the Nats “mis-used” Strasburg and should have played it safer.  I don’t envy Mike Rizzo this post-season, because unless the Nats win the world series there’s going to be the inevitable stories about how the Nats would have won had they kept their Ace in the rotation.  To borrow a quote from Major League, “Well, I guess then there’s just one thing left to do … win the whole !?@& thing.”  (link NSFW)

Great comeback by the Nats, snatching a win in a game they probably should have lost.  They now have the split in St. Louis and are in a commanding position to win this short series.

Verlander has already given the Tigers a huge leg up in their divisional series. Photo unknown via rumorsanddrants.com

As we have already seen in the playoffs thus far, predicting these coin-flip games, or predicting the outcome of individual games, is usually fool’s gold.  The first four games of the playoffs featured four Road-team wins.  You can argue that the higher-seeded teams in the divisional series are “better” than the home teams and this was to be expected … except that we’re talking about divisional winners/90+ win teams all around.  So far, the results have been surprising.

What’s also been tough this year is the lack of “announced” starters.  The Tigers seem to know exactly who they’re throwing for all 5 games of the series … but nobody else does.  Baltimore’s only announced starter (Jason Hammel) hasn’t pitched since September 11th and they have a handful of guys to pick from.  In last year’s version of this post I was able to do match-up analysis.  This year i’ll just look at the breadth of the starters to see who has an upper hand.

Washington-St. Louis:

• Washington’s likely starters: Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Jackson, Detwiler
• St. Louis’ likely starters: Wainwright, Garcia, Carpenter, Lohse

I’ve already talked at depth about this series in my previous post.  Just looking at starters, its hard not to see the Nats as the favorite.  Our Ace Gonzalez goes twice in the series, St. Louis doesn’t hit righties as well.  Carpenter could be a difference maker.

Detroit-Oakland:

• Oakland’s likely starters: Parker, Milone, Anderson, Blackley
• Detroit’s likely starters: Verlander, Fister, Sanchez and Scherzer

Justin Verlander is as close to unbeatable as there is, again evidenced by his game 1 dominance. (7ip, 3 hits one solo home run).  If he’s set to go in game 4, Oakland basically has to win out.  The rest of Detroit’s planned starters all sport sub 4.00 ERAs and all of them have at least a 113 ERA+.  In fact, how exactly is this only an 88 win team?  They have three unbelievable hitters in the middle of their order and plus starting pitching.  Max Scherzer and his dominating fastball apparently has recovered enough from a post-game celebration injury and should take the ball in Game 4.  Anibel Sanchez has been pretty effective since arriving from Miami in a mid-season trade (is Sanchez an off-season FA target of the Nats for their 5th starter?) and should give the Tigers a great chance to win his game 3 start.

Meanwhile, Oakland has a slew of rookie starters to choose from, all of whom sport sub 4.00 ERAs (the worst season ERA on the staff is Travis Blackley, who may or may not feature in the post-season).  Jarrod Parker threw game one and was effective, just not effective enough.  I was surprised to see Tommy Milone slated as the game 2 starter (perhaps chosen by virtue of his home/away splits; 2.74 ERA at home, 4.83 ERA away).  After that I honestly have no idea who we’ll see.  Oakland named 5 starters to its post-season roster, but AJ Griffen was pasted in his last outing and may be a long-man/emergency starter.  Brett Anderson is clearly the staff Ace at this point but only returned in late August.  Oakland’s been on such a tear though, its hard to bet against them.

Prediction: Verlander already gave Detroit the huge advantage with a game 1 victory.  Oakland needs more magic to advance.

New York-Baltimore:

• Baltimore’s likely starters: Hammel, Tillman, Chen, Saunders
• New York’s likely starters: Sabathia, Pettitte, Kuroda, Phelps?

Baltimore’s only announced starter as of today is Jason Hammel, who (as noted above) hasn’t thrown in 3 weeks.  After that?  The Orioles used 12 different starters on the season and at one point demoted 3/5ths of their rotation in a week.  They seem set to roll out the above named guys after Hammel, but this leaves out both Miguel Gonzalez and Steve Johnson, who were effective down the stretch.  I can’t find a link for Baltimore’s named divisional roster as of the time of this writing; which would have helped.

