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Robert Coello throws a very “old school” pitch. Photo wiki/flickr via james_in_to account.

Thanks to Rob Neyer for this article, posted 5/16/13 (and subsequently Jeff Passan in this 5/28/13 article and this Ted Berg USAToday article on 5/29/13) about Robert Coello, a journeyman hurler currently with the Los Angeles Angels who throws what one executive calls a “Knuckle-Forkball” but what in reality is an “Original Forkball.” Not a “Split Fingered Fastball” mind you, but a true-on Forkball. Neyer then goes into some research he did with Bill James on the pitch and has a pretty interesting history on this very rare pitch.

Neyer’s post has video of the pitch as it comes out of his hand (as does the Usatoday article) and indeed the ball knuckles and dives like a knuckler. He only threw one forkball in his 5/15/13 outing but has thrown more than a few since and is getting some national media notice.

Here’s Pitch F/X data for Coello’s 5/15/13 outing. They classified this pitch as a “FS,” pitch f/x lingo for “Fastball-Split” or a splitter. He threw it at 79.5mph. Since then, he’s thrown (I guess) 11 more Forkballs (now classified in Pitch F/X as a “FO”) at an average of 79.2mph. By way of comparison, R.A. Dickey‘s average knuckleball velocity in 2013 has been 75.3mph. And Dickey’s knuckleball is considered so effective because he throws it with such pace (Tim Wakefield only threw his 65-66mph for the last few years of his career). Imagine if Coello can command this pitch and throw it consistently and frequently; he’d have a chance of combining a Dickey-esque fast knuckleball with his 91mph fastball. That could be quite a combination.

So, why is this guy so interesting to me? Because in my own abbreviated amateur baseball pitching career, I threw the same pitch! Somehow over the years screwing around while warming up as a middle infielder I discovered this pitch; you jam the baseball between your index and middle fingers and then throw the ball such that it “pops” out of your hand (it will even make a popping noise, not unlike a soft snapping fingers noise) and begins knuckling towards its target. It definitely is not a diving/sinking split fingered fastball motion; it knuckles in. You can throw it with some pace; you throw it with the same motion and intensity as a fastball, except that it gets hung up in the webbing of your fingers and knuckles out. It is relatively easy to control, especially if you throw over the top and just “aim” the ball at the middle of the plate. I used it as a 3rd pitch but one outing in particular it was moving so much that my catcher called nothing but forkballs.

I always called it a forkball, but figured it knuckled instead of diving down like a typical split-fingered fastball because I wasn’t throwing it at the pace of a professional pitcher. Now as it turns out, it looks like I was just throwing a “throw back” pitch rarely seen in the professional ranks. Cool.

This world needs more Forkball pitchers!

Post-post update: Fangraphs Eno Sarris had a great article on him 9/23/13, showing multiple gifs of the pitch, as well as noting that Coello now has a top-30 wFB pitch thanks to the uniqueness of the forkball.

Written by Todd Boss

May 31st, 2013 at 7:01 am

Posted in Majors Pitching

Tagged with bill james, eno sarris, jeff passan, ra dickey, rob neyer, robert coello, ted berg, tim wakefield, todd boss

Why is Toradol “ok” but Steroids and HGH “bad?”

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Did Papelbon inadvertantly open up a whole new PED angle? Photo Keith Allison via wikipedia/flickr

The latest salvo in the “Questionable Performance Enhancing Drug” storyline in today’s professional baseball landscape was this interesting statement from Jonathan Papelbon last week; he and other Boston teammates frequently were injected with the drug Toradol by team doctors when they were feeling “run-down” or overly fatigued in order to get a quick pick-me-up for a game. Apparently Toradol had the effect of giving players a four hour window of feeling “pretty damn good” and it was used by a portion of the Boston clubhouse. Its also in use in many other clubhouses (though apparently not in Philadelphia, who told Papelbon his Toradol days were over).

Ok, how is Toradol not a Performance Enhancing Drug? It certainly seems to qualify based on WADA’s “Three Criteria” for PEDs:

The capacity to enhance performance (clearly, as discussed by Papelbon)
Use can result in negative health consequences (absolutely; Jon Lester suffered some of them and had a serious internal bleeding issue, and now Boston is reportedly reviewing its use of the drug)
Violate the spirit of sports. (opinion based .. but after reading what Toradol can do, how can you NOT argue that its use violates the “spirit of sports?”)

(2/15/13 update: The Red Sox trainer who administered all this Toradol apparently “flouted” state laws by doing so, as reported by Jeff Passan, who is all over this case.)

By the way, WADA adds a drug to its banned list if it qualifies for TWO of the above three categories (hence the addition of things like “Deer Antler Spray” despite it having no known side effects, since it clearly seems to violate the spirit clause).

This leads me to my larger question: Why is Toradol, and as a side effect Steroids and HGH “bad” but the use of Cortisone, Toradol considered “ok” in terms of usage? What do Cortisone shots do? They enable a player to play through pain that otherwise may keep him out. Uh … isn’t that the definition of a “performance enhancing” substance?? Our own Ryan Zimmerman clearly benefited from cortisone shots in 2012; his before/after splits after receiving shots in his shoulder are pretty distinct and obvious. Cortisone itself also fits the 3 WADA principles; it enhances performance, it has side-effects that many doctors are quite worried about, and I’m sure some would agree it changes the “spirit of the game” in some ways.

If your answer involves something along the lines of “PEDs are banned because they’re illegal” then I’ll counter with this: Steroid’s aren’t illegal; they’re just controlled. But so is Cortisone; you can’t just inject yourself with the stuff without a doctor’s order. And so is Toradol; you can’t go into your local supermarket and buy injectable Toradol. And so is HGH: ask yourself why most elderly persons keep bottles of the stuff on their bed-side table? Even something like a B-12 shot raises some issues; lots of players get B-12 shots and swear by the natural effect it has, but as with Toradol I’m pretty sure you can’t just get injectable B-12 and administer it yourself. Even though B-12 is naturally occurring, in order to naturally consume the amounts of B-12 being injected you’d likely have to eat a bushel of clams (or some other high B-12 food) every day.

Honestly I may have the biggest issue with the classification of HGH as a PED, when you think about what HGH is (a naturally occurring growth hormone that is generates solely to help the body heal itself after an injury or illness) and then think about what Cortisone accomplishes for athletes. So its “ok” to take a Cortisone shot that treats inflammation from an injury/strain so that you can go out and play better … but its NOT ok to take a naturally occuring suppliment to help with the same issue?? The only reason adults don’t heal as fast as kids is precisely because our natural HGH generation slows as we age … and doctors prescribe HGH to help the elderly heal from illnesses and injuries all the time. Isn’t this inconsistent?

And all the above just talks about various medications. Lets talk about the in-vogue plasma-replacement treatments that Kobe Bryant popularized and which have now been done by others, including Alex Rodriguez and Bartolo Colon. In this op-ed piece from Jeff Passan from Dec 2011, he discusses the blurry line between PEDs and legitimate surgical procedures. The article has a very in-depth description of the A-Rod procedure and raises the question as to what defines a Performance Enhancing Drug? If blood doping is illegal, how is a procedure that filters out platelets and re-injects them to targeted spots legal? Colon was out of the game in 2010, got the procedure and suddenly is a 116 ERA+ pitcher in 2013; isn’t this concerning?

Passan takes things one step further, comparing the healing effects of HGH with these new treatments that A-Rod and Colon got and makes a very good point; these new-fangled surgical procedures absolutely qualify for WADA’s 3 criteria. Passan has also asked the same questions I’m asking in a June 2006 article that started about HGH but ended with this same general question. And he makes very good points about cortisone, HGH, Testosterone and even Tylenol usage. Its worth a read.

Here’s another question: why is it “ok” to have performance-enhancing surgical procedures (Lasik surgery, Tommy John surgery, or any manner of surgery involving transplanted ligaments or tendons) but it is NOT ok to use drugs that have the same general effect? If I can take a pill that gives me 20-10 vision, which enables me to see the baseball better and become a better hitter, would that be considered a PED? I’m pretty sure … but yet people go get laser surgery and can get their eyes fixed to this level of quality any day of the week. Perhaps this is a ridiculous example but my point stands; whether or not your performance is enhanced by virtue of a bottle or by the knife, aren’t these valid questions? We’re starting to hear of psychotic parents of teen-aged pitchers actually getting “preventative” Tommy John surgery done, knowing that most pitchers who have the surgery see improvement in certain aspects of their game (since the Ulnar Ligament connector is actually strengthened in this surgery over how it grows naturally). Is this … ethical?

And then there’s this interesting point, which was proposed on a BS Report podcast done between Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman last week. If HGH is considered a PED, and HGH’s sole purpose in life is to help people get better after being sick … then why aren’t classes of anti-biotics such as Amoxicillin also considered PEDs? What is the difference? Klosterman then made the additional (scary) point that PED usage and testing may all be for naught eventually; Genetic testing and DNA manipulation may get to the point where there can BE no test to find out whether someone’s been genetically manipulated in order to be a superior athlete. Testing has been trailing the science for years in professional sports … it may eventually be rendered completely moot. Of course, taken the the ridiculous extreme, do we really want a slew of genetically engineered super-athletes competing for our enjoyment? Why not just invent a bunch of robots to play these games?

Food for thought. I know we’ve discussed some of these topics here before but do you worry about the inconsistencies in professional sports PED policies? I’m not sure I have an easy solution, but I will say that the classifications of drugs seems arbitrary in some cases.

