Nationals Arm Race

It seems like every time I turn around, I see another ex-Nat pitching against us.  This past weekend our old friend Tommy Milone surfaced with the Mets to help lead his team to victory against us.

It got me wondering; what’s the best pitching staff of ex-Nats you could come up with right now?

Using a quick and dirty reference guide for depth charts at rotoworld.com, and basically going off of memory of who used to be in our organization, here’s my starting five rotation members, how they were connected with us and how we parted ways.

1. Rich Hill, LA Dodgers.  He of the near perfect-game turned to walk-off homer loss.  Hill was a MLFA signing in March of 2015, threw in 25 games of relief and then was given his release halfway through the season (he probably had an opt-out).  From there, he bounced to Boston before signing a one year deal with Oakland where he suddenly was an all-star starter.  Oakland flipped him to LA, and now he’s the #2 starter basically on the best team in baseball.
2. Robbie Ray, Arizona.  He was a big-money draft-pick by us before the new rules came in.  Initially seen as a throw-in in the Doug Fister trade, Ray is now the one who “got away.”   Detroit moved him to Arizona in the 3-way Didi Gregorius move, and he’s slowly come into his own.  He made the All-Star team in 2017 and is one of the better starters in the NL this year.
3. Marco Estrada, Toronto.  This one still amazes me; we drafted him in 2005 and developed him all the way through his 6-year free agency in the minors, with him showing little of what he now shows for Toronto.   After leaving Washington, he signed in Milwaukee and eventually became a solid rotation member for them, but became an all-star in Toronto.  I’m tempted btw to also put in Marcus Stroman, who we drafted out of HS as a short stop in 2009 before he went to Duke, learned how to pitch, and became a first rounder.
4. Brad Peacock, Houston.  He’s got a 11.9 K/9 rate as a starter/swingman for Houston this year.  We drafted him under the old “draft and follow” rules in the 41st round in 2006, developed him to the majors, then flipped him in the Gio Gonzalez deal.  Oakland then moved him (as they’re apt to do) to Houston in 2013, where he’s pitched ever since.  2017 is easily his best pro season.
5. Alex Meyer, Los Angeles Angels.  Our second “first round”pick in the 2011 draft (the “Rendon” draft), he was thought to be perhaps too big to start.  Initially the trade bounty sent to Minnesota for Denard Span, Meyer took for ever to develop, got flipped to Los Angeles and took til his age 25 year to even debut in the majors.  Finally in 2017 he’s showed some promise as a starter (though he’s missed time with a shoulder injury).

Honorable Mentions: Doug Fister, Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, Jordan Zimmermann, Nate Karns,  Tommy Milone, Nick Pivetta, Mat Latos, Bronson Arroyo, Vance Worley

Interesting.  When I started this post I thought it’d be deeper.  I struggled to pick the 5th starter over the list of HMs.  Would you take any of the honorable mentions over Meyer or Peacock right now?  Can you think of anyone I’m missing?  Giolito just had a nice start; do you take him over Meyer or these other guys?

Do we have any regrets about any of these guys getting away?  Probably not.  There’s no way we could have predicted what Hill would have become, and Ray was just a baby when he was flipped.  We knew we were giving up talent in Peacock and Meyer … just not knowing how long it would have taken to matriculate.  Estrada’s maturation was totally unexpected too.

As far as the honorable mentions go … i’m completely surprised Fister (and Milone for that matter) is still in the league.  Giolito/Lopez was giving up talent to get talent.  We seem to have dodged a huge bullet with Zimmermann.   Karns has never really been healthy enough to show us what he has.  Pivetta may eventually come back to haunt us, but his 24-yr old season showed he’s not quite ready for the bigs.  Latos and Arroyo are barely hanging on (Arroyo may have already announced his retirement).  Worley pitched against us a few weeks ago and beat us but overall his 2017 has been a struggle.

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How about relievers?  Here’s my best seven ex-Nats relievers out there (feel free to remind me if I forgot someone):

