Nationals Arm Race

Desmond got a Q.O. … and gets screwed. Photo Drew Kinback/Natsnq.com

When former Nat Ian Desmond signed, he became the final Qualifying Offer-attached player to come off the Free Agency board for the pre-2016 season.  So its time to publish our recurring “Are Qualifying Offers working” post.  We first visited this topic ahead of the 2014 season and again prior to the 2015 season.

I don’t think i’m “burying the lede” by saying that, No, Qualifying Offers are not working (at least as far as the players are concerned).  But lets look at the results of this past off-season’s free agents with compensatory draft pick attachments and do some analysis (fyi, from here on out “Qualifying Offer” will be abbreviated QO):

Here’s my QO Worksheet in Google Docs, which tracks all the QO-offered candidates going back to 2012 and is the basis of a lot of this analysis.

Here’s some summary stats for this year’s QO candidates:

• 20 Free Agents were offered QOs heading into this past off-season.  That’s a significantly higher number than in any of the year’s past (9 after the 2012 season, 13 after 2013 and 12 after 2014)
• 3 Took the QO to remain with their original team (Brett Anderson, Colby Rasmus and Matt Wieters).  This represents the first time that anyone has actually taken a QO and, frankly, was something I never though we’d see.  The players union has convinced players to not act rationally to such an extent that I was sure that there was an unstated agreement to never take a QO.   After all was said and done though, I’m sure there’s probably 4-5 more players who probably wish they HAD taken the QO.  As it stands, Anderson, Rasmus and Wieters all get huge raises and nice healthy “pillow contracts” to re-establish value for the following off-season.
• 3 more eventually Re-Signed with their QO-offering team (Chris Davis, Marco Estrada and Alex Gordon).  I’d only qualify one of these three as really being a significant re-signing; Estrada’s 2015 salary was $3.9M and he declined a $15.8M QO.  I guess you could argue that Gordon’s market was depressed by the QO … but I also think he was reticent to “leave home” and leave a team at the top of the game.
• 9 guys who got paid just as they would have anyway; 5 of which got many millions more in AAV than their walk year contract.  But these are also the marquee FAs of this past off-season, so QOs were meaningless in the equation.  We’re talking about Zack Greinke (6/$205M), Chris Davis (7/$161M), Jason Heyward (8yr/$184M), Justin Upton (6/$132M) and Jordan Zimmermann (5yr/$110M).
• 8 of the 20 players who ended up taking LESS in AAV with their new contract.   Now, two of these players (Estrada and Ian Kennedy) may have taken less in AAV but both ended out well on the “plus side” of the free agent accounting; Estrada signed a 2yr/$26M deal (career earnings prior to this point: just over $10M) while Kennedy signed an astounding 5yr/$70M deal after completing a mediocre season in San Diego that had me personally predicting he may be still unsigned in June.  But the other Six?  Well they’re the QO system victims…
• 6 Players who were clearly negatively affected by the QO and have a serious beef with the system.  Lets look at them one-by-one
  • Dexter Fowler: Walk year of $9.5M salary, after a media-misstep re-signs with his original club for 1yr/$8M with a $5M buyout (so $13M guaranteed) and a team-affordable option year for next year.  Now, you could argue that Fowler took a “home team discount” to stay with what everyone is calling the best team in the majors and I wouldn’t argue.  But Fowler was just the kind of mid-level veteran who frankly never should have declined the QO in the first place.
  • Yovani Gallardo: Walk year of $13M salary, a guy who just badly over-estimated his market after posting mediocre numbers in Texas.  Ends up with a sh*tty franchise (Baltimore) who hemmed and hawed with his medicals (as they’ve done in the past) and he ends up with just a 2yr/$22M contract.
  • Hisashi Iwakuma had a walk year of $7M and who probably wouldn’t be on this list were it not for his own medical issues causing the Dodgers to balk at a 3yr deal; he goes back to Seattle on a discounted 2yr/$20M deal.  I guess its arguable whether the QO really was affecting this guy; it didn’t seem like he wanted to even explore the market outside of a handful of west coast teams.
  • Howie Kendrick languished on the FA market until the end of January before decamping back for his old team, signing for just 2yrs/$20M.  Another guy who just never was going to be worth giving up a 1st rounder.
  • Daniel Murphy ended up taking $3.3M/year in AAV less than the QO value with Washington; it remains to be seen whether the Nats vastly over-paid for a poor defensive 2B whose value seems to be entirely propped up by a fantastic 2015 post-season.
  • Last, but not least, Ian Desmond who managed to leave more on the table (in terms of delta in his new contract AAV versus what he gave up in QO guaranteed salary) than ANY OTHER player in the history of the system.  His 1yr/$8M deal is 7.8M less than his QO; that’s more “lost money” than even Kendrys Morales, Nelson Cruz, or Stephen Drew left on the table … and a couple of these guys didn’t sign until May or June!  And this doesn’t even mention the 9-figure extension he turned down a couple years ago.