Written by Todd Boss

February 13th, 2013 at 9:35 am

Posted in Baseball in General,Non-Baseball

Tagged with alex rodriguez, bartolo colon, bill simmons, chuck klosterman, jeff passan, jon lester, jonathan papelbon, kobe bryant, ryan zimmerman, tommy john

Soriano? Well at least its Rafael and not Alfonso

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The Nats get some icing on the cake in Soriano. Photo Elsa/Getty Images via nydailynews.com

Jeff Passan broke the news, which I found out about only by chance late Tuesday afternoon (silly me, trying to do “work” or something). Rafael Soriano to the Nats on a 2yr/$28M deal with a third option year that only vests with a relatively unattainable 120 “games finished” plateau reached.

Wow. Did not see this coming.

Was this a reaction move to Drew Storen‘s meltdown in the 9th inning of NLCS game 5? Adam Kilgore is reporting that the Nats owner Ted Lerner was “heavily involved” in the transaction, likely because of the amount of money involved and perhaps as a sign of the 2013 mandate to win it all.

Two quick reactions from a roster management perspective:

First off, we can call off the need for lefty relievers. Soriano’s so good against both righties and lefties that he can be the Loogy. 🙂
Secondly, I’m guessing that either Tyler Clippard or Drew Storen is officially on the block. The team certainly could have made the argument that they had too many right handed, back of the rotation candidates BEFORE today. Now they’ve got three closer-quality arms but only one closer job. And clearly Soriano is going to be the closer. If you look at his career stats, when he’s closing he’s lights out. 185 ERA+ last year for New York, a 237 ERA+ as Tampa’s closer in 2010. Clippard and Storen are good, but they’re not that good. One or the other is likely traded now, so as to clear a log-jam of RH arms in the pen. They *could* send down guys like Stammen or Storen (they have options available) but they’re too good to make way. More likely is a trade.

New Look 2013 bullpen: Soriano closing, Clippard or Storen setting up, Henry Rodriguez and Mattheus in 7th inning roles, Duke as loogy/long-man, Stammen as 6th-7th inning/long man and Bray as the loogy. Or perhaps Garcia makes the team while Bray pitches in AAA waiting for an injury. Or perhaps Clippard and Storen both stay, and both Bray and Garcia start in AAA. Or perhaps Clippard or Storen get packaged with Morse to bring back (as we’ve been saying for a while) both a lefty reliever AND some prospect depth.

I can see the blogosphere criticizing this deal for three reasons.

That’s a lot of money for a closer (I think it makes him the highest paid closer in the game), and the deal is surprising in that Soriano now will easily earn more than the rest of the bullpen combined, a stark departure from Mike Rizzo‘s parsimonious methods of building bullpens lately.
Yet another Scott Boras client for the Nats. By my count that’s now seven Boras clients in the Nats system and five on the MLB roster (others: Espinosa, Werth, Goodwin, Harper, Rendon, Strasburg). I hate the lazy narrative that Rizzo is somehow Boras’ b*tch, but we’re about to hear it again. Check the agent database: yes we have a lot of his clients but so does Texas (7), Boston (8), Kansas City (6) and Detroit (6). Boras just has a lot of good players, and the Nats are a good team where players want to come to play.
This costs the Nats their 2013 first round pick. It wasn’t nearly as high a leverage pick as before (#33 overall with a couple of compensation picks pushing it down from the #30 spot as last year’s best record would have indicated). I’m sure the argument will be that Soriano > back-of-the first round pick.

$14M for a closer is a lot of money. But hey, its not my money. If we weren’t sure of it before, the Nats are now *really* officially saying that they’re going for it in 2013. I’ll have to re-do both the salary and the WAR worksheets when I get some time to see how this factors in.

Written by Todd Boss

January 15th, 2013 at 3:40 pm

2013 Rotation Rankings; Ranked 1-30

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Greinke bolstered the Dodger’s already strong rotation. How much? Photo Jeff Golden/Getty Images

(Editor Note: I’ve had the bulk of this post written for weeks and have been waiting for the last couple of impact FA starters to sign. I’m tired of waiting. If/when guys like Kyle Lohse, Shawn Marcum or Joe Saunders signs, or if there’s another big trade that happens, perhaps I’ll re-post this).

On December 5th, awash in the after-glow of the Dan Haren acquisition, I postulated that the Washington Nationals’ 2013 rotation was the Best in the Majors.

That was before the next shoe dropped in the Los Angeles Dodger’s unbelievable spending spree in 2012: signing Zack Greinke to a 6yr/$147M contract. This is the 2nd largest starting pitcher contract ever signed (just behind CC Sabathia‘s 7yr/$161M deal that he opted out of to sign a slightly larger deal in terms of AAV after the 2012 season). These rankings also are updated for the highly-criticized James Shields (and parts) for Wil Myers (and parts) deal, the Ryan Dempster signing.

The larger story behind the Greinke signing remains the unbelievable payroll Los Angeles will be sporting in 2013; they’ll spend roughly $225M in 2013, breaking the Yankees record by a 10% margin, and all boldly in the face of a dollar-for-dollar luxury tax. And they’re likely not done yet on the FA market. But the focus of this article is a revisiting of baseball’s best rotations, now that Greinke is in the Dodger’s fold.

Instead of trying to figure out which handful of teams are the best, why not rank all 30 rotations? With the help of some Depth Chart websites (ESPN, rotoworld, mlbdepthcharts, and some good old-fashioned baseball-reference.com), here’s my rankings of the 30 rotations as they stand for 2013, right now. For the sake of this ranking, I am trying to take a reasonable expectations case for each of the pitchers on each team, as opposed to a “best case” for each team (this is most important when considering San Francisco’s rotation). I’m also not considering “depth,” just the Ace through 5th starter (this is important when judging Washington especially).

Note: a couple of other National writers have done similar analysis, with David Schoenfield‘s NL-only rankings on his Sweetspot blog back in November and Buster Olney‘s top-10 in the MLB rankings here. By and large the rankings match up, with a couple of different .

Discussion on each rotation is below the rankings.

Washington: Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Haren, Detwiler
Detroit: Verlander, Fister, Sanchez, Scherzer, Porcello (with rookies Smyly, Crosby, Wilk awaiting)
Los Angeles Dodgers: Kershaw, Greinke, Beckett, Harang, Capuano (with Ryu, Lilly, Billingsley in the wings)
Toronto: Dickey, Morrow, Johnson, Buehrle, Romero with Happ/Laffey/Drabeck/Huchinson in the wings.
San Francisco: Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Vogelsong, Zito.
Tampa Bay: Price, Hellickson, Moore, Niemann and one from Cobb/Archer. Possibly Odorizzi and Montgomery now in the mix too.
Philadelphia: Halladay, Hamels, Lee, Kendrick, Lannan (with Cloyd/Pettibone/Hyatt as backups)
St. Louis: Carpenter, Wainwright, Westbrook, and probably Lynn and Garcia (Kelly/Miller if Garcia is not ready)
Cincinnati: Cueto, Latos, Bailey, Arroyo, Leake (possibly Chapman?)
Arizona: Kennedy, McCarthy, Cahill, Miley, and one from Skaggs/Collmenter
Atlanta: Medlen, Hudson, Minor, Maholm, and one from Beachy/Delgado/Tehran
Texas: Darvish, Harrison, Holland, Ogando and likely a FA pick up. (Perez for now)
Los Angeles Angels: Weaver, Wilson, Vargas, Hanson, Blanton (wth Richards/Cassevah for depth).
Oakland: Anderson, Griffen, Parker, Colon, Milone, with Straily/Blackley/Ross/Godfrey in the wings.
Chicago White Sox: Sale, Peavy, Danks, Floyd, Quintana
New York Yankees: Sabathia, Kuroda, Pettitte, Nova, Hughes/Phelps. What about Pineda?
Boston: Lester, Buchholz, Dempster, Lackey, and 1 from Doubront/Morales/ De La Rosa.
Baltimore: Hammel, Chen, Tillman, Gonzalez, Britton (perhaps Bundy)
Chicago Cubs: Garza, Samardzija, Jackson, Wood, and one from Baker/Feldman/Villanueva (likely two if Garza is still injured or is traded). They also just signed Dontrelle Willis to a minor league deal.
Kansas City: Shields, Guthrie, Santana, Davis, Chen (Hochevar, Moscoso?)
Seattle: Hernandez, Iwakuma, Ramirez, Beavan (Hultzen?). Bonderman on a reclamation project.
Pittsburgh: Burnett, Liriano, Rodriguez, McDonald, Locke, McPherson
Milwaukee: Gallardo, Estrada, Fiers, Narveson, Rogers (with the likes of Peralta and Thornberg waiting if Narveson cannot go).
Minnesota: Diamond, Worley, Correia, Pelfrey (if he’s healthy), Hendricks, Duensing, De Vries (maybe Gibson or May? ). Harden on a reclamation project.
New York Mets: Santana, Niese, Gee, Harvey, and who knows.
Cleveland: Jimenez, Masterson, McAllister, Kluber, Carrasco, Bauer (Kazmir and Myers on reclamation projects)
Colorado: De La Rosa, Chacin, Pomeranz, Nicaso, Francis (and newly acquired Rosenbaum perhaps?)
San Diego: Volquez, Richard, Marquis, Stults, Ross
Miami: Nolasco, Alvarez, LeBlanc, Eovaldi, Turner, Maine?
Houston: Norris, Humber, Ely, White, Harrell, Lyles (who, who and who?)

Free Agents as of 1/2/13 that could impact the above list: Lohse, Marcum, Saunders, Lowe. Also guys like Webb, Vazquez and Pavano could be coming out of retirement but likely won’t make much of an impact.