Meanwhile, looking at New York’s options past the above named three guys, I would initially guess that New York is going to a 3-man rotation for the playoffs.  What would you rather do?  See three effective veterans going on 3 days rest, or to give post-season starts to the likes of Phil Hughes or Ivan Nova?  Freddie Garcia lost his starting spot in September when Pettitte returned but isn’t an option because of how ineffective he’s been all season.  Would you give a game-4 start to rookie David Phelps?  It seems amazing to me that the highest payroll team in the league can’t find an effective 4th and 5th starter (getting Pettitte out of retirement?  Giving Garcia 17 starts after signing him off the trash heap?) and I think it continues to be their downfall (only one World Series appearance in 8 years).

New York swept the Orioles in the first series of the season, split a 2-game set in mid-season, but lost EVERY other series exactly 2 games to 1 on the season.  Is there any reason not to think they’ll do something similar in this series?  I see a split in Baltimore and then New York struggling to win 2 of 3 in New York.  Does Sabathia struggle going on 3 days rest?  More importantly, does Pettitte??  He should be on a golf course right now, not pitching in October.  It should be interesting to see if New York uses a 4th starter.

San Francisco-Cincinnati:

• San Francisco’s likely starters: Cain, Bumgarner, Vogelsong, Lincecum
• New York’s likely starters: Cueto, Arroyo, Latos, Bailey

We’ve already seen some interesting mishaps with Cincinnati’s best laid plans; Cueto out with bask spasms after just 2 batters, planned game 3 starter Latos forced into action.  Now it looks like Cueto will go game 3, with Bailey either pushed to game 4 or skipped outright since Latos only threw 4 innings in game 1.  Or perhaps Bailey goes game 4 with Latos pushed to a possible game 5.  Either way, the wild-cards here are Cueto’s health and Arroyo’s effectiveness.  If Cueto returns for a game 3 start, with Cincinnati haven already “stolen” a game against SF’s ace, the Giants are in trouble.

Meanwhile, has San Francisco made a decision on its starters?  They’ve named all 5 (the above four plus Barry Zito) to the post-season roster with an unnamed player dropping to the bullpen.  I think they’ll go with supposed ace Tim Lincecum as the 4th starter despite Zito’s numbers being superior. Meanwhile, Ryan Vogelsong has been vulnerable down the stretch despite good numbers on the season.

I think the back-end of the Giant’s rotation is a huge question mark, and if the Reds have already stolen a game against Cain, this series may be short.

We need Edwin Jackson to perform against his former team. Photo Nats team official via espn.com

Ok, I’ll admit to being (as one commenter said recently) the “Eeyore” of Nationals fans.  I was scared of Atlanta and thought we would struggle to beat them in a short series starting on their turf.  I posted my baseball predictions and the two teams I thought would make the series both lost under sometimes interesting circumstances.  The unbeatable ace Kris Medlen got beat, losing a start for the Braves for the first time in 24 times (not that he really pitched badly; I’ll take a 6+ inning, 3 hit, 0 walk performance every day of the week.  Think about how difficult it is to give up 5 runs on 3 hits…).  So perhaps I’ll understand if you don’t really want to trust my opinion on predicting the divisional series.

Anyway.  So the Nats are traveling to St. Louis to start the NLDS.  If you’re looking for a guess as to who has the advantage by looking at the two meetings between the teams this year, you may find definitive proof wanting.

• The Nats took 3 of 4 at the end of August from St. Louis, bombing them for 31 runs in four games and really roughing up three of St. Louis’ best starters (in order Jaime Garcia, Adam Wainwright and Kyle Lohse, tagging each for 5-6 runs).  Only Jake Westbrook kept the Nats offense at bay, and as far as I can tell he’s not going to be on the playoff roster.  The one loss in this series was in one of the more amazing games the Nats played this year; they blew a 4 run first inning lead, fell behind 8-6 on Jordan Zimmermann‘s worst outing of the year, rallied to take the lead only to have the bullpen blow the game.
• The Nats then traveled to St. Louis the last week of the season and were pretty much bombed themselves, with St. Louis scoring 26 runs in three games while taking 2 of 3 with our guys Edwin Jackson and Ross Detwiler having nights they’d rather forget.

So, which series is more educational to help predict what may happen now?  As commenters have pointed out, momentum means nothing and a shutout yesterday indicates nothing for today.  Fair enough.  We have learned that both offense are capable of really putting runs on the board, fast.  But that wasn’t exactly news either; the teams were 2nd (Cardinals) and 5th (Nationals) in runs scored in the NL this year.