There have been plenty of lamenting pieces on Desmond in the last few days; i hope he’s not reading about how everyone is calling him a dummy for leaving $100M on the table between his spurned 7-year Washington deal and his declined QO.  He just got unlucky; he had an awful walk year, he fell squarely into the “mid-level veteran not worth giving up a draft pick” category, and he hit the off-season at a time when a huge number of teams are, to use a word, tanking.  Half the teams in the NL and a couple more in the AL are in positions where they’re not spending extra dollars in FA and are depending on in-house options for SS; combine that with those teams who already have quality short stops and you suddenly have a completely dried-up market for Desmond.  Take a quick peek at the RotoWorld depth charts for the NL and look at the guys who are slated to start … and then ask yourself if Desmond is a better option.

I still can’t quite figure out specifically why the White Sox didn’t sign him; who is their slated starter at short?  They had a protected 1st rounder and are not quitting on 2016, so instead of getting a quality guy like Desmond they’ve signed Jimmy Rollins as a MLFA/NRI and that’s who might be the starter?   The Mets are another obvious team that may be wishing they’d signed Desmond when it becomes more apparent that the guy they actually signed (Asdrubal Cabrera) can no longer play SS .. or hit for that matter.  Anyway…

I think Desmond has gotten pretty sh*tty representation, honestly.  He should have signed the extension and not held out for an Elvis Andrus contract that was never going to happen.  And he should have read the tea-leaves, seen how the market was looking, seen how teams are hoarding 1st round draft picks, seen how his .233 BA was going to hamper his market and just taken the QO to try for a bounce-back season.

There’s lots of people talking about the QO system and what to do with it; i’m guessing its going to be front and center in the next CBA.  But how do you compensate teams for losing FAs?  I don’t have a good option and I don’t think the “just sever ties between FA and the draft” is the answer either.  I guess we’ll see some creative solutions proposed as we get closer to the CBA negotiations.

Here’s a quick recap of the year in stories on this blog, to tie a bow on 2015.  From each month, I’ve grabbed a couple of the more interesting or unique posts I did, with thoughts and follow-on.

(Here’s 2014’s review and  2013’s review as well, to see how far we have or have not evolved…)

Jan 2015:

• Holy Cow Scherzer! Nats make a statement by signing Scherzer for $210M; he does not disappoint with 2 no-hitters in his first season.  We’ll conveniently forget his 6+ ERA during crunch time when the team was caught and surpassed in the standings by the eventual NL champion Mets.
• Like the Janssen signing: Yeah; this one didn’t work out as well.

Feb 2015

• Nationals Prospect Ranks historically: I reference this post more for one of my better accomplishments lately; turning all my historical prospect rankings into one big XLS.  Here is that XLS in Google Drive, updated for the latest prospect rankings list I could find (BA’s year-end top 10 for the system).
• Qualifying Offers: Are they working? (2015 edition): Answer: doesn’t seem so.  And so far in this off-season, we’re seeing similar results.

Mar 2015

• Brady Aiken has TJ surgery, shakes up draft boards: Aiken eventually goes 17th overall and loses millions versus where he was drafted the year prior.  Hope he can come back from such an early TJ surgery.
• Nats Outfield … what happens next?  Big discussion once it became clear that both Span and Werth were not making the 2015 opening day lineup healthy.