Rumored trades as of 12/31/12 that could impact this list: Harang, Capuano, Masterson, Smyly/Porcello.

Hmm. I seem to favor NL teams. The majority of my top Ten rotations are in the NL. Is this bias? Discussion, 1-30

Washington: If Dan Haren returns to 2011 form, which I’m assuming he will, this is the best rotation in the majors. Not the deepest though; if we lose someone to injury we could struggle to repeat 2012’s win total. But this is an exercise to determine the best 1 through 5, not to determine depth (where teams like the Dodgers and Tampa clearly have more depth). I will say, this is a close race at the top; I can see arguments for any of the top 4-5 to be the best rotation. I don’t want to be accused of homerism by ranking the Nats #1, but can make a man-for-man argument that shows we should be #1 above the next several competitors.
Detroit’s rotation in the post season was fantastic against New York, then god-awful against San Francisco. Why? What can they change in 2013? They better figure it out, because upon re-signing Anibel Sanchez they’re rolling the dice on the same big 4 in 2013. Fister and Scherzer are slightly underrated but showed how dominant they can be in the playoffs. The #5 starter is likely where Detroit falls to Washington; Detwiler’s 12th ranked ERA+ in 2012 will trump nearly every other #5 starter in the league.
The Los Angeles Dodgers has an Ace in Clayton Kershaw, a near-Ace (in my opinion) in Zack Greinke, a potential near-ace career reclamation project in Josh Beckett, and then a bunch of question marks. Two rotation stalwarts Ted Lilly and Chad Billingsley remain injury question marks for 2013, and the rest of their rotation right now are league average hurlers. I believe their pitchers get a bump in adjusted ERA by virtue of their home park, thus I don’t believe their current #4/#5s match up as well with Washington’s or Detroit’s, putting them in 3rd place. Plus Beckett is a question mark; is he throwing like he did at the end of 2012, or is he the Fried-Chicken eating malcontent he has been in Boston the last couple of years?
Toronto: Its not every day you can trade for 4 starting players, including two rotation members. But thanks to Miami’s salary dump, Toronto finds itself with a significantly improved rotation. If Josh Johnson returns to Ace form, coupled with Brandon Morrow’s fantastic 2012 performance and Mark Buehrle’s solid #3 stuff, they have something to build on. The subsequent acqusition of 2012 Cy Young award winner R.A. Dickey changes things though, valulting Toronto into the discussion for best AL rotation.
San Francisco has won two World Series’ in three years with the same core of hurlers, and there’s no reason to think they won’t continue to be amongst the elite in the league. The question remains though; what are they getting from Tim Lincecum in 2013? Is the other shoe going to drop on Ryan Vogelsong‘s fairy tale career resurgence? And, can Barry Zito continue his career rebound? If the best-case falls for Lincecum and Zito (Lincecum returns to Cy Young form and Zito pitches even marginally ok) then I think they’re the best rotation in the game. As it stands though, i’m assuming that both guys fall somewhere short of the best case, meaning that they’re “only” the 5th best rotation in the game.
Tampa Bay has well-known pitching depth, and even with the move/heist of the James Shields trade they have a ton of guys who other teams would love to have. Expect a bounce-back sophomore campaign from Matt Moore and more excellent innings from rising hurlers Alex Cobb and Chris Archer. They may not be the best rotation in the game, but they’re certainly the most value for the dollar.
Philadelphia’s big 3 are all fantastic, but are showing signs of age. Roy Halladay only had an 89 ERA+ last year; has age caught up to him? The drop-off after the big 3 is significant too. But the potential of the big 3 keeps this rotation among the league’s elite. The acquisition of John Lannan didn’t affect their ranking much; he merely replaces the Phillies heading into 2013 with a rookie in the #5 spot. I had Philadelphia lower in the earlier drafts of these rankings, and have them this high on the assumption that their big three are all entering 2013 healthy.
St Louis’s 2012 rotation was rich enough this year to drop 18-game winner Lance Lynn to the bullpen. With Chris Carpenter healthy in 2013, with Adam Wainwright recovered from Tommy John, and with the likes of hard-throwing Joe Kelly or Shelby Miller as your #5 starter, this could be a scary rotation. And that’s if Jaime Garcia isn’t ready for the start of the season after injuring his shoulder in the playoffs. Kelly/Rosenthal are serious arms though and give far more depth than what a team like Washington has. Some pundits are not as high on the ability of Carpenter to return to his career form, pushing this ranking slightly lower than I initially had them. It all comes down to the health of their 1-2 punch; if Carpenter and Wainwright pitch like Cy Young candidates, this rotation gets pushed up much higher.
Cincinnati’s 5 starters took every 2012 start except ONE (the back half of an August double header). In today’s baseball landscape, that’s nothing short of amazing. Mike Leake may not be the strongest #5, but Cincy’s 1-2-3 put up great numbers pitching in a bandbox in Cincinnati. I’m not the biggest Mat Latos fan, but his 2012 performance spoke for itself. Lastly, there’s rumors that Aroldis Chapman may be moving to the rotation, pushing Leake presumably to a swing-man role. If Chapman can repeat his K/9 performance in a starter role, this rotation is even more formidable. Should it be higher? Perhaps; in previous drafts I had them in the top 5, but I just can’t seem to give their top guys the same “Ace” billing as other leading arms above them on this list.
Arizona‘s acquisition of Brandon McCarthy is a great one for me; if the Nats hadn’t bought Haren, I thought this guy would fit in perfectly. Arizona has a solid 1-4 and (like Atlanta) has a slew of options for #5. And, they have help in the immediate future, with Daniel Hudson coming back from July 2012 TJ surgery and a top prospect in AA. I see them as a solid rotation 1 through 5 but without the blow-away ace that other top rotations have.
Atlanta’s found gold in Kris Medlen gives Atlanta enough depth to trade away starters (the Tommy Hanson for Jordan Walden deal). They have 4 good starters and then can pick from 3 top-end prospects for the 5th starter until Brandon Beachy is back from surgery. What pushes this rotation down in the rankings is the unknown; is Tim Hudson getting too old? And what kind of performance can we expect from Medlen realistically? Can he really continue to pitch like Bob Gibson in 1968? Their 3/4/5 guys don’t scare me right now, but the potential of 1 and 2 keep them ranked decently high.
Texas bought an ace last off-season in Yu Darvish, has a couple of good arms developed in house in Holland and Harrison, but has been depending on one-off FAs to fill the void. They need a full healthy year out of their two upper-end arms Alexi Ogando and/or Neftali Feliz to make the leap. Felix is out for most of 2013 though after getting Tommy John surgery in August. Colby Lewis is in the fold but seems like he’s out most of 2013 after elbow surgery late last season. If they buy another decent FA this off-season (Lohse?), this rotation works its way further up. I have a hard time seeing them at #12, but who above them on this list right now do you push them ahead of?
The Los Angeles Angels have a great 1-2 punch in Weaver and Wilson, but they’ve spent the off-season watching their former envious rotation erode. Hanson is an arm injury waiting to happen, Blanton has been pitching below replacement level for 3 years, and they don’t have an established #5 right now. Perhaps this rotation should be lower. The shrewd trade for Jason Vargas helps keep them in the upper-half of the league, based on who their planned #4/#5 guys are.
Oakland’s slew of young, cost contained and quality starters is the envy of the league. The only thing that keeps this list from greater acclaim is Oakland’s relative lack of recent success (2012 not withstanding). Throw in a couple more playoff appearances and Billy Beane can get a sequel to Moneyball published. Like the LA and SF rotation, they benefit from their home park, but that doesn’t take away the fact that they won the division last year. The off-season isn’t over either; I can still see Beane flipping one or more of his rotation for more depth/more hitting and turning to his stable of youngsters again. I’m not necessarily happy with this ranking spot and feel like it should be higher, but their collection of unknowns doesn’t inspire the confidence of the known Aces above them on this list.
The Chicago White Sox have a big up and coming potenial Ace in the making in Chris Sale and the engimatic Jake Peavy. After that are some league average options. Jose Quintana had a great 2012; can he repeat his success? I feel like the 3/4/5 guys in this rotation are all quality, innings eater types, but nothing that really knocks your socks off. Middle of the pack feels right.
The New York Yankees continue to get 95+ win teams with a smoke-and-mirror job in the rotation. Now they set to go into 2013 with one possibly injured Ace and two guys nearly 40 as their 1-2-3. Is 2013 the year the wheels come off the bus for New York? A healthy Michael Pineda contributing as the #2 starter he can be would vastly improve the outlook here.
Boston‘s ranking may be changing significantly, depending on which arms they buy up off the FA market. I think a new manager helps Lester and Buchholz regain their near-Ace form of yesteryear, and Dempster should give them competent innings in the middle of the rotation. But I can’t assume anything when it comes to their 1/2; they’ve both been so good and so bad in the recent past.
Baltimore amazingly comes in ranked this low despite making the playoffs last year with this collection of no-name starters. Maybe i’m underselling their 1-2-3 capabilities. Maybe i’m just treating them like a team that had a pythagorean record of 82-80.
The Chicago Cubs still seem set to be in “sell mode,” so listing Garza as their Ace seems fleeting. Behind Garza though are a collection of hard throwing, promising guys. I like Samardzija, the Edwin Jackson acquisition gives them a solid #4. Perhaps this rotation should be slightly higher on potential.
Kansas City made their big trade to acquire an “Ace” … and only got James Shields. I mean, Shields is good .. but not that good. He’s only got a career 107 ERA+, but he is a healthy workhorse. Behind Sheilds is a collection of guys who mostly are #4 and #5 starters elsewhere, which means this rotation is … below average.
Seattle should have been higher than the teams directly ahead of them on this list just by virtue of the quality of Felix Hernandez … but then they went and traded away Vargas, and seem to have no good ideas on the back end of their rotation right now. This team could be in trouble.
Pittsburgh is getting by on veteran starters who have the ability to look good, and may not deserve this high of a ranking. AJ Burnett had a great first half but settled back down to average in 2012. Here’s a great stat: Burnett is getting paid $16.5M a year … and has *never* made an all star team in his career.
Milwaukee seems like they should be higher with a guy like Gallardo leading the ranks. But their #2 is Marco Estrada, a guy who couldn’t make Washington’s rotation in the years when we didn’t HAVE a rotation. I know Fiers is good; perhaps this rotation should be higher.
Minnesota‘s rotation looks pretty poor right now; their ace is a guy whose a #3 on most teams (Scott Diamond) and they’re hoping for one of their injury reclamation projects to pan out. It could be a long season in Minneapolis.
The New York Mets rotation could be better than 25th, if Santana isn’t allowed to throw 150 pitches pursuing a no-hitter and if Niese pitches up to his capability. However, Santana hasn’t had an injury-free season since 2008, and I’m not betting on it in 2013. They are planning on giving both the 4/5 slots to rookies, meaning there could be some long series for this team in 2013. Their fate was sealed when they traded away their Cy Young winning Ace, and the statement was made about the direction of the franchise.