What is fair to say is that the Nats probably have a more dangerous opponent in St. Louis; they’re a better offense, though they clearly hit right-handed hitters better than lefties (a 113 wRC+ versus right handed hurlers versus 104 versus lefties).  And they’re getting back a grizzled post-season veteran in Chris Carpenter just in time for the playoffs.  Carpenter is probably on most people’s short list for “guys i’d trust to start Game 7” in this league, and now the Nats seem set to face him in Game 3.

Lets look at the pitching matchups (some of this is a guess; official starters havn’t been named all the way through the 5-game series but the below should be what we see);

The good news: Washington has shown it can blast St. Louis starters.  As mentioned above, the team put up very big numbers on 3 of the 4 starters they anticipate seeing in this series.  Meanwhile, St. Louis gets to see our Ace Gio Gonzalez twice; the last time they saw him Gio pitched a 5-hit shutout.  They also see Detwiler in game 4, meaning three of their five potential series games are against Lefties (whom they are weaker against).  Zimmermann’s home-away splits favor him on the road, and I think Jackson will be looking for revenge for his poor outing against them the last time out.

I’ll admit; I was scared of Atlanta.  And I’m wary of St. Louis, especially after the late season spanking.  But, they didn’t see Gonzalez in that series and now are set to see him twice.  The Nats offense isn’t going to be afraid of any St. Louis starter (perhaps outside of Carpenter, who a lot of them havn’t seen in a while), and should put runs on the board.

Prediction?  I think the Nats have the pitching matchup advantage in 3 of the 5 games and may only be a pitching “underdog” in the Jackson-Carpenter start.  The goal is to get a split in St Louis and Gonzalez-Zimmermann gives them a great shot in both games.  I like our chances.

20-game Winner Gonzalez is our likely #1 starter in the playoffs. Photo Joy Absalon/US Presswire via usatoday.com

The Nats rotation has been incredibly stable this year; only a mid-season experiment with Chien-Ming Wang interrupted a near season-long quintet of starters unmarred by injury or poor performance.  The shutdown and playoff unavailability of Stephen Strasburg is well, well documented, so we won’t talk about him here.  But two important decisions await Davey Johnson in terms of his playoff roster construction: playoff rotation and bullpen construction.  Lets take these questions one-by-one:

1. What is your playoff rotation?  Here’s the evolution of our rotation this year:

• The year started off with your starters in this order: Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Jackson and then Detwiler. The starters went R-L-R-R-L.
• After the All Star Break, Johnson shuffled the starters and re-ordered them to go Zimmermann, Gonzalez, Strasburg, Jackson, Detwiler (still R-L-R-R-L), ostensibly to give Strasburg a bit more rest and extend his season a few days.
• On August 3rd (around a double-header) Zimmermann and Gonzalez switched places.  Now you’ve got Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Strasburg, Jackson and Detwiler (L-R-R-R-L).  All three RHSPs are in order, as are the two LHSPs.
• On August 15th around an off day, Detwiler and Jackson switched places, probably to keep Detwiler on regular rest and probably to fix the aforementioned issue of 3 RHSPs in a row (starters now Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Strasburg, Detwiler, Jackson for L-R-R-L-R).
• On September 12th, John Lannan replaces the shut-down Strasburg in the rotation.  Now we’re Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Lannan, Detwiler and Jackson for L-R-L-L-R.

If we play out the rotation the rest of the season, barring any more rain-outs or injuries, the starters will be (Starting 9/21):

9/21: Jackson
9/22: Gonzalez
9/23: spot starter Wang, to give the rotation its regular rest.
9/24: Zimmermann
9/25: Lannan
9/26: Detwiler
9/27: Jackson
9/28: Gonzalez
9/29: Zimmermann
9/30: Lannan
10/1: Detwiler
10/2: Jackson
10/3: Gonzalez

At this point I’m going to assume that the Nats will win the division and go straight to the divisional series, which (per MLB’s playoff schedule) starts either Saturday 10/6 or Sunday 10/7.  Which day the Nats start will be critical; if the Nats are the #1 seed they’ll start Sunday; if they’re the #2 seed they’ll start Saturday.

But in either case I think we’re going to see some manipulation of the above schedule, because I think the team wants Gonzalez to start the opener.   And he cannot start an opener on 10/6 or 10/3 if he throws 10/3.   We may see him skipped on 9/28 and then throwing a start 10/1 (which I’d be happy for; that’s the last game I have tix for this year), which would put him on regular rest for either a 10/6 or 10/7 start.