• Felipe Rivero: the big name on this list; he’s exploded onto the scene since being flipped to Pittsburgh in the Mark Melancon deal.  He’s got an ERA+ for 2017 of 345, a just ridiculous.  He’s my ex-nat closer.
• Blake Treinen: flipped to Oakland in a classic “change of scenery” move and he’s been stellar from day one on the west coast.  Sub 2.00 ERA, 7 saves.  Will he stay at this level?  Hopefully for him, yes.
• Mark Melancon: I know he’s struggled with injury this year, but he’s only 32 and should have plenty of more success.  I’ll take him as closer 1-A to Rivero on my Ex-Nat staff.
• Fernando Abad: DFA’d in the 2013 off-season then flipped to our favorite trade partner for a non-prospect minor leaguer, Abad was subsequently stellar for Oakland the following season.  He’s been up and down since, but has also been stellar in Boston’s bullpen this year.  He’s one of my Ex-Nat Loogies.
• Jerry Blevins: the guy who (I think) Mike Rizzo traded for 50 cents on the dollar because he took the Nats to arbitration in 2015.  He got hurt soon after the trade in 2015, but has given the Mets two very solid years out of the pen since.
• Craig Stammen: that’s right; he’s not only back but has had a very nice season in San Diego’s bullpen.
• Yusmeiro Petit: we signed him away from our nemesis San Francisco … and then he struggled badly enough to have his club-option declined.  He promptly signed with the Angels and has been quite effective in 2017.  He’s my ex-Nat long-man.

Honorable Mentions: Tyler Clippard, Matt Belisle, Michael Brady, Ian Krol, Drew Storen, Josh Smoker, Marc Rzepczynski, Zach Duke, Paolo Espino, Abel de los Santos, Matt Purke, Xavier Cedeno.

So, this is a much better bullpen than starting rotation.  Three closer-quality guys at the top and two quality lefties.  Both Stammen and Petit have been good this year.  There’s a long list of honorable mention Nat relievers at this ponit and there may be others who are sitting in AAA right now.

 

 

I was intrigued by ckstevenson’s comment/suggestion to do a piece on Former Nats.  We certainly talk about them a lot, especially the traded pieces.  So I’ll start a new series tracking down significant players who departed ways from the team.  I figure year by year is the way to go, so we’ll look at guys who were with the franchise in 2016 who left either during the 2016 season or who were traded in the off-season prior to the beginning of the 2017 season.

I’ll leverage previously written material from my Nats to Oblivion Posts to start, then fill in the holes.  I’ll focus on players no longer with the organization, not guys like Clint Robinson who got DFA’d off the 40-man but who are still with the org in some capacity.

I’ll organize this by roughly by the level of the player; major league players who left via FA or trade, then DFAd/declined players, then minor leaguers of note.