Apr 2015

• Forensicane’s campaign finally fulfilled; Rafael Martin called up & Cedeno axed: the title speaks for itself.  Martin didn’t pitch much but certainly impressed with his debut.  Cedeno’s DFA seemed deserved at the time, but he pitched very well for Tampa after catching on there.
• Cole up … why not Roark?: My prophetic post predicting Cole’s meltdown in Atlanta … of course I couldn’t predict the Dan Uggla homer and 13-12 game, which I immediately put into …
• Greatest (and worst) ever Nats games & Events; updated for 2014 events and April 2015 Atlanta game: I’ll be re-doing this post soon for all the stuff that happened the rest of 2015 and the weird off-season the team has had.

May 2015

• 2015 CWS Field of 64 announced; teams and analysis: one of many CWS posts, culminating in UVA winning in Omaha in late June.
• DC/MD/VA District High School Tournament Report: 2015 post-season: May is Prep HS tournament time.  June has a ton of College and College World Series posts.  I know I don’t get a lot of comments on my HS and College coverage, but I enjoy following both and try to keep interest in local baseball alive.  FWIW, the area may very well have a first round pick in 2016 in Oakton HS’ Joe Rizzo.  More to come in February when I start up Prep baseball 2016 posts.

June 2015

• First Look: Nats top 10 draftees from 2015 Rule-4 Draft: The culmination of the pre-draft work for the Nats; digging in and looking at who we’ll be following from a-far for the next few years.
• 2015 Draft Results: local player interest draft results. This post is the end result of months and months of work, digging into players with local ties in order to follow and eventually publish where they’re going.
• Is Ross making the Nats re-think their future rotation strategy?  Yes, I think its safe to say he did.  Is Turner/Ross for Souza/Ott the best trade Rizzo has ever done?

July 2015

• State of the Nats at the halfway point 2015: Where I was noticing that our offense was holding on by a thread but that we’d still win the division by 10 games.  Yeah.  Didn’t think the Mets would find the second coming of Babe Ruth in Yoenis Cespedes and they would catch fire they way they did.
• Nats 2015 Draft Wrap-up: Nice wrap-up of the whole draft class.
• Papelbon for Pivetta: good trade, bad karma? Another prophetic blog post title, eh?

Aug 2015

• The Nats post-All Star game gauntlet of opposing Starting Pitchers: It was tough, and the team didn’t do very well against them.  They went 6-10 to open the 2nd half and went from 2 games up to 2 games back … and never made it up.
• Its make or break time; even more so than a week ago.  Arbitrary endpoints, ranting about the Papelbon trade, ranting about the manager.  Just a regular post about the 2015 Nats.
• Why exactly did the Nats call up Turner?? A question I keep asking to this day.

Sept 2015

• The Definition of Insanity… is apparently to keep watching the Nats play the Mets in September.
• I said “Call me when they Sweep Atlanta” … 115 comments on this post from the viewers, the season high by a lot.

Oct 2015

• GM for a day (or an off-season): what do you do to this team for 2016? A fun post to write.  Some of it has even come true!
• Rotation Reviews of your 2015 Playoff Teams & WC Picks: One of the reasons the October post output is way up; I did a bunch of prediction picks.  None of which were right of course.
• Chase Utley gets away with yet another dirty play; time to change the rules: F*ck Chase Utley, I hate that guy.
• 2015 Season Statistical Review of all Nats 2015 draft picks: A new feature I stumbled across that I’ll now make sure I find the time to do every year.
• Welcome Bud Black: haha; i wish I could un-post 🙂

Nov 2015

• My 2015 End-of-Season Awards Predictions: Only missed one BBWAA award this year.
• Three take the QO; but some still rolling the dice: First time for everything.  Murphy’s QO ends up costing the Nats their 17th overall pick.

Dec 2015

• Operation Bullpen Makeover Status Report: So far, so good.  Lots of new faces.
• Nationals/MLB Pitching Staff Year in Review; 2015: First in a series that is still being written as we speak.
• Murphy Signing: I guess I’m ok with it: A ringing endorsement!

Total posts for 2015 (including this one): 115.  That’s down from 130 posts in 2014 and down significantly from 2013 (237 posts).  Wow, how in the heck did I do 237 posts in 2013.  That’s nearly a post for every weekday, all year.  Including this post, i’ve published 923 total since the inception of the blog.  When I hit 1000 i’ll do some cool retrospective or something.  Should happen midway through 2016.