After that though, there’s some decisions to be made.  The NLDS ridiculously gives the lower-seed the first two home games, so I think Johnson may want to have some options available to him for his 2nd, 3rd, and 4th starter (I think its a pretty basic assumption that Lannan is being left completely off the playoff roster; more on this later down when talking about the bullpen options).  Here’s the home/away splits of our 4 likely playoff starters (numbers as of 9/21/12).

• Gonzalez: 8-4, 2.58 ERA at home, 11-4, 3.24 ERA away.
• Zimmermann: 4-3, 3.70 ERA at home, 7-5, 2.23 ERA away.
• Jackson: 5-6, 3.72 ERA at home, 4-4, 4.04 ERA away.
• Detwiler: 8-2, 2.59 ERA at home, 2-4, 3.78 ERA away.

Interesting; Zimmermann is far more effective away, Detwiler is far more effective at home, and Jackson is just about the same either way.  This seems to imply that Zimmermann is your best bet to take the 2nd start, away from home, then line up Detwiler-Jackson-Gonzalez (or some combination thereof) at home.

Here’s another take; Johnson likes to play match-ups with certain teams.  Will the Nats opponent factor into the equation?  Assuming the Nats are the #1 seed, your likely wild-card winners right now are Atlanta and St. Louis (its hard to see a scenario where St. Louis loses its current 3 game WC lead in the next 12 days, but it could happen, but for the purposes of this article we’ll assume these two teams hold on).  How do these teams fare against lefty versus righty starters?

• Atlanta is hitting .247 as a team versus Lefties with an 86 wRC+.  That’s bad.
• Atlanta is hitting .251 as a team versus Righties with a 97 wRC+.  That’s certainly better than they do versus lefties.
• St. Louis is hitting .275 as a team versus Lefties with an 113 wRC+.  That’s basically 2nd in the majors behind the uber-hitting Rangers.
• St. Louis is hitting .270 as a team versus Righties with a 104 wRC+.  That’s roughly a 10% difference in Run Creation.

So, it seems like if we play Atlanta, we want to load up on Lefties while if we play St. Louis we want to load up on Righties.  This would seem to indicate that, if Atlanta is our opponent we’ll want to go Gonzalez-Zimmermann-Detwiler-Jackson-Gonzalez again, meaning Atlanta has to face 2 lefties in the first 3 games plus 3 out of 5.  If we play St. Louis, you’d think that we’ll want to switch up Detwiler and Jackson so that St. Louis gets L-R-R-L-L.  The idea being that once we get home, even though we’re lefty-heavy we’ll have the advantage.

However, with the #1, #2 and #3 seeds far from settled with a week and a half to go, lets also look at the same logic for both Cincinnati and San Francisco, since its conceivable at this point we could be playing either of these teams (use the same links in the Atlanta links above to see these statistics):

• Cincinnati is hitting .268 as a team versus Lefties with an 107 wRC+.   Both Tied for 6th in the majors.
• Cincinnati is hitting .248 as a team versus Righties with a 89 wRC+.
• San Francisco is hitting .268 as a team versus Lefties with an 96 wRC+.
• San Francisco is hitting .270 as a team versus Righties with a 98 wRC+.

Conclusions?  Cincinnati matches up very well against lefties and struggles against righties, while San Francisco is a pretty well balanced team with no real weakness against either side.

One last factor is post-season experience, of which this group has very little.  Jackson is the sole guy with any post season experience, it being last year with potential opponent St. Louis.  I cannot see Johnson bumping any of the guys who are pitching better than him though, at least in a short series, based on this veteran experience (we’ll revisit this though in a 7-game series, where the identity of the 4th starter is incredibly important, as he only goes once in that series).

In any scenario, I think your first two starters away are going to be Gonzalez and Zimmermann.  After that will depend on the opponent.

2. What is your playoff bullpen?  By virtue of the fact that we don’t need a 5th starter, the team can carry an extra player.  Here’s the bullpen as it sits now, divided into “regulars” and 9/1 call-ups:

• Regulars: Burnett, Clippard, MGonzalez, Gorzelanny, Mattheus, Stammen, Storen
• Sept 1 callups: Duke, Garcia, Wang (and technically Lannan).