• Mark Melancon: signed a 4 years/$62M with the San Francisco Giants, through his age 36 year, which was a record for a relief pitcher that lasted a few more weeks until Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen signed in last off-season’s closer bonanza.  So far in 2017 he’s been solid, as expected.  The Nats were pursuers, but didn’t want to go as high on total value.
• Wilson Ramos: signed a 2yr/$12.5M deal with Tampa, with incentives to possibly take that to around $18.5M.  A far cry from his value prior to the knee injury.
• Matt Belisle: signed a 1 year/$2.05M deal with Minnesota.  He only made $1.25M on a minor/major league deal with Washington in 2016, who didn’t want to guarantee him this kind of money for 2017 in his age 38 year season.  So far in 2017 he’s been very solid, picking up where he left off last  year.  We could probably have used him … but that’s “hindsight is 20/20” argument right now; you could also look at his 2016 and say “one-off” season and fully expect him to regress this year.
• Marc Rzepczynski: signed a 2 years/$11M deal with Seattle, clearly more than the Nats were willing to pay, despite the fact that we traded future hall-of-famer Max Schrock to acquire him.  As of this writing he had yet to give up a run for Seattle’s bullpen in 2017.
• Danny Espinosa: traded to the Angels for two AAA arms after the team made  him obsolete (and destroyed his trade value) by acquiring Adam Eaton and making it clear that Trea Turner was going to be the 2017 shortstop.  Espinosa returns to his home town and is doing about what we’d expect from him; hitting .186 and leading the league in strikeouts through April 2017.
• Yusmeiro Petit, who made the 2017 Angels as an NRI and has been very effective thus far in 2017, pitching to a 1.59 ERA through most of April.
• Ben Revere was non-tendered and signed a 1yr/$4M deal with the Angels (with some incentives).  Revere joins former Nats Petit, Espinosa, Yunel Escobar and Alex Meyer in Los Angeles; that’s 20% of their current active roster with Washington ties.
• Jonathan Papelbon: Released mid-2016, not only did he not sign on for the rest of the season … he has yet to sign on with anyone for 2017.  He was reportedly “dealing with a family matter” over the off-season that prevented him from signing with a team.  I think that’s code for “I’m no longer good enough to convince a team to deal with my baggage so I’m probably retired.”  Either that or he’s somehow self convinced that his 89mph fastball still plays as a closer in the modern game and refused to consider middle relief options.
• Derek Norris became the second ex-Washington catcher to join Tampa Bay this off-season, signing a 1yr/$1.2M deal with another $800k in roster bonuses after getting cut loose from his $4.2M arbitration-avoiding contract this spring.  The transaction cost Washington a cool $688k.  Norris has struggled badly at the plate thus far.
• Sean Burnett: Signed MLFA deal with Philadelphia for 2017, but was cut on 3/26/17.  Not even assigned to AAA.  As of this writing is un-signed.  I’m slightly surprised someone hasn’t taken a flier on him as a AAA loogy, unless the scouting reports from his time last fall indicate that his 2nd elbow isn’t as good as his first.
• Mat Latos got his rehab assignment paid for by the team last year but couldn’t parlay it into anything but a MLFA deal for 2017 with Toronto.  However, a slate of injuries to Toronto’s rotation resulted in his getting called up in April 2017, shocking me; I figured Latos was done.  His first start wasn’t great: 4 runs in 5 innings; we’ll see how long he lasts in the hitter-friendly Skydome.
• Matt den Dekker: Signed MLFA/NRI deal with Miami for 2017.  Did not make the 25-man roster and is currently in their AAA affilliate in New Orleans.
• Paolo Espino, who had a solid year starting in AAA, signed a MLFA deal with Milwaukee for 2017.  Through his first 4 starts for their AAA team in Colorado Springs, he’s posted similar numbers to what he did for us last  year, quite a feat for playing at such altitude).  I thought Espino was a loss for a team that clearly doesn’t rate its remaining AAA starters that much and who had an open tryout for 4-A types like Jeremy Guthrie and Vance Worley all spring.
• Vance Worley; speaking of Worley, after not beating out Guthrie or anyone else to make our team, he opted out and joined den Dekker (and Tyler Moore, and Destin Hood, and Steve Lombardozzi) in Miami’s AAA team in New Orleans.  That’s 5 players with Nats ties on a 25-man team.  Worley through 4 starts: 1.66 ERA.  Perhaps the Nats picked the wrong veteran hurler.  Worley had solid numbers for Baltimore in 2016; still not sure why he wasn’t looked at more closely.
• Erik Davis: longtime Nats farmhand Davis took a MLFA deal to leave our system, signed with the AAA affiliate in Reno of Arizona and has been stellar thus far in 2017; zero ER and 12 k’s in 8 innings.  If he turns into a serviceable RH reliever at a time that the Nats need some … i’ll be disappointed.
• Taylor Jordan: summarily cut after it became clear he would need a second Tommy John surgery.  I thought the timing was a bit cruel and hope that Jordan at least got his medical bills paid for by the team.
• Abel De los Santos was claimed off waivers off our 40-man roster by Cincinnati, who eventually called him up for a 2-week stint last September.  However, they waived him in October and he got claimed by … guess who … the Los Angeles Angels.  The DFA’d him a month later during the pre-Rule5 period and snuck him off their 40-man roster.  He’s struggling for their AA team in Mobile so far in 2017.
• Reynaldo Lopez (traded for Eaton): struggling with is control thus far in 4 starts for AAA Charlotte.  1-1 with a 4.87 ERA and a 22/13 K/BB ratio.
• Lucas Giolito (traded for Eaton): also struggling with his control thus far in 4 starts for Charlotte: he’s 0-2 with a 6.43 ERA and a 16/9 K/BB ratio.
• Dane Dunning (traded for Eaton): has posted a 0.45 ERA through his first three starts for low-A Kannapolis, with a 26-1 K/BB ratio, though as noted in the comments previously, Dunning is the sole 1st round college draftee from a 4-year school who is NOT already in High-A.  He’s a man among boys in Low-A and needs to be moved up to get any useful reading off his stuff.
• Mario Sanchez (traded for Cordero): has given up 5 runs in 9 innings thus far for AA Reading in the Philadelphia system.
• Jeffrey Rosa (traded for Romero): sitting in Tampa’s XST, no 2017 appearances.  He’ll likely repeat the GCL.
• Pedro Avila (traded for Norris): 3 starts and decent numbers for Lake Elsinore in High-A.  He’ll give up hits in that hitter-friendly league, keep in mind.  At the end of the day, trading Avila so that we’d have the honor of giving Norris a check for $688k and then releasing him was not the best business Mike Rizzo has ever done.
• Felipe Rivero (traded for Melancon); 0.77 ERA through 12 appearances for the Pirates in 2017.  We’ve litigated this one to death; it was a tough return to give up for Melancon … but what choice did we have at that point last year?
• Taylor Hearn (traded for Melancon); iffy results through 3 starts for High-A Bradenton in the FSL.  Big arm, lots of Ks, can he stay as a starter.  That’ll be the scouting report on Hearn until he arrives in the majors by hook or by crook.
• Max Schrock (traded for Rzepczynski): Future hall of famer Schrock is slashing .231/.286/.288 through mid-April for AA Midland in the Oakland system.  For as much as I mock Schrock, I will note that he was paid like a 3rd or 4th rounder out of college irrespective of where he got drafted, so his eventual success really should be measured more in that light than the specific round he was picked (13th).
• Burke Badenhop MLFA for the 2016 season, didn’t make the team and was released, signed ML deal with Texas but lasted exactly one week before getting released again, and never signed on for the rest of 2016 or since.