From 26-30, I honestly don’t see much of a difference between these rotations. Really the only argument was to figure out which rotation of no-names between Miami and Houston was dead-last. I selected Houston for the time being; if/when Miami trades Ricky Nolasco for 40 cents on the dollar, we’ll feel free to rank them 30th.

At the end of this massive posting, I can honestly say that the difference between the 5th ranked rotation and the 6th is often near nothing. Looking back, I can see anyone from the 5-8 range being listed in any order and I’d agree with it. I ranked and re-ranked these rotations over and over again from the time I started writing this post in early December to the time i’ve posted it. Perhaps it would have been easier to just have groupings of rotations instead of a pure ranking 1-30. But, that would have been a copout.

I look forward to your opinions and arguments for some rotations to be higher/lower than others.

Written by Todd Boss

January 7th, 2013 at 11:59 am

Posted in Majors Pitching

Tagged with adam wainwright, aj burnett, alex cobb, alexi ogando, anibal sanchez, aroldis chapman, barry zito, billy beane, bob gibson, brandon beachy, brandon mccarthy, brandon morrow, buster olney, cc sabathia, chad billingsley, chris archer, chris carpenter, chris sale, cj wilson, clay buchholz, clayton kershaw, colby lewis, dan haren, daniel hudson, david schoenfield, derek holland, doug fister, edwin jackson, felix hernandez, jaime garcia, jake peavy, james shields, jason vargas, jeff passan, jeff samardzija, jered weaver, joe blanton, joe kelly, joe saunders, johan santana, john lannan, jon lester, jon niese, jordan walden, jose quintana, josh beckett, josh johnson, kris medlen, kyle lohse, lance lynn, marco estrada, mark buehrle, mat latos, matt garza, matt harrison, matt moore, max scherzer, michael pineda, mike leake, neftali feliz, ra dickey, ricky nolasco, roy halladay, ryan dempster, ryan vogelsong, scott diamond, shawn marcum, shelby miller, ted lilly, tim hudson, tim lincecum, tommy hanson, tommy john, wil myers, yu darvish, zack greinke

Loria a disgrace to the Game

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Jeffrey Loria, the biggest con-man in Miami. Photo unknown via si.com

A couple of months ago, I posted an entry titled “Is Jeffrey Loria the worst owner in sports?” after a series of off-season gaffes came to light. Perhaps that title was prone to hyperbole, as the comment section talked about other awful owners in professional sports. However, I’m bringing up the topic again.

The previous post was written before Heath Bell was shipped off to Arizona, before Ozzie Guillen was officially fired, and (the reason for this re-hashing of the topic) before the absolutely ridiculous fire-sale trade announced yesterday evening, where the Marlins shipped off the rest of 2011’s off-season acquisitions (Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle), along with their best starting pitcher (Josh Johnson), their starting catcher (John Buck) and a valuable utility player in former Nat Emilio Bonifacio to the Toronto Blue Jays for a quartet of malcontents and decent-at-best prospects. Oh, just for good measure the Marlins kicked in $4M dollars of (likely) revenue sharing money to boot.

I completely agree with the initial reactions from national baseball writers Bob Nightengale (who called the team a “Ponzi Scheme“), Ken Rosenthal (who says Loria should “just sell the team“), Buster Olney (who calls the Marlins the “Ultimate con“), from Scott Miller (saying that Loria “must be stopped“), from Keith Law (who called the deal a “boondoggle“) and from Jeff Passan (who calls this “a Baseball Tragedy“). Passan’s article in-particular is worth a read, as it details all the shameful behaviors of Loria and his son-in-law, napoleonistic team president David Samson, in gory details. You’ll feel the heat of anger just reading each new incident that these two con artists have perpetrated over the years.

Most infuriating to me is that this represents just the latest profiteering injustice that Bud Selig has empowered Loria to commit. Going back to his days with the Expos (who he left in shambles and which directly led to our first years of franchise incompetence), continuing through to the criminal negotiations resulting in a mostly-publicly funded stadium, now resulting in this dismantling (which leaves the team with roughly $20M in committed 2013 payroll). The shame is that Loria will pocket MILLIONS and millions more dollars by shedding all these ill-thought contracts. How is that fair to the baseball fans in Miami, or the taxpayers in Florida, or the players that remain on that team (see Giancarlo Stanton‘s tweet for his opinion of the move), or to the other owners, or to the players union in general?

Selig should absolutely veto this trade in the “Best interests of Baseball” clause, and should force Loria to sell. The reaction and upheaval from the national media is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed reading and folling the sport. Enough is enough. I realize that these moves only benefit us as Nationals fans (since the Miami team is now likely to lose nearly 110 games, ala the 2012 Houston Astros), but my sense of fair play and businessmen obtaining ill-gotten profits spurs me to write this post today.

Written by Todd Boss

November 14th, 2012 at 10:35 am

Posted in Baseball in General

Tagged with bob nightengale, bud selig, buster olney, david samson, emilio bonifacio, giancarlo stanton, heath bell, jeff passan, jeffrey loria, john buck, jose reyes, josh johnson, keith law, ken rosenthal, mark buehrle, ozzie guillen, scott miller

Nats Off-season News Items Wrap-up 1/14/12 edition

5 comments

I’m looking for a contract “This Big!” Photo unknown via iusport.com

This is your semi-weekly/periodic wrap-up of Nats and other baseball news that caught my eye.

Nationals In General

Talk about rumors that just won’t go away: Nationals apparently remain the favorites for Prince Fielder. Ken Rosenthal says the same. Buster Olney has a nice overview with pros/cons laid out. For me (as discussed in the comments of the previous posts), I think he’d be a mistake for 8-10 years, but an absolute steal for 3. Here’s some thoughts from Tom Verducci, who thinks the Nats are his destination. And here’s a post that says one of the 3 candidates for Fielder I identified in this space a few days ago (Toronto), is out of the running.
Imagine a lineup that goes like this: Espinosa-Werth-Zimmerman-Fielder-Morse-Ramos-Desmond-Cameron to open the season, and then potentially inject Bryce Harper hitting behind Morse and replacing Cameron in the outfield. That’d be 5 straight home-run hitting threats in the middle of your order, with good L-R balance. I know he’d be expensive, but that’s a 95 win offense. It’d be even better if we got a one-year stop gap hitter to open the year playing RF and who we could flip in trade if Harper comes up sooner than later.
From Jdland.com: the concrete factory across the street from Nats park is finally coming down!
Whoops: Zech Zinicola hit with a 50-game suspension for non-PED drug abuse. Sounds like Marijuana to me. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Nats release him after this, his 2nd transgression.
John Sickels‘ new rankings of the Oakland A’s top 20 prospects, post trades this off-season. 6 of the 10 top were acquired in the Trevor Cahill and Gio Gonzalez trades, while three more represent Oakland’s #1 draft picks in 2011 (Sonny Gray) and 2010 (Michael Choice) and 2009 (Grant Green). Say what you will about Billy Beane, but he’s clearly building a big-time farm system for the future right now.
A nice review of the Nationals 2012 outlook from seamheads.com.
We lost Doug Slaten. Now he can go be horrible for Pittsburgh.
Good news on both Sammy Solis and Bobby Hanson from Byron Kerr.
Adam Kilgore says the team is still talking to Rick Ankiel about coming back as a 4th OF… I wouldn’t be totally opposed to that; he’s essentially the same player we got in Mike Cameron, right? Only difference seems to be lefty versus righty.
Fun little position-by-position exercise: ranking the NL east teams position by position from David Shoenfield. I must admit though I think he was a bit generous with his Nats rankings in some cases.