I think this decision is pretty simple; you keep the 7 “regulars” and add in power arm Christian Garcia, who has been lights out since arriving, as an extra middle-relief guy.  There’s no reason to have minor league starters Duke, Wang or Lannan on the post-season roster; the only function they’d have is as long-men, but the regulars include two such arms already in Stammen and Gorzelanny.

The possibility exists that Johnson will opt for an extra bench guy instead of an 8th bullpen arm, but I doubt he’d choose that route.  Your “extra” bench guys right now are Leon (3rd catcher), Brown and Perez (ofs), and one of either DeRosa or Tracy (technically it was DeRosa who got added off the DL after roster expansion; he likely would have been delayed in the minors had this happened earlier in the season).  I can’t see any reason to keep any of these guys on a post-season roster at the expense of an 8th reliever.  Tracy gets a few ABs a week and can only play 1B, while DeRosa can provide cover at multiple positions and seems to have more value.  I could be wrong though; Tracy continues to deliver timely pinch hits in the clutch (as he did this past weekend).

Man, it feels good to talk about playoff baseball!

Here’s the AA version of the 2012 season pitching staff review.  I’m going down the line from top to bottom; AAA is here.  As with the other reviews, we’ll look at the main rotation, the substitute and spot starters, then focus on key relievers.  Rehab appearances are not discussed.

Harrisburg starters.  The rotation started the season with Gilliam, Demny, Mandel, Rosenbaum and Ballard.  Lets see how the original rotation and other primary starters fared.

• Robert Gilliam, the “forgotten man” in the mega Gio Gonalez trade in December, made the opening day start for Harrisburg but didn’t live up to his billing.  He got 13 starts before going to the bullpen, and then eventually getting demoted to Potomac.  Season AA numbers: 3-7, 6.38 ERA.  Outlook for next season: The team likes him as a starter; i’m guessing they give him another whirl in the AA rotation.
• Paul Demny took a step back in his progressive career with the Nats, going 6-8 with a 5.43 ERA in 23 starts before moving primarily to the bullpen at the end of the season.  He’s still very young (just turned 23) but he’s finishing his 5th pro season and 2013 will be his “walk year.”  Interestingly, the Nats named Demny one of their AFL participants, an odd selection based on his performance this season. Outlook for next season: as with Gilliam, I’d be surprised if Demny remains a starter.  AA bullpen as a swingman unless the team needs a 5th starter.
• Jeff Mandel started the year in the Harrisburg rotation and put in 11 middling starts before getting moved to AAA to replace an equally ineffective Mitch Atkins.  This marked the third straight season he had started in AA and moved to AAA, a sure sign of an organizational arm who filled in where needed.  Outlook for next season: see AAA post.
• Danny Rosenbaum was supposed to be the Ace, the Star of this rotation.  He was the highest-ranked prospect and was the Organization’s best starting pitching prospects.  He didn’t really live up to his billing, going 8-10 with a 3.94 ERA and a 1.31 whip in 26 starts.  He looked great his first 10 starts and then struggled the rest of the season.  He turns 25 in the off-season and is Rule-5 Eligible.  I think the team has to protect him.  Outlook for next season: Added to 40-man roster ahead of the Rule-5 draft but back in AA to start 2013, with an eye on a mid-season promotion to AAA.
• Mike Ballard was a Minor League Free Agent signed from Baltimore (after failing to make it in the Houston organization after 5 minor league seasons).  You would have thought he’d have been in AAA but started the season in the AA rotation.  After 12 up-and-down starts he got absolutely pounded on June 13th, hit the DL with “elbow discomfort” and has been there ever since.   Final season stats: 1-5, 4.31 ERA.  Outlook for next season: released.  You hate to cut a guy with a season-ending injury, but business is business.
• Ryan Perry, astutely acquired for Collin Balester (who failed to impress in Detroit and was DFA’d earlier this year) in spring training and he competed for the MLB bullpen.  He featured briefly, was ineffective and was optioned to AAA.  The team took a look at his repertoire and decided to try to convert him to a starter in AA.  The results?  Pretty good; a 2.84 ERA and 1.11 whip in 13 AA starts.  Outlook for next season: here’s the problem with Perry; he’s out of options for 2013.  He was added to a 40-man roster in April 2009, and burned options in 2009, 2011 and this year.   So he has to either make the MLB club or be DFA’d at the end of spring training.  So look for Perry to compete for the #5 starter job or be considered trade bait in the off-season.
• Kevin Pucetas is another Minor League Free Agent who probably was too experienced for AA (as with Ballard); he spent the previous 3 seasons in the Pacific Coast League.  For Harrisburg in 2012 he was excellent out of the pen early (posting a 1.59 era in 34 relief innings) and then was relatively mediocre in 12 starts (5-5 with a 4.81 ERA).  You have to think he was merely filler for a gap in pitcher development in this system and will be looking for work elsewhere for 2013.  Outlook for next season: with another organization.
• Trevor Holder finally looked like he was putting things together early in Potomac, earned a mid-season promotion to Harrisburg and put up a 3.78 ERA in 10 starts (9 actual starts plus a 10th game where the “starter” went one inning on a rehab assignment).  The knock on Holder was that he was a total signability pick in 2009 after the team spent big on Strasburg and Storen.  It is good to see him putting some things together.  Outlook for next season: AA rotation.
• Ryan Tatusko got 8 starts in 27 appearances in a long-man/spot-starter/swingman role for the team.  He was slightly better as a reliever versus a starter (his splits showing a 2.72 ERA with greater than a k/inning as a reliever, a 4.50 ERA in his 8 starts).  I have always liked Tatusko (not the least reason of which is that he writes a blog) and was eager to see him contributed after he came over (with Tanner Roark) in the Cristian Guzman trade.  But his time with the organization may be at an end; he just finished his 6th minor league season and he took a step back with the organization.  Outlook for next season: I thought he’d have been in AAA by now; perhaps 2013 is the year.  AAA swingman.
• Other guys who got spot starts here and there (non-rehab):
  • Brian Broderick: the team’s former rule-5 pick never made it with St. Louis, and when he was released the Nats picked him up.  He got a handful of appearances down the stretch and finished the season with 3 starts.  The team clearly likes the guy and seems willing to give him a chance.  Outlook for next season: AAA rotation.
  • Austin Bibens-Dirkx, he had a couple starts early before getting promoted up to AAA, where he probably should have started the season based on his experience.   Outlook for next season: (as copied from the AAA post): with another organization.
  • Adam Olbrychowski got called up to make the last start of the season.  Outlook for next season: see High-A post.
  • Of note: Chien-Ming Wang made no less than NINE rehab starts in AA (and fifteen overall minor league rehab starts).  You can argue whether or not the organization was “bending” the DL/service time rules or not; either way I can’t see how Wang stays with this team for 2013 and beyond.