923 posts; that’s a lot of writing.  I once calculated that a typical novel is between 90,000 and 100,000 words.  Well, most of my posts are between 1000 and 2500 words … so that means I’m writing about a book every 50 posts.  I’m in the wrong profession.  Of course, i’m not sure who would ever read a book about some random IT guy’s musings about his local baseball team.  🙂

I feel like we have a solid group always commenting, no trolls.  Very grateful for everyone who stops by and everyone who comments.  I wonder how we can get more readers; should I do more publishing on twitter when I post?  Probably.  Now that natsinsider.com is gone, we may struggle to get the word out since Mark was my primary feeder site.

We generally have 20-30 comments on each post, which is cool.  High comments on posts were 70 on a “Ladson Inbox”post in January 2015 and an astonishing 115 comments on the August “call me when we sweep Atlanta” post.

Happy New Year and thanks for reading in 2015.

Murphy makes the drive down I-95 to Washington. Photo via bleacherreport.com

I may have buried the lead of the post in the title, but I figured we’d want a place to react to the big Xmas gift the Nats gave themselves; pending a physical the Nats have signed Daniel Murphy to a 3yr, $37.5M contract.  We’ll assume that the contract doesn’t get cancelled for physical reasons (ala Hisashi Iwakuma) or some criminal issue (ala Aroldis Chapman) in the next 72 hours or so and the team makes it official at some point over the weekend.

Nats acquire the left-handed bat they needed to play a position they suddenly found themselves needing coverage in thanks to the Yunel Escobar trade.  They also acquire a guy who makes a ton of contact (just 38 Ks last year in 538 PAs … by way of comparison Michael Taylor struck out 158 times in 2015, in *fewer* plate appearances (511 to Murphy’s 538).  Murphy also can contribute with some power; 14 homers last season (and another 7 in last year’s post-season), and some speed (not a ton of SBs last year but he stole 23 in 2013).  He makes a ton of sense batting in the #2 hole (assuming of course the team finds someone who can actually get on base for him), but he could also slot in at #5 (assuming Bryce Harper bats 3rd, in order to split up the lefties).

More importantly, the Nats take a veteran solid bat off their closest rivals, who don’t really seem in any hurry this off-season to back-fill their holes in the lineup by the departing Murphy or Yoenis Cespedes.

Some thoughts on the the deal and its ramifications on the Nats:

• Assuming he gets an even $12.5m in 2016 per his contract’s AAV, the Nats 2016 payroll just jumped up into the $141M range.  I think that comes down a bit (assuming the Nats can shed themselves of one or both of their highly paid closers).
• The signing costs the Nats the 17th overall pick in the draft.  A tough pill to swallow; on his own i’m not entirely sure Murphy is worth that pick.  perhaps you can see the value in the significantly lower contract value than what Murphy was probably worth on the open market.  I guess you don’t really covet the 17th overall pick when you have just one year left with Scherzer, Strasburg and Harper all together.  You have to try to win now with these guys, since more and more it seems clear the team won’t retain either of its young starlets (not with talk of Harper getting a $400M contract).
• Ben Zobrist: 4yrs/$52M from the Cubs.  Zobrist is four years older, had only a slightly better 2015 split than Murphy (.276/.359/.450 versus .281/.322/.449), play a similar set of positions (4 5 7 and 9 last year for Zobrist, 4 5 and 3 last year for Murphy), and had similar bWARs (1.9 for Zobrist, 1.4 for Murphy).  Yet Zobrist gets $14.5M more and one additional year despite being 4 years older and almost guaranteed of being a fossil at the end of his contract.  Do you think Qualifying Offers are working?  Do you think this is going to be topic #1 to address in the next CBA?
• Murphy will require a roster move; the team is at 40/40 on its 40-man.  My uneducated guess: Erik Davis.
• I’m guessing there’s an open competition between Espinosa and Turner to be the opening day SS.  And my guess is that Espinosa wins it for now.  Something in my gut tells me that the improvements he’s made plus his superb defensive ability will win out over Turner’s potential.  But, no more 2B for Espinosa; he’s either the starter at Short or the utility guy.  I could be wrong; maybe Espinosa is destined to be Mr. backup infielder again in 2016, riding the pine while Turner learns how to be a major leaguer.  I hope not; I think at this point in his career he’d be so gutted if he got beat out that he’d be close to useless as a super-sub.
• Murphy is not especially gifted at 2nd defensively.  Negative UZR/150s across the board.  But, its not nearly as important having a plus defender there as it is on the right hand side of the infield, and the return of the gifted Rendon plus the near gold-glove quality of Espinosa at short could really help the Nats and their pitching staff convert more ground alls to outs.
• All the 2B on the Nats depth chart just became serious trade bait.  40-man roster guys Wilmer Difo and Chris Bostick?  100% blocked for 3 years.   Murphy may be able to play other positions … but the positions he can fill are also filled by guys who are better than Murphy and also here for more than 3 years.  So I wouldn’t be surprised by some dealing coming soon.  Maybe Billy Beane can give us something we need in return for some closer-to-the-majors middle infielders and 5th starters (of which we have plenty in AAA).
• $12.5M AAV for a 1.4 bWAR player.  Yeah; there’s some serious money in the game right now.