Free Agents/Player Transaction News

MLBTraderumors is great; they’ve created arbitration tracking pages that will “keep score” of all the cases coming up in Jan-Feb.
If you believe Jim Bowden, the Rangers are playing hardball in their Yu Darvish negotiations. If this falls through … look for pandemonium both on the Prince Fielder front and with Darvish next year when he’s an unrestricted FA and could attract interest from pretty much every team in the league.
Makes sense: Marlins plan to aggressively pursue Yoenis Cespedes. Getting the latest big name Cuban defector can only be a good thing for the franchise as they try to re-build a fan base in a heavily latino/cuban community.
Well, the Yankees shored up their rotation in one 3 hour period on Friday night; trading for Michael Pineda and then signing Hiroki Kuroda. They went from having three question marks in their rotation to now wondering if AJ Burnett can hold onto the 5th rotation spot. Wow. Here’s Keith Law‘s analysis, predictably giving the “edge” to the Mariners in the deal despite the obvious fact that Pineda is MLB proven while the other three guys in the deal, aren’t.

Hall of Fame items

Mike Silva becomes one of the very few BBWAA writers with a HoFame vote to publish support for Jack Morris. I’m sure I’ll be seeing the inevitable Craig Calcarerra blog posting questioning Silva’s IQ for doing so.
David Shoenfield has a little missive on the HoFame, voting procedures and comments on how few players are getting elected these days.
Chris Jaffe does an excellent job predicting HoFame votes every year; here’s his guess on 2012’s election. Bad news for Bagwell and Morris, good news for Larkin though.
Other interesting HoFame notes: one site in particular collects ballots; here’s a summary of the 80-some ballots she has right now. Very good support for Larkin.
No Bagwell votes here; prepare for the ridiculing. Danny Knobler and Scott Miller.
I think i’m just about fed up with bloggers who see everything in modern baseball through little spreadsheets of data and who never even saw Jack Morris and Bert Blyleven tell me I’m an idiot because i think the former is a better pitcher than the latter. At some point statistics are just that; numbers that prove or disprove whatever your theories are. You can’t just ignore 20 years of performance and context of playing in the league by boiling down thousands of innings pitched into one number, whether it is ERA+ or WAR or whatever. For me, when you talk about whether a player is a Hall of Famer, you look at individual season accomplishments. Morris basically had 15 seasons of full time pitching. In 5 of those seasons he was a top-5 vote getter in the Cy Young; that means in 5 seasons those people who covered baseball that season considered him among the best 5 pitchers in his league. In another two seasons he didn’t finish top 5 but still received votes. He was god-awful his last two seasons, lowering his career totals. And there’s dozens of examples of him completing games despite having given up 3-4 runs and sitting on 140 pitches. Maybe Morris just needed to pitch in the current era, where he would be taken out in the 7th on a pitch count and then replaced by specialized relievers. Meanwhile Blyleven, in 21 full seasons of starting made exactly TWO all-star games and received comparable Cy Young support 3 times. I’ll ask again; how can you be considered one of the best of all time if nobody who covered you day in and day out during your career thought you were even among the best of your day??
Jorge Posada announces his retirement; the inevitable “Is he a Hall of Famer” articles start. Immediate gut reaction from me: yes he’s a HoFamer. Unlike some of his Yankees dynasty team members (Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte) Posada seems a bit more transcendent in terms of talent and legacy. A quick glance though at his career stats show some of the problems with his eventual candidacy. He’s a late bloomer; not playing a full-time season til he’s 25. However for the 10 seasons he had from 25 to 35 he was fantastic; 5 all-stars, 5 Silver Sluggers and two top-6 MVP votes. After he turned 35 though he struggled with health and had a relatively poor final season at the plate. He has no gold gloves and had a reputation for having a very weak throwing arm but had a 121 OPS+ for his career (a great offensive player for a catcher). His compareables in b-r are heady company (including Carlton Fisk and Gabby Hartnett). I guess we’ll see in 5 years’ time.
Jan 9th 2012: the wait is over. Only Larkin elected, Morris and Bagwell vote totals rise but still not close.
Spreadsheet of all published/known hall of fame votes, with links to explanations. Interesting to say the least; several blank ballots and several very odd ballots to say the least.

General Baseball News

Buster Olney continues his rankings of the top 10s of baseball; this time with lineups. Predictably its very AL East heavy. Previously he had done rotations, bullpens, infields and outfields. Links to other lists available from this article (ESPN insider only; consider spending $2/month for it; its worth it).
Buster, after finishing the above rankings, publishes his preliminary 2012 top 10 Power Rankings. Rays #1, Nationals essentially #11/”Best of the Rest.” Boy this team’s reputation has come a long ways in just a few short years.
Jeff Passan‘s A-to-Z discussion on Baseball this off season and in 2012. I link it since I like most everything Passan writes.
Joe Torre joins an ownership group chasing the LA Dodgers … but not the one that Stan Kasten is heading. Bad move; I think Kasten’s a shoe-in to be Selig‘s pick.
This could have a bigger effect than the loss of Albert Pujols: St. Louis pitching coach Dave Duncan is taking a leave of absence from the team to care for his ailing wife. Duncan has been such a miracle worker for reclamation project starters over the past few years that its hard to imagine the Cardinals pitching staff not to take a dent.
The Chicago Cubs franchise potentially takes another hit: Starlin Castro reportedly accused of sexual assault. Castro returned home for the off-season and isn’t in the country; could this incident prevent him from getting a work visa in 2012?
Jonah Keri takes on one of my favorite topics; calling out Billy Beane and showing how he’s closer to being an incompetent GM than he is to his vaunted reputation as the game’s best GM.
Great article on Baseball Prospectus about SLAP tears in baseball players (normally pitchers). The article is very heavy on medical jargon but talks about the different types of tears and surgical remedies. This is the injury that Chris Carpenter had and recovered from (though I’m pretty sure he ALSO had Tommy John surgery too).
Nice book review for “A Unique Look at Big League Baseball.”

Collegiate/Prospect News

2012 AL rookie of the year favorite Matt Moore, profiled at seedlingstostars.com. This is part of a series of prospect reviews, counting down to #1 and Moore is ranked #4 … but the author immediately caveats it by saying that any of the top 4 could be #1. I talked about Moore after his playoff start on this site, coming away with a Wow factor that I havn’t had since Strasburg.
Scout.com’s top 100 Prospect list for 2012. Bryce Harper #3 behind Moore and Mike Trout. Can’t argue there. Other Nats on the list include Anthony Rendon (#56). AJ Cole (#76) and Brad Peacock (#85) would have made us a bit more respectable pre-Gonzalez trade. Here’s hoping that the Nats “other” big prospects (Meyer and Purke in particular) turn in stellar 2012’s and beef up our presence on the national prospect scene again.

General News; other

Article on 10 “trendy sports medicine” fixes. Including some exotic baseball remedies we’ve heard about recently.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/tom_verducci/01/13/ryan.madson.prince.fielder/index.html

Written by Todd Boss

January 14th, 2012 at 12:17 pm

Posted in Baseball in General,Hall of Fame,Nats in General,Weekly News

Tagged with adam kilgore, aj burnett, aj cole, albert pujols, alex meyer, andy pettitte, anthony rendon, barry larkin, bernie williams, bert blyleven, billy beane, bobby hansen, brad peacock, bryce harper, bud selig, buster olney, byron kerr, carlton fisk, chris carpenter, chris jaffe, craig calcaterra, danny knobler, dave duncan, david schoenfield, doug slaten, gabby hartnett, gio gonzalez, grant green, hiroki kuroda, jack morris, jeff bagwell, jeff passan, jim bowden, joe torre, john sickels, jonah keri, jorge posada, keith law, ken rosenthal, matt moore, matthew purke, michael choice, michael pineda, mike cameron, mike silva, mike trout, prince fielder, rick ankiel, sammy solis, scott miller, sonny gray, stan kasten, starlin castro, stephen strasburg, tom verducci, tommy john, trevor cahill, yoenis cespedes, yu darvish, zech zinicola

Nats Off-season News Items Wrap-up 12/31/11 edition

5 comments

Its Hall of Fame ballot time. Let the Jack Morris arguments start-up again. Photo John Iacono via si.com

This is your semi-weekly/periodic wrap-up of Nats and other baseball news that caught my eye. With the approaching Hall of Fame nonsense, er I mean news cycle approaching, I’ll throw in a HoFame section.

Nationals In General

Transcribed from a radio interview by Tim Dierkes, here’s Mike Rizzo on CF and 1B. This is the first time I’ve seen Rizzo mention NEXT year’s FA class in terms of looking for talent and it makes you wonder if we don’t already have our entire primary starting 15 set (8 out-field players, 5 starters and setup/closer) for 2012. I can live with Jayson Werth in CF, since it opens up lots of FA possibilities in RF. In fact, I smell a separate post coming…
Former Nat Lastings Milledge is going to Japan to try to resurrect his baseball career.
Scouting-specific SeedlingsToStars.com site looks at Anthony Rendon.
The USA Today does an in-depth, position-by-position overview of the team and where it stands.
Another Tom Boswell article that I disagree with; he thinks Prince Fielder isn’t “right” for the Nats. I’m sorry; but Fielder is a run creating machine (he created 35 more runs last year than Michael Morse, by way of comparison, which roughly equates with his 5.2 Wins Above replacement value). Yes we have LaRoche who is plus defense, but is he going to come back to 2010’s form or is he going to be a lost cause again? Meanwhile, Fielder looks set to take a shorter term deal and re-try his hand at the FA market when he hits 30. Wouldn’t you sign him for 3yrs $70M? You put Fielder at 1B, keep Morse in Left, groom Bryce Harper to play center and keep Werth in right. For the next 3 years. How difficult is that? Boswell talks about where to put Rendon; well; you put him wherever you have a need. Put him at 2nd and move Espinosa to short. Or you trade someone to free up room. This team’s problem isn’t the need for a lead-off slap hitter; we need a big run producer in the middle of the order. Someone to replace what Adam Dunn gave us for two years.
Ryan Tatusko posts his 2011 recap of his minor league season plus his time in the Venezuelan Winter League. I wish more players were as blogger-friendly as Tatusko.