Harrisburg Relievers: taking a look at the relief corps at the end of the season.  They used an awful lot of them.

• Marcos Frias finishes his 6th pro season taking a step back from his 2011 numbers in high-A.  On the year, a 4.82 ERA in 65 1/3 relief innings.   He’s still very young, being a DSL graduate and yet to turn 24.  Technically he’s rule-5 eligible but its hard to see a team taking a flier on a RH reliever without knock-out stuff.  Outlook for next season: back in AA bullpen.
• Erik Davis was generally excellent all season for Harrisburg, posting a 2.52 ERA in 64 1/3 relief innings.  He earned a late season promotion to AAA.  The former starter and trade bounty for Alberto Gonzalez technically is rule-5 eligible but the risk of losing him seems slight.  Outlook for next season: AAA bullpen, looking to become the next Christian Garcia.
• Patrick McCoy had a pretty good season out of the pen in Harrisburg; 7-3 with a 3.70 era in 58 1/3 innings.  He was rule-5 eligible in 2011 but didn’t get picked up.  Now he’s one year from being a Minor League Free Agent.  Outlook for next season: AA or perhaps AAA bullpen, whoever needs a left hander.
• Hector Nelo, who was released by Texas in April of 2011, finished the year with strong numbers as the team’s primary closer.  He had a 2.73 era and 16 saves in 52 2/3s innings over 47 appearances.  More importantly his K/9 rates really jumped from 2011.   He’s the kind of big-time arm that Mike Rizzo loves (he can reportedly hit 100mph) and should get some looks going foward.  He’s tied to the organization for one more season.  Outlook for next season: the closer in AAA.
• Rafael Martin was as unbelievably bad statistically in 2012 as he was good in 2011.  How do you go from a 1.65 ERA across 2 organizations in 2011 to a 6.69 ERA in 2012?  Perhaps the answer is either a late-season injury or fatigue; in his last four appearances in AA this season he gave up 11 earned runs; the 6 appearances before that just one.  He’s no spring chicken though; he’s already 28 and is far far too old for AA at this point.  Outlook for next season: bullpen in AAA and hoping for a rebound to 2011’s numbers.
• Cameron Selik pitched 1/3 of an inning in AA before a season-ending injury.  Outlook for next season: See High-A writeup.
• Pat Lehman got promoted to AAA.  Joe Testa got demoted to High-A.  See those write-ups for outlooks.
• Other Relievers who appeared in AA of note (not including Rehabbing MLBers): Outlook for next season for all of these guys seems the same: either continued “org guy” middle reliever or minor league FA in another organization.
  • Zech Zinicola came back to the team after being rule-5 drafted in late 2009, and remains an organizational arm.
  • Jimmy Barthmaier split time between AA and high-A.  Org arm.
  • Corey VanAllen was demoted down from AAA and then got hurt in July.   Org arm, maybe a loogy in AA again.