Does this move make the Nats a better team?  Yeah I think it does.  By himself Murphy doesn’t move the needle a ton, but he gives this team some things they didn’t have yesterday.  I like his contact hitting, his lefty bat, the addition of some needed power.  The team missed out on so many other guys this off-season, they probably felt they had to make this deal.  So they did.

Desmond gets a QO. Photo Drew Kinback/Natsnq.com

Qualifying Offer (QO) extension time has come and past, and a record 20 players received the 15.8M one-year contract tender for 2016.

The Nationals, as has been typical, went the conservative route and only gave a QO to the two players they expect to reach significant, multi-year deals.  Jordan Zimmermann and Ian Desmond.  They opted not to extend offers to their other 7 free agents, nor to the two guys who a  year ago you would have thought to be locks to get one (Doug Fister and Denard Span).

(coincidentally: am I the only one who thinks that the Nats actually have 9 free agents on their end-of-year 40-man roster?   Zimmermann, Desmond, Span, Fister, Uggla, McLouth, Janssen, Thornton and Johnson.  Why is it that all the other stories I read only list the first 8?  Is Reed Johnson actually not a FA?  Look at the Nats XLS on Cots‘; Johnson is absolutely listed as a FA, as are 6 others, plus the two with options that we’ve already declined.  Am I wrong?)

Anyway.  I’m on record as saying that the Nats should have extended 3 QOs to include Span.  Yet not for the first time, the team has opted not to offer a QO to a guy who clearly would have declined it.  And this will be the third time they have made a crucial mistake as an organization and gave away a high draft pick needlessly.  Edwin Jackson was always going to sign a multi-year deal and the Nats inexplicably failed to give him one.  Same with Adam LaRoche, who clearly still had a market for his services and would have garnered another pick.

I’m not sure exactly what Scott Boras seems to “have” on the Lerners … but not for the first time they’ve cut him a break and done him and his clients an inexplicable favor.  So, what exactly do the Nats get out of this?  Span should send the team management a fruit basket for not destroying his FA market this coming off-season.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Span didn’t hire Scott Boras so that he could hand over a commission check on a gift of a $15.8M one year deal.  Span was never going to accept that QO.  Just dumb.  But hey, it isn’t exactly the first dumb thing this front office/ownership group has done this off season…

So, of the 20 players who did get a QO … the annual question remains.  Will someone actually take it this year?  Just as a reminder, here’s the entire list of QO-offered players since the system began, with their eventual contract offer and a judgement of whether or not the QO “hurt” their next contract.  Eight in 2012, 13 in 2013, and 12 after last season.  That’s 33 total players and so far NOT ONE has signed the deal.  I’m still not entirely convinced that there’s not a Player’s Union-wide conspiracy going on where they decline the QOs en masse because they don’t agree with it for some reason.  Certainly it seems like the next CBA will eliminate it, since it has clearly done little except harm the market for FAs.