Hall of Fame Specific

A pro Edgar Martinez take with the important quote, “There is a position called DH…” I have changed my own stance on this issue in recent years, especially when considering relief pitchers as hall of fame worthy. If you argue that a closer and his 60-70 innings is somehow more valuable to a team than a designated hitter’s 650 at bats, then I’d have to disagree. On my hypothetical ballot, Martinez is in.
Excellent review of active MLB players under HoFame consideration by Fangraph’s Dave Cameron. Also, the comments discussion brings up a number of other players. He uses primarily career WAR to determine the player’s value, which I’m somewhat hesitant about (in most cases WAR is an accumulator stat, as a mediocre player who stayed very healthy will have a higher WAR than an excellent but shorter-lived career).
This article really got to me, to the point where I commented on both the original post by Jay Jaffe at Baseball Prospectus and the discussion at TangoTiger‘s InsideTheBook.com blog. Jaffe’s hall of fame measuring system (called JAWS) somehow has determined that Brad Radke, the middling pitcher for the Twins who had basically one standout season in his career, was a BETTER player career-wise than Jack Morris. How would any sane baseball observer possibly come to this conclusion? This is where the modern blogger’s over-reliance on statistics really gets to me. I have not read into why this system ranks Radke so high while ranking Morris so low but suspect it is due to a reliance on the same calculations that go into the ERA+ statistic (of which Radke’s career ERA+ of113 is better than Nolan Ryan‘s career era of 112).

Free Agents/Player Transaction News

Oakland continues to dismantle itself: Boston trades OF prospect Josh Reddick and two other players to Oakland for closer Andrew Bailey and outfielder Ryan Sweeney. This is after Boston acquired Mark Melancon earlier in the off-season; they now have completely remade the back side of their rotation. Clearly the team is moving Daniel Bard to the rotation, having just traded for his replacement. Reddick was clearly seen as surplus to requirements, despite putting together a decent 2011 season, but you have to wonder if the team is going to be satisfied with Sweeney starting in RF.
Keith Law makes a good point during his analysis of the Bailey move, saying that adding Bailey is a far better move than paying Jonathan Papelbon $50M. I agree completely and think that anyone who pays $10M+ per year for a guy who throws 70 innings and who only really has about 50% “high leverage” plate appearances (see last year’s splits for Mariano Rivera and Papelbon to see that 57% of Rivera’s plate appearances were in “high” leverage situations as a high, while Papelbon was at 47%) is just wasting money. Find a hard thrower in your organization (say, like Drew Storen for the Nats), install him as the closer as a rookie, then ride him til free agency and then cut him loose and start over. Relievers are fungible talents, they come and go, mostly are failed starters since they don’t need the full repertoire of pitches to be successful, and are cheaper to come by.
(hat tip to ck of the Nats Enquirer): The Baltimore Sun reports that Scott Boras and Prince Fielder were in the Baltimore/DC area to meet with an owner not named Peter Angelos. More links on the topic from Federal Baseball. Gee, I wonder who it could be? Why would those two fly HERE and not directly to the city of the owner in question, unless the owner of the team in question was either a) the Nationals, or b) an owner of a MLB team who lives in this area but owns a team based elsewhere, or c) an owner of another team just happened to be in DC for some odd reason (odd because Congress is out of session, which would seem to eliminate most any possibly lobbying reason). Don’t get me wrong; I think Adam LaRoche can contribute in 2012 and it seems ludicrous to think he can’t at least get close to his 2010 numbers, but Fielder is a 5+ WAR player who probably makes us the favorite for the NL wild card if we sign him, right now.

General Baseball News

Wow, two LOOGY articles in the same day. Bill James answered a question about the evolution of the LOOGY and posted this link describing its birth (apparently by Tony LaRussa in the 1991 season). I also never knew that the term “LOOGY” was coined by none other than Rob Neyer. And TangoTiger points to some of the same research. Mid 30s lefties everywhere have LaRussa to thank for their extended careers.
Could you imagine this happening in today’s game? The first intentional pitch would have resulted in ejections. Certainly modern umpires would not let a pitcher throw pitch after pitch at an opposing batter. Clearly these umpires let this game get out of hand.
Will MLB step in? USAToday’s Seth Livingston thinks that the Oakland payroll dumping trades this off-season may get the attention of the front office. Hard to see why; according to Cot’s the Athletics are only signed up for around $17M of guaranteed contracts in 2012 right now, before a slew of arbitration cases. They non-tendered 3 of their 10 arbitration cases but kept a couple of their more expensive guys (Cot’s thinks they had 14 arbitration-eligible players; I havn’t cross-referenced outrights and DFAs but know they had 10 arb tender decisions). Of those they did tender, they have since traded away Sweeney, Gonzalez, Bailey, Breslow and Cahill. Geeze. Baseball-Reference thinks they’ll get to $50M in payroll; I wonder if they’ll get to $35m frankly. And, its looking more and more like this could be something like a 50-win team. Things could get ugly in the Bay area in 2012.
This would be a loss for us prospect hounds: Keith Law is reportedly interviewing for a front-office position with the Houston Astros. Law takes a very specific, opinionated viewpoint towards player development, drawing from his experiences in the Toronto organization (which itself during his time took a rather college-heavy approach to the draft which ultimately wasn’t as successful as the team wanted, ultimately contributing to the end of JP Ricciardi‘s reign.
An interesting exercise; USA Today builds an unbeatable MLB team for the median MLB payroll. Honestly though, I’m not sure just how challenging this exercise is. If you gave me $86M (the median payroll they used) you should be able to put together TWO such teams. There’s enough pre-arbitration and arbitration-controlled talent in the league to be able to do the same task for something approaching a $20M payroll. A future blog post? 🙂
Follow-up on Alex Rodriguez‘s experimental Germany treatment; this op-ed piece from Jeff Passan on the blurry line between PEDs and legitimate surgical procedures. The article has a very in-depth description of the A-Rod procedure and raises the question as to what defines a Performance Enhancing Drug? I have had similar discussions; why are Steroids “bad” but Cortisone “good” in terms of usage? What do Cortisone shots do? They enable a player to play through pain that otherwise may keep him out. Uh … isn’t that the definition of a “performance enhancing” substance?? Steroid’s aren’t illegal; they’re just controlled. But so is cortisone; you can’t just inject yourself with the stuff without a doctor’s order. Passan takes things one step further, comparing the healing effects of HGH with these new treatments that A-Rod and Bartolo Colon got and makes a very good point; the WADA uses 3 categories to define a doping drug and everything we’ve described here can be argued to fit those criteria (except that only HGH and Steroids have been determined to be “bad” by the powers that be). There’s something inconsistent here.

Collegiate/Prospect News

Seedling to the Star’s scouting report on Braves phenom prospect Julio Teheran. Teheran’s stock has slipped somewhat in the past two years, especially given the inevitable comparisons to fellow pitching prospect phenom Matt Moore. While Moore’s 2011 MLB debut was nothing short of amazing (including his 7 innings of shutout ball in the playoffs), Teheran posted a 5.03 ERA in about 20 MLB innings throughout 2011. It was bad enough to probably rule Teheran out of the 2012 rotation plans and send him back to repeat AAA. But if he can put things together, he’ll join an arsenal of young arms in Atlanta that seems set to be their next wave of starters in the ilk of John Smoltz and Tom Glavine.

General News; other

Baseball meets modern America: Joe Maddon and the rising Latino population in his home town of Hazelton, PA, as written by Joe Posnanski.
67-56? I’ve never seen a football game with such a ridiculous scoring line.

Written by Todd Boss

December 31st, 2011 at 9:04 am

Nats Off-season News Items Wrap-up 12/9/11 edition

3 comments

Probably the biggest Nats news of the week was who we DIDN’T get. Photo Peter Christian via thesportsbank.net

Weekly wrap-up of Nats and other baseball news that caught my eye. With the absolute deluge of baseball news, rumors, and unbelievable FA signings this week I frankly got lost in the shuffle, so most of these items are from the weekend and early this week. Hopefully you know by now about Reyes, Buehrle, Wilson, Pujols and our Rule5 losses. If not, you’re just not a true baseball fan now are you? 🙂