Summary

Harrisburg struggled to find a good consistent group of starters.  My guesses on what role these guys will play next season list too many guys getting dumped into the bullpen, so it may be interesting to see who gets another shot at starting in 2013.  Unfortunately these injuries and inconsistencies cost the team a near-certain 2nd half playoff spot.

How much will Strasburg's shutdown really affect the team? Photo allansgraphics.com

Here we are, September 1st, and every single columnist and blogger who covers baseball has, by law, added their 2 cents to the Stephen Strasburg shutdown debate. And as the imminent shutdown date approaches (I had predicted 9/12 being his last start either in a post or the comments section, and that date still seems to hold; 9/12 gives him 3 more starts, which seems to match what we’ve been hearing lately out of Davey Johnson and the front office), I’m honestly not looking forward to the coming blitz of additional opinions from the blogosphere talking about what idiots the Nationals are, blah blah.

My succinct opinion on the shutdown can be expressed in this metaphor; if you had open heart surgery, and your cardiologist says to you, “take it easy next season and only pitch 160 innings,” wouldn’t you follow his advice?   Both the doctor who performed Strasburg’s surgery (Lewis Yocum) and the famed James Andrews (together essentially the two leading experts on the injury and the surgery) have come out in support of the National’s conservative plan.  To every other pundit out there who says something like, “there’s no proof that shutting him down will protect him in the long run,” I’ll say this: I trust the guy with the M.D. behind his name over the internet dork sitting in his mom’s basement who thinks he knows better.

Even my wife has added her 2 cents; while watching Saturday’s game (a pretty amazing back and forth offensive outburst ending with St. Louis scraping a run against Drew Storen to take it 10-9), one of the telecasters added his opinion on the matter and my wife asked me why the Nats didn’t just “let him pitch less” earlier on in the season.  A common theme for Strasburg shutdown critics; to which I say this: if you think the whole shutdown thing isn’t playing will with the Veterans in the Nationals clubhouse, exactly how do you think it would have played out if the entire pitching rotation was manipulated all season on account of one guy?  Baseball is a team game; you have 25 guys out there who contribute to each win, and I’m pretty sure the veterans on this team wouldn’t have taken well to having their routines thrown off in an effort to squeeze 5 more starts out of a 24 yr old (no matter how promising he may be).

But I digress slightly from the point of this post.  I’m of the opinion that we may see an interesting phenomenon occur when Strasburg gets shutdown for the season.  We may see a theory that Bill Simmons has come to popularize called “The Ewing Theory.”  In essence, the theory says that teams with stars who receive an inordinate amount of media attention often perform better once that star has either left the team or gone down with injury.  Teams rally around each other after their star player either leaves or goes down with injury partly because of the “relief” they get from media questions, partly to show that they can win without the big name, and partly (in some cases) because the star player was “holding the team back” by virtue of his presence (this happens more in sports like Basketball, where one player can really command an entire team’s attention; less so in Football or Baseball).  It is named after Patrick Ewing because his 1998-99 New York Knicks ended up in the finals despite Ewing going down with injury.  The phenomena has repeated itself in a number of notable ways over the years; off the top of my head these situations fit the theory:

• UVA basketball went as far in the NCAA tournament without Ralph Sampson in 1984 than they ever did with him.
• The NY Giants won the super bowl the year AFTER Tiki Barber retired.
• The Seattle Mariners won 116 games the year after Alex Rodriguez left as a free agent.
• The Tennessee Volunteers won the National title the year AFTER Peyton Manning graduated.