Here’s a quick opinion on the 20 guys who got QOs and what I think may happen (AAV = Average Annual Value on their contract):

• Easily surpass AAV of $15.8M and get monster deals: Greinke, Heyward, Zimmermann, Upton, Gordon: All of these guys are marquee free agents, are the kind of guys you give up a pick to sign gladly, and will sign for significant money well eclipsing the QO AAV or guaranteeing a significant amount of money (like, in the $80M+ range).
• Will sign multi-year deals with significant money, even if AAV is “only” at or near $15.8M: Desmond, Davis, Iwakuma, Gallardo, Samardzija: I can see Desmond doing 4/$60 or something like that in New  York, I can see the two pitchers getting nice deals in the 3/$45 range and I can see Davis banking a short high AAV deal.  For me, even Samardzija’s 2015 decline won’t scare off some teams, especially teams out west in pitcher’s parks and especially since he could be a nice 2nd-tier deal of an arm once you get past the significant FA pitchers.
• Might not get $15.8M AAV, but will sign for at least 2/$25M or 3/$40M or something: Lackey, Chen, Kendrick, Weiters, Anderson: Most of these guys probably take less AAV but guarantee more total cash, like several guys did last off-season.  I’ll bet some of these guys re-sign with their current teams too (Anderson, maybe Kendrick, maybe Lackey too).  The draft pick compensation likely scares off some teams here, so their market will be limited, but if a team has a protected first pick they might be ok giving up a second rounder for these guys.  Or, a team like Washington, which will get two supp-1st picks, may be willing to give up its 1st rounder to just “drop down” 10-15 slots to sign these guys.

So that leaves more than a few guys who might be crazy not to sign the offer sheet:

• Rasmus: made just $8M this year; does anyone really think he’s getting significantly more in FA on an AAV basis?  Plus, who is going to give up a 1st or even a 2nd round pick to sign him?  And he hit just .238 in a hitter’s park.  This seems like a “dare” move from the Houston front office, known in the industry to be just a bit too clever for their own good sometimes.  As in, “I dare you to break with your union and take this deal.”  If there really is some un-spoken agreement among players to never take a QO, he’s a great test case.
• Fowler: Similar situation to Rasmus ($9.5M this year): he’s not the kind of guy you commit significant money to, is he?  He does have value in a very small CF market, so perhaps you  make the argument he belongs in the same conversation as Lackey or Kendrick.
• Murphy: made just $8M this year and hit half as many homers in the post season as he had all year.  So clearly he made himself some cash with his post-season exploits .. but enough to double his pay on an AAV basis?  A shrewd move from the NY front office, pressing the issue here with Murphy.
• Kennedy: $9.8M this year but has been awful.  Might not even be a 5th starter, and has Scott Boras as an agent.  Who’s giving up a 1st rounder to make him their 5th starter?  Who’s signing him to a long term deal?  Without the QO stigma, I could have seen him signing a 1yr/$8M deal but not much else.  How can he possibly not take this offer, a gift of a pillow contract to re-gain some value for next off-season?  One reason: his agent.  Is Kennedy going to be the next Stephen Drew or Kendrys Morales, who gets talked into hitting the open market by his aggressive agent only to find himself sitting until next year’s draft passes since nobody’s willing to give up a high round pick to sign him?
• Estrada: he made just $3.9M in 2015 and has made just $10m TOTAL in his career, yet got offered $15.8M for next season after a breakout  year in Toronto.  Uh, why wouldn’t he take this QO?  He’s on the wrong side of 30, would more than double his CAREER earnings with one stroke of the pen, and if he repeats his performance could get a 3-year deal taking him past age 35 to lock up his financial future.  This is easily the craziest QO we’ve seen yet and will be the biggest test of the system.

It just seems to me that this last group of players are either going to re-sign with their own team or are going to get really screwed in the open market.  Look at that last group of 5 players and tell me who’s giving up a 1st round pick to sign them?

Good further reading on the same topic:

• Grant Brisbee‘s analysis of who is getting “hosed” by the QO this year.
• Buster Olney‘s list of seven players who may accept the QO this year
• Ken Rosenthal with an editorial about the state of the QO system.

Can Batman bring a championship to New York? Photo: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Post season predictions so far:

• Wild Card Games: (link to my prediction post): got both Houston and Cubs WC wins right.
• NLDS: (link to my prediction post):  Got LA in 5 games wrong, got Cubs in 4 exactly right
• ALDS: (link to my prediction post): Got Toronto in 4 correct, got KC in 5 exactly right
• NLCS: (link to my prediction post): Predicted Cubs in 6, was Mets in 4 (ouch, not even close)
• ALCS: (link to my prediction post): Predicted Toronto in 6, actually was KC in 6 (wrong again).

So, neither LCS went as I thought it would and we have the #1 media market in the post-season for the first time since 2009.