Nationals In General

An excellent good-bye blog posting from Ben Goessling, leaving the MASN Nats beat for his home-town paper. No permanent replacement has been hired, but MASN still has Byron Kerr putting out excellent prospect-focused posts, and Pete Kerzel temporarily filling in for Goessling during the Winter meetings (and perhaps beyond).
Well, now we know what Stan Kasten plans on doing in his post-Washington career. Unfortunately for Kasten, Bud Selig can’t just give him the Dodgers as has been his custom in “awarding” teams to new owners.
Byron Kerr reports that Hector Nelo, our high-A reliever who is pitching in Venezuela, can now hit 100mph. He always had a high velocity arm, but being a 25-yr old in high-A isn’t necessarily the most impressive feat. He was an April minor league free agent pick up, having been released by the Texas organization after putting up pretty mediocre figures. I’m projecting him in our AA bullpen for 2012. He may be able to hit those high figures, but its not being reflected in amazing k/9 rates. I remain skeptical that he can be an impact arm for us in the future.
As noted elsewhere, Keith Law‘s posted his “top 50 under 25” list of players under 25 but who have already lost their rookie eligibility. Its insider-only but Amanda Comak at the Washington Times pretty much cut-n-pasted the entire list late last week. You can google it or search her archives. 3 Nats made the list: Strasburg, Ramos, and Espinosa. No real quibbles about those Nats left off; Drew Storen would have qualified, as could have Desmond and some weaker members of the bullpen/bench, but clearly Law doesn’t rate closers (nor do I, really). He has Craig Kimbrel, 2012’s ROY at #49. Law’s little dig at Desmond in his Espinosa write-up also indicates his opinion of the hitting capabilities of our current starting SS. I do question some of his rankings: I’d certainly have ranked Kershaw above one-year wonders such as Mike Stanton, but perhaps Law’s explanation of his ranking (he’s looking at projections for the next 6 years versus what they’ve already accomplished), explains it away.
Well, there goes one OF option: Laynce Nix has signed with the rival Phillies. Most reports seemed to indicate that the 2-year guarantee solidified the deal for Nix, who faces at best a LF platoon in Philadelphia. Still, he could turn in a 20-homer season rather easily hitting in that bandbox.
Jim Riggleman signed on to manage the Cincinnati AA franchise, a bit of a step down from a MLB manager job but at least he has on-field work.
In what is sure to inspire a fire-storm of Natmosphere posts, Jim Bowden reports that Ryan Zimmerman‘s agents have been “rebuffed” in opening contract extension talks. I can’t blame Rizzo here: you’ve got a franchise player who can’t stay healthy; he’s a risk to guarantee a bunch of years and a bunch of money. Yes, everyone’s a risk to give guaranteed contracts … perhaps why the team needs to think on it a bit more.
Uh oh. Sammy Solis is visiting Dr. Yocum to get his elbow looked at. This is not a good sign. Can anyone say Tommy John surgery?

Free Agents/Player Transaction News

A month-old post, but somehow I missed it. Jeff Passan‘s free agent tracker, with some concise opinion on each of 181 free agents this off-season. No predictions but on-point analysis.
Wow. Heath Bell gets 3yrs/$27M from the Marlins. Not that I don’t think he’s a good closer, and not that I really care that the Marlins just acquired a player being paid in AAV the equivalent of 1/8th of their 2011 payroll. Maybe this whole “Marlins are going to spend money” thing is for real. I agree with Neyer‘s assessment here: “that’s a lot for a guy who is going to throw 65 innings.” Predictably, Keith Law hates the deal.
Even more Wow: Jose Reyes signs for a reported 6yr/$106M deal with these same Marlins. One has to wonder if we’re looking at another dynasty build-up/epic team dismantling situation.
Jon Heyman‘s list of 10 busiest clubs for the Winter meetings, and somehow the Nats, whose name is associated with practically every FA in some form or another, are not on the list.
We could soon find out just how serious the Nats interest is in Yoenis Cespedes, with him possibly being declared a FA within the next week or so.
Despite some opinions that the Rule 5 draft is useless, there are active teams every year (The Nats included). Here’s one blog’s Top 25 available Rule 5 draft potentials. He does list three Nationals: Brad Meyers, Sandy Leon and Erik Komatsu. He also lists the top other prospects by system. That’s a TON of research frankly, digging through rule5 eligibles from all 30 minor league systems. Of course, John Manuel did the same on Baseball America, posting part 2 of his review, highlighting some favorites for role players (utility infielders, 4th outfielders, loogys and middle relievers). I’m guessing its from this group that the Nats may tempt fate and look to fill some bench spots. 12/7/11 Update: sure enough we lost both Meyers and Komatsu. So irritated.
Sometimes, star athletes just don’t know how to say good bye. Manny Ramirez has filed for re-instatement and plans on playing in 2012 after serving his 2nd drug suspension. He’ll have to improve on his 1-17 outing for Tampa Bay last season.
Interesting potential trade tidbit posted by new Masn beat reporter Pete Kerzel: Boston possibly dangling either Josh Reddick or Ryan Kalish in trade for starting pitchers (names mentioned include Ross Detwiler and Collin Balester). I’d like any trade permutation here; both Detwiler and Balester are out of options and increasingly with every Buehrle/Wilson/Oswalt rumor Detwiler’s chances of making our 25-man roster diminish.

General News; Baseball and other.

“Just in time,” indeed. Rob Neyer reports that the Feds are investigating the incredibly shady Marlins stadium deal. Jeff Passan also mentions the SEC subpoenas for financial records, meeting minutes, etc, looking for evidence of bribery of federal officials. Nothing would make me cackle more than to find out that the Marlin’s owners and management were to expect a federal indictment for corruption. Everything I’ve ever read about Jeffrey Loria, David Samson, and Larry Benifest and anything related to the Marlins as an organization and this stadium deal in particular has been negative, and this undoubtedly will be no different. I hope Selig is happy with himself for engineering Loria’s Expos sale and Marlins purchase, as well as watching his new buddy subsequently pocket millions and millions of dollars in revenue sharing whilst occupying the 6th largest market by MSA.
Wow. Jon Heyman is leaving SI for CBS. This prolific writer is well known for being ahead of the curve on baseball news, and leaves a pretty big hole in the baseball reporting department for cnnsi.com.
Interesting precedent setting event: MLB has restored Mike Trout‘s rookie eligibility for 2012. He’ll certainly be a candidate .. if he can get on the field. Matt Moore may be a better candidate, based on what we saw in September and October though.
I’ll put in just enough opinion to get into trouble on the BCS: LSU-Alabama repeat for the National Championship is an abomination of justice when looking at the Alabama season in basic comparison to Oklahoma State. The OK State-Stanford game will be 10x as enjoyable. I only wish the BCS could have had 100% egg on its face with LSU losing the SEC title game but still being pretty much guaranteed a match up in the Championship. I would have laughed. Call me when there’s a playoff.
I didn’t realize they were nominated: legendary college coaches Mike Krzyzewski and Pat Summitt received 2011’s SI Sportsman of the Year award. Clearly these were “career” awards, as opposed to anything specific to 2011.
In case you were interested, or wanted to nit-pick every Hall of Fame ballot to death, here’s a blogger who tracks all the BBWAA voters and finds their HoFame votes.
Not to get into too much politics here, but Mitt Romney‘s reported dig on Barack Obama‘s planned 17-day vacation smacks of hypocrisy. All he needs to do is check the record on George W. Bush‘s days spent “on vacation” while office and perhaps he’d wish he wasn’t casting stones. In fact, depending on how you interpret this research, Bush spent nearly 32 PERCENT of his time in office actually back home at his ranch or at Camp David.

Written by Todd Boss

December 9th, 2011 at 9:33 am

Nats Off-season News Items Wrap-up 11/18/11 edition

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With more Wild Cards, get ready to see scenes like this more and more. AP Photo via infopop.cc

Here’s a weekly wrap up of Nats-related news items, along with other general interest baseball articles, with my thoughts as appropriate. (Note: these news items are more or less chronological in the Saturday-to-Friday blog post news cycle i’m using, with me going back and adding in clarifying links as needed).