I think this team may exhibit a bit of inadvertent Ewing Theory once Strasburg sits.  You have to think the players are tired of being asked about it; who’s to say they won’t just keep on rolling and play even better once Strasburg gets shutdown and the issue is done?  Plus, here’s some corroborating evidence that may help out;

1. After September 12th, the Nats will only miss three Strasburg starts.  The difference between Strasburg starting those three games and John Lannan is likely to be nearly negligible.  Strasburg’s Wins above Replacement (bWAR) figure for the season is 2.6 right now through 26 starts.  That’s .1 WAR per start that Strasburg gives the team over a replacement player.  And Lannan isn’t exactly a replacement-level pitcher; he owns a sub 4.00 ERA and a 103 ERA+ for his career.  Lannan’s WAR for his two spot starts this year?  Exactly .2, or the same .1 WAR contributed per game as Strasburg.

2. Lannan is the quintessential guy pitching for a contract, and in all likelihood will use these three spot starts to showcase himself for his eventual new team in 2013.  It isn’t that Lannan isn’t a good pitcher, its just that he isn’t the type of guy Mike Rizzo likes to have in his rotation (i.e., power arms with high k/9 rates).   So I’d bet dollars to donuts that Lannan pitches three quality games in mid-to-late September, then gets left off the post-season roster and eventually gets non-tendered at the arbitration offer deadline.

3. Of the 6 series that the Nats play between September 12th and the end of the season, at least 3 will be against teams with no playoff implications (home-and-home versus Philadelphia plus a 4-game home series against Milwaukee).  The Nats are also at St. Louis in the second to last series, by which time the Cardinals may very well be completely out of the Wild Card race.  If the end of 2011 showed us anything, its that teams out of playoff contention in September have a tendency to play really, really weak lineups of prospects and September 1 call-ups.  Look at some of the lineups that the Nats faced in September of last year (especially some of the New York line-ups): they were literally two regulars and 7 AAA guys.  There’s no reason to think that the Nats won’t improve on the .655 winning percentage they’ve had for the last two months despite not having Strasburg in the rotation.

But, the critic may say, wouldn’t you rather have Strasburg pitching Game 1 of your divisional series?  Well, yes of course.  In arguably putting out a playoff rotation of Strasburg-Gonzalez-Zimmermann-Jackson is better than Gonzalez-Zimmermann-Jackson-Detwiler.  But, our playoff rotation is still pretty darn good.  Using the probable playoff teams as of this writing, here’s how our playoff rotation would rank with other NL playoff teams (the ranking is league rank in ERA)

• Washington: Gonzalez (12), Zimmermann (8), Jackson (17), Detwiler (13).  Strasburg, btw, is 10th.
• Cincinnati: Cueto (1), Latos (27), Arroyo (29), Bailey (37).  Leake, their #5 starter, is 43rd.
• San Francisco: Cain (4), Vogelsong (9), Bumgarner (11), Zito (42).  Except there’s no way they’d go with Zito in a playoff series, so you’d be seeing Lincecum, amazingly ranked 50th of 51 qualifying NL starters in ERA this year.
• Atlanta: Maholm (14), Hudson (25), Minor (46).  Their likely 4th starter would be Medlen, who in 6 starts has a 1.71ERA.
• St. Louis: Lohse (3), Wainwright (32), Westbrook (33).  Their likely 4th starter would be Garcia over Lynn, but Garcia’s era would rank him 45th or so if he qualified.

San Francisco’s rotation looks pretty tough.  Until you remember that the Nats swept them at home and just beat them 2 of 3 on the road for a 5-1 season split.  In fact, of probable playoff teams here’s the Nats current season records:

• Cincinnati: 5-2.  We beat them 3 of 4 in April, then took 2 of 3 in Cincinnati in May.
• San Francisco: 5-1.  Swept at home, took 2 of 3 on the road.
• Atlanta: 10-5 at current, with 3 critical games in Atlanta in mid September.
• St. Louis: 3-1 in the series just concluded, with a 3 game set in St. Louis in late September.

Wow.  I didn’t even realize just how well the Nats have played against the league’s best until I looked it up.  This has to give any Nats fan some serious confidence heading into a playoff series, no matter who we may end up playing.

Here’s hoping the Strasburg shutdown doesn’t affect the team as much as pundits seem to believe.