Likely Pitching Matchups for Mets-Royals:

Mets-Royals:

• Game 1: Harvey vs Volquez
• Game 2: deGrom vs Ventura
• Game 3: Cueto vs Snydergaard
• Game 4: Young vs Matz
• Game 5: likely Volquez vs Harvey again
• Game 6: likely deGrom vs Ventura again
• Game 7: likely Snydergaard vs Cueto again

Discussion

The Mets, by virtue of their quite unexpected sweep, get to reset their rotation and opt (somewhat surprisingly) to lead with Matt Harvey instead of Jacob deGrom.  So be it; both guys likely throw twice in the series anyway, so perhaps its a case of getting Harvey a home start in game 5 where he’s likely to be unbeatable.  The Royals had to burn Yordano Ventura in the LCS game 6; he won’t be available until WS game 2, so they seem set to lead off with their 2nd most effective guy Edinson Volquez in the opener.

Man for man, the Mets seem to have an overwhelming pitching advantage here.  Their 1-2-3 starters each are significant throwers, Volquez doesn’t normally scare anyone, and Johnny Cueto had a 36.00 ERA in the LCS.  But the Royals are formidable at the plate: 2nd in the league in BA (by just a point behind the leader), Fewest in the league, by a fairly significant margin, in percentage of strikeouts.  Lastly, as a team they’re the 3rd best squad in the game at hitting fastballs.  So strength meets strength here.

I can see the Royals working the Mets pitchers, who are all young and may be at the tail end of their effectiveness after a season where almost all of them are pitching far longer than they thought.  If the Royals get into the Mets bullpen … are they in trouble?  Meanwhile, the Royals’ starters don’t exactly inspire confidence necessarily, but the Royals bullpen is 2nd to none and with so many off-days there’s no reason to think that their main bullpen arms can’t throw in practically every game.   With the possible exception of one game in NY, I can see the likes of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Luke Hochevar throwing each night and shutting down the late innings.  This could make the difference if this team can get a lead and hold on to it in a close game.

Side note: how funny is baseball; Wade Davis was an awful starter … 5.32 ERA for KC in 24 starts in 2013.  and in 2 years out of the pen he’s 17-3 with a 0.97 ERA across 139 IP!!  Read that statline again; it wasn’t a typo.  187/43 K/BB in 139 IP over the last two years as a 7th/8th inning guy.  Hochevar was the same thing: 5.73 ERA as a starter in 2012, then a 1.92 ERA when he got moved to the pen in 2013.  They also have the effective Ryan Madsen (former Phillie) out there, and all of this bullpen success is in spite of losing perhaps their *best* arm in closer Greg Holland to injury earlier this year.  Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned for our Nats in terms of bullpen construction and what it can do for you.

Can the Mets keep up their momentum after such a long layoff?  Will the rest help or hurt their young arms? (probably help frankly).

I have a feeling this is the Royal’s year.  I’m not sure how they do it, but I think the home field advantage and the fact that they’ve “been there before” gives them a bit of an advantage.  The Mets’ arms are not infallible; they’ll give up runs.  Is Daniel Murphy still the second coming of Babe Ruth?  Can Lucas Duda get hot again (when he’s on fire, he’s the best hitter in the league, as my fantasy team this year could attest).

Prediction; I like Kansas City in 7.  This goes against my better judgement, because I always favor the arms, but when the bats can neutralize the arms … go with the team that seems like its destined to win.

PS: in case you were not aware of the local connection … Kansas City’s GM Dayton Moore was involved with the baseball program at George Mason University, serving as an assistant coach from 1990-1994, right around the same time as some of my baseball colleagues were there (my former teammates who played at Mason would have graduated in the 92-94 range).  Now as GM in KC, he’s hired former local player Lonnie Goldberg as his scouting director; we mentioned Goldberg in this space back in Jan 2013 when talking about notable local pro players in my big “All-Virginia team” post, and Goldberg was on those Mason teams in the early 1990s with my former HS teammate Billy Emerson (now the AD at Paul VI in Fairfax).  Small world.