Great news: Wilson Ramos was rescued with apparently on 11/11/11 no bodily harm and no ransom paid. This is a great end to this saga, which really could have gone so much worse for Ramos and his family. Mark Zuckerman reports on the details of the rescue.
Interesting read from Jon Paul Morosi, who interviews an anonymous american player about life in the Venezuelan Winter League. The player wanted to stay anonymous, but he didn’t seem to really say anything of note that would require protecting his identity. Better safe than sorry though.
Joe Sheehan, writing for si.com, mentions both Bryce Harper and Sammy Solis in his AFL review of players to watch on 11/10/11. He saw Solis’ 4-inning/9 K game and was impressed. I would be to if a 6’5″ lefty could throw 94mph and punch out guys at will. That’s Solis’ “ceiling.”
As if it wasn’t enough to do analysis of the current FA crop, Buster Olney apparently was bored and did a year-too-early analysis of the 2012 free agent crop. I only post this because it corresponds with one of my frequent matras about this off season; don’t waste your FA dollars competing for 2-3 front-line pitchers. Wait for 2012 when there’s 10-12 good candidates.
More BA links related to the Nats top 10 prospects, announced last week. Here’s the free version of the top-10 with scouting reports, the Organization quick-overview page.
BA’s Jim Callis 11/9/11 editorial piece about how the Nats picked “a good time to be bad.”
For Yu Darvish fans, yet another scouting report. And another one. Tom Verducci posted a very well done piece demonstrating how most pitchers from NPB hit “The Wall” 2 years into their MLB careers, also noting that there has never been a single Japanese pitcher to make more than one all-star team. Fangraphs.com has a bunch more articles on Darvish from a few weeks ago, and BaseballAmerica has some as well for you to find at your leisure. Side-story: In one of the weekly chats last week (can’t remember which one) a very good point was made about using previous Japanese pitchers as comparisons to Darvish. The chat-host flat out called it racist. I have certainly drawn those same comparisons, looking at player’s birth place (as a way of determining NPB-graduates) and asking whether or not there’s ever been a huge success story for a Japanese-born pitcher. I don’t view this as racist; just factual. When I point out that there’s never been (for example) a French-born star baseball player, there isn’t a subsequent implication that “there fore all French baseball players are crap.” Therefore I will continue to point out that Darvish, as a NPB-graduate, comes with risk no matter what his scouting report or genetic make up happens to be. And my stance is that the risk involved isn’t worth the likely 9-figure price tag.
Wow the Marlins are doing some serious FA inquiries. Rumors this week that they’re talking with Jose Reyes, Albert Pujols, Mark Buehrle AND new Cuban FA Yoenis Cespedes. Those players alone would probably represent something in the range of $400M of guaranteed contracts. I just have a really hard time believing that this club, which has sucked revenue sharing money for years and easily transferred it into the owner’s pockets, will suddenly do an about-face and actually spend the money they need to be competitive. Really hard time believing it until I see it. Jeff Passan agrees with me.
Thanks to DistrictOnDeck for transcribing a few points of the Mike Rizzo–Jim Bowden conversation on mlb radio this week. I can’t help but taking note of the glaring discrepancy in Rizzo’s double-speak when it comes to pitching. Despite having his 1-2-3 already being set for the 2012 rotation (Strasburg, Zimmermann, Lannan) and re-signing Wang this week, Rizzo still says that at the same time he wants to “bring in another starter” AND have the likes of Milone/Peacock/Detwiler compete for the 5th starter. Well, which is it? Because if you buy another FA starter, there is no 5th spot available. Not unless we’re about to see a non-tender for John Lannan.
Excellent post from David Schoenfeld, in the wake of the Ryan Madson $44M contract being withdrawn, about the value of closers and the need to have a marquee closer at all in the modern game. In the post, he lists the named closers of the past 10 WS winners, and his point is this; its littered with names of guys who were clearly not elite-level closers.
Interesting opinion piece from Jim Breen on FanGraphs about Hard-Slotting. Breen posits the same opinion i’ve read over and over from Keith Law in the anti-draft slotting camp; they both claim it will “drive players to other sports.” They use names like Zach Lee, Bubba Starling, and Archie Bradley as recent examples of guys who were legitimate 2-sport stars and were “bought” out of football commitments at major Div-I universities by virtue of the large bonuses they received. Here’s the problem I have with this stance: where’s the proof? I just have a hard time believing that these athletes, when presented with a choice, would have a larger-than-slot bonus make up their minds. You’re either a baseball-first player or not, irrespective of your talents and desires in a secondary sport. Nowhere in these arguments have I ever seen an interview or a survey where these two-sport stars are actually asked the basic question, “Would you be playing college football if your guaranteed baseball bonus was smaller than what you got.” Its all assumptions, and this article is no different (posting the assumption that Lee “would not be playing baseball right now if there was a hard-slotting system.”
Good information to know from Dave Cameron‘s fangraphs chat: the BABIP on ground-balls is .235 for ground balls, .130 for fly balls, .720 for line drives. Cool.
Here’s a funny article from Baseball Prospectus on Hot Stove League terminology and how to interpret it.
Joe Lemire writes a great piece highlighting the safety issues and general decline of Venezuelan baseball over the past decade, in light of the Ramos kidnapping.
I first took note of Tax issues during last off-season’s Cliff Lee sweepstakes, noting that he faced perhaps a 12% difference in salary by taking a deal to stay in Texas versus New York. Eric Seidman looks at the same issue and more with his great article in FanGraphs titled “Jock Tax.” Conclusion; taxes for athletes are ridiculously complex.
Phillies sign Jonathan Papelbon to a 4 yr/$50M contract. Well, I guess they’re not going to be re-signing Ryan Madson. The Phillies resign Papelbon basically for the same money they had been paying Brad Lidge, so its not going to directly lead to an increase in their payroll. But as someone who openly questions the value of closers in general, I have to criticize the move as wasting money on a player they could replace from within for a fraction of the cost. David Schoenfield agrees with this sentiment.
Adam Kilgore has a nice little primer on the upcoming GM and Owners meetings in Milwaukee. He does some quick Nats off-season planning analysis, and I agree with him that it’s looking more and more like the team is going to pursue someone like Mark Buehrle or Roy Oswalt, meaning that the Detwiler/Peacock/Milone battle for 5th starter may not actually happen. This would imply the team is looking to trade these guys, presumably for CF talent. Lots of moving parts.
Si.com’s Jon Heyman broke news on 11/14 from the GM meetings that prospective Houston Astro’s owner Jim Crane has accepted the condition of moving his team to the AL west as a prerequisite to ownership approval. Interleague blurring, here we come. ESPN reports that this MLB “demand” was a condition of the sale of the team to Crane. You have to love Bud Selig and his hard-line ways, given his precious anti-trust exemption.
The Nats outrighted both Cole Kimball and Corey Brown from the 40-man on 11/16/11 and lost Kimball to Toronto. My thoughts here along with a healthy discussion.
Courtesy of Craig Caltaterra, a fantastic blog entry just crucifying Peter Angelos.
Op-ed piece about proposed draft changes, from ESPN’s David Shoenfeld.
Another Collective bargaining agreement fall out: elimination of compensation picks for type-B free Agents. Probably a wise move; type B free agents are usually not valued nearly as much as a supplemental first round pick, leading to hijinks in the draft system by teams who covet these picks. Frankly, the revampment to the system that needs to be done is the reliever classification. How is Darren Oliver, a 41-yr old loogy possibly a type A free agent?? That classification immediately eliminates half the league from even looking at him, and probably the other half as well (meaning they’d be giving up a 2nd round pick at worst). The union has to be upset at the way their veteran players have their job movement limited by this classification. Ironically, about 5 minutes after I wrote this, Buster Olney also used Oliver as an example as to why the system needs to change.
In the “no surprise here” category, Hanley Ramirez isn’t keen on switching positions should the Marlins, who have been woo-ing every FA out there this off season, somehow acquire Jose Reyes. Ramirez is pretty much the ultimate non-team player and the Marlins have spent far too long coddling him and cow-towing to his demands. Good luck EVER getting him to agree to anything that isn’t Hanley-first.
Ex-Nats rumors: Jason Marquis apparently has interest from his “hometown” NY Mets for a 2012 contract. I say that’s great news for the Veteran hurler, who had to be dismayed when he broke his leg in a contract year. Even if its a non-guaranteed deal, or for significantly less money than he got from us two years ago (2yrs $15M), he deserves another shot.
Interesting side effect of MLB’s obscure player transaction rules: by virtue of the Angels only sending Mike Trout down for 17 days instead of 20, the demotion still counted towards his 2011 service time. This has two implications: Trout officially now has served his rookie season and won’t be eligible for the 2012 Rookie of the Year award, AND the Angels now are in serious jeopardy of exposing Trout to eventual “Super-2” status. The first point is a slight shame for Trout, who seems set to rocket into prominence in this league based on his minor league production. The second point is “shame on the Angels” for not knowing the rules; if Trout is as good as promised, this mistake could cost them millions and millions of dollars. WP Dave Sheinin did a great study about Stephen Strasburg‘s super-2 status, comparing it to Tim Lincecum‘s, and concluded that avoiding super-2 for superstars can save a team almost $20Million. Seriously.
Why is this news? The Nats and Ryan Zimmerman, a player who is signed through 2013 havn’t talked about a contract extension. So what? This shouldn’t be news until NEXT off-season. I don’t care that Kemp signed a big deal, or that Braun got locked up for a few more years, or that Tulowitzki signed a ridiculous deal through 2020. Just because YOU jumped off a bridge doesn’t mean I have to. If i’m the Nats GM, I wouldn’t sign on for an 8year contract, let alone a 5year, for a guy who has missed significant chunks of the last few seasons through injury until I saw him back at the 155-160 game level. He’s only 26, but has already had three major injuries (hamate bone surgery, left labrum and this year’s abdomen surgery). Plus he missed the last couple weeks of the 2010 season with a muscle strain. That’s a lot of medical on a young guy. Maybe the musings of some other Nats bloggers on the topic could have some credence.
Its official; two wild cards coming in 2013. Judge Landis is rolling in his grave. Actually I’m somewhat ok with this news; I think more needs to be done to mitigate the possibilities of Wild Cards winning the World Series. If a play-in round is introduced that thins your pitching staff and makes it harder to advance, i’m all for it. I’m not a 100% traditionalist but I do like to see teams that win the most regular season games actually competing for the World Series, instead of the St. Louis Cardinals sneaking in as a last-second wild card and winning the championship.

Written by Todd Boss

November 18th, 2011 at 9:06 am

Posted in Baseball in General,Nats in General,Weekly News

Tagged with adam kilgore, albert pujols, archie bradley, brad lidge, brad peacock, bryce harper, bubba starling, bud selig, buster olney, chien-ming wang, cliff lee, cole kimball, corey brown, craig calcaterra, craig counsell, darren oliver, dave cameron, dave sheinin, david schoenfield, eric seidman, hanley ramirez, jason marquis, jeff passan, jim bowden, jim breen, jim callis, jim crane, joe lemire, joe sheehan, john lannan, jon heyman, jon paul morosi, jonathan papelbon, jordan zimmermann, jose reyes, keith law, kinesaw mountain landis, mark buehrle, mark zuckerman, matt kemp, mike rizzo, mike trout, peter angelos, ross detwiler, roy oswalt, ryan braun, ryan madson, ryan zimmerman, sammy solis, stephen strasburg, tim lincecum, tom verducci, tommy milone, troy tulowitzki, wilson ramos, yoenis cespedes, yu darvish, zach lee

Nationals Arm Race

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My 2013 End-of-Season award Predictions

A forkball after my own heart

Why is Toradol “ok” but Steroids and HGH “bad?”

Soriano? Well at least its Rafael and not Alfonso

2013 Rotation Rankings; Ranked 1-30

Loria a disgrace to the Game

Nats Off-season News Items Wrap-up 1/14/12 edition

Nats Off-season News Items Wrap-up 12/31/11 edition

Nats Off-season News Items Wrap-up 12/9/11 edition

Nats Off-season News Items Wrap-up 11/18/11 edition

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