Taylor Jordan trades in his minor league gear for a Nats kit for the first time. Photo via wffn.net/hueytaxi on flikr.com

As Luke Erickson noted over on NationalsProspects.com, one of the Nats worst-kept secrets was finally let out of the bag when word broke that Nats 2013 minor-league sensation Taylor Jordan was in New York and was going to make his Major League debut on Saturday June 29th.  Starting in place of “injured” and ineffective starter Dan Haren, Jordan went up against one of the worst offensive teams in Baseball (the Mets are dead last in team batting average, hitting just .229 as a team as of 6/29’s game).  Lets review how Jordan did.

At the end of the day, (a 5-1 Loss for the Nats and a “Loss” for Jordan in his debut), Jordan’s line probably betrays how well he pitched on the day.  Jordan was pulled after 4 1/3 innings and was relatively unlucky to have given up the 3 runs (1 earned) that he did.  After a nervous first inning that included a walk and a HBP, Jordan induced one of many ground ball outs on the night to get out of the jam.  He cruised through the 2nd and 3rd innings relatively unscathed before some bad luck and a couple of bad pitches cost him a run in the third.  He got what looked to be a double-play ball to erase one runner who reached by error but the turn was slow (in fairness, a ball deep to the hole in 2nd and a fast runner conspired against the turn).  He then hung a slider against John Buck who hit it sharply to left to drive in the first of his charged runs in the 4th.

Ryan Zimmerman‘s questionable positioning against the Mets’ cleanup hitter Marlon Byrd led to two fielding errors on sharply hit balls that, despite their pace, should have been outs (why is he playing even with the bag there??  Does he really think Byrd is bunting batting out of the clean-up spot?)   Then a little-league sequence in the 5th led to the 2nd run being scored when Ian Desmond‘s attempt to get Daniel Murphy advancing to third led to a second run.  Jordan’s last charged run was on a sac fly/inherited runner allowed to score by his relief pitcher Craig Stammen.

Jordan featured a fastball that was regularly 91-92 but which peaked at 95.81.  He seemed to tire as the game went on; his peak fastballs were all in the first two innings (perhaps he was “amped up”).  His mechanics reminded you of Jered Weaver, with a sweeping cross-body motion that results in plenty of movement on his pitches.  He featured a very plus change-up, which he commanded well and was able to get key strikes on (he had no issues throwing it to lead-off a hitter, or at 2-0).  His slider didn’t move much, but it also featured as a plus pitch when he kept it down.  He was able to locate his fastball well, as best evidenced in David Wright‘s third at-bat against him, where Jordan fooled him badly with a slider, jammed him inside repeatedly and eventually forced a weak ground-ball to the shortstop to retire him in the 5th.  He gave up some sharply hit balls, but he also was very unlucky as a couple of flairs and bloops fell in just behind the infield.

On the day, he gave up 5 hits, two walks, and a HBP against just one strike-out (against his opposing number Dillon Gee, who he retired with another fantastic change-up).  He wasn’t very efficient on the mound, only throwing 48 of 84 pitches for strikes.  He wasn’t “nibbling” per se, but definitely works the corners and missed his spots.  In the 4th and 5th he was constantly falling behind hitters and (as Masn announcer J.P. Santangelo noted) it eventually caught up with him.  He got 9 ground outs to just 3 fly outs to go along with a handful of bloop singles, and to me its clear what his approach is.  Despite pretty decent K/9 numbers so far in the 2013 minor league season (72 Ks in 90 1/3 innings) he’s definitely a guy who is going to rely on location and a sinking fastball to induce grounders for outs.

All in all, in an oft-repeated mantra for 2013 you can’t win if you don’t score.  He probably was pulled when he should have been and isn’t really at fault for the loss (not when your offense only scores one run against a middling pitcher like Gee).  I think Jordan clearly has earned another start and probably sticks around for a while.

One last note: I can’t help but comment on a cynical but possibly true comment I read in one of the other Nats blogs (my apologies, I cannot remember who said it).  Is Jordan’s call-up a precursor to his being included in a possible trade, much as Mike Rizzo featured both Tommy Milone and Brad Peacock at the end of 2011 prior to shipping them off?  I ask this because Jordan doesn’t seem to be the typical Rizzo guy; he’s not going to overpower you, he doesn’t throw mid 90s.  Then again, neither does Haren and that didn’t stop Rizzo from signing him for $13M.

Either way, I look forward to his next outing.  I’m always excited to watch new guys on the mound.