That’s a lot of player churn, and a lot of prospects traded.  Did I forget anyone?

 

 

Sixth and last in our set of Draft class Reviews for the 2016 season.  First was the 2016 class, then the 2015 class then the 2014 class, then the 2013 class, then the 2012 class.

There’s no point going past the 2011 class because anyone prior is already a 6year MLFA.  Its barely worth discussing these draftees since all the college-aged players are 6 year MLFAs after this season, but we’ll strive on anyway, especially since one guy in particular has been somewhat of a lightening rod in this space.

Web links to use while reading:

• Stats are pulled from milb.com and/or fangraphs.com; put the player name into the search bar to get his seasonal stats
• The 2016 MLB.com Draft Tracker (which I believe is the best draft tracker out there) is the best place to get draft class information.
• The 2016 Bonus Tracker
• The Big Board and the Draft Tracker are the goto resources for prospects for any Nats fan.
• More obscure stats on players are sometimes found at places like thebaseballcube.com, perfectgame.org, their college websites, twitter accounts for the players, and good old fashioned deep-dive googling.
• My historical list of Nats prospect rankings, updated for all 2016 mid-season rankings.

It is also worth reminding everyone that the 2011 draft was the last of its kind before new CBA rules went into effect.  So what you see in 2011 isn’t what we see now.  Specifically:

• There used to be 50 rounds; after this draft it went down to 40.  And looking at the rounds 40-50 picks, you can understand why there was little need for those additional 10 rounds.
• There used to be no caps on bonus spending; after this draft, no more massive bonus spending to sign HS prep kids in lower rounds to 1st round money.
• And because of the new caps and the tracking of limits up to the 10th round, we now see teams often making “throw away” college senior signs in the 6th-10th picks to save on bonus dollars to go over-slot for high profile picks or later draft steals.  In 2011, these same guys were getting drafted in the 20th-30th round range instead.

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Without further ado:

Round 1: (#6 overall) Anthony Rendon, 3B Coll Jr from Rice: Slashed .270/.348/.450 and was a Gold Glove finalist while rebounding to put together a 4-win season for Washington.  Had an awful NLDS series, failing badly in the clutch especially in the Game 5 loss.  Still is a significant and important player for this team.   Has accumulated 11 career bWAR through four seasons/age 26, which isn’t on pace for Hall of Fame levels by any means but is still pretty solid.  If he puts together two more years like his 2016, he’ll be inline for a pretty hefty contract.  Matriculated to Majors.

Round 1 (#23 overall): Alex Meyer, RHP Coll Jr from Kentucky: Traded straight up for Denard Span in Nov 2012.  The Twins could never get him productive at the Major league level, so they flipped him in Aug 2016 to the Angels for Hector Santiago.   The Angels immediately put  him in the rotation; he went 1-2 in five starts with a 4.57 ERA.  Likely in their rotation in 2017 since they’re starved for starting pitching.

Round 1-S (#34): Brian Goodwin, OF Juco from Miami Dade CC South: Slashed .280/.349/.438 in AAA, earned a call-up to provide some OF coverage and more than held his own in 42 MLB at bats (.286/.318/.429).  Goodwin salvaged his career and my opinion of it in 2016; I thought he had peaked as a AA/AAA washout.  Now is he a realistic 4th OF candidate?   He played mostly CF for Syracuse but mostly corners during his MLB stint (that’s because of course Trea Turner was manning center).  We’ve talked a lot about what this team should do at CF; is Goodwin an answer?  For 2017 I see him competing with Michael Taylor for the 4th OF spot but not starting; the loser of that competition will head back to AAA or get traded.  Writing this analysis made me immediately update my “Options Worksheet” to see if Goodwin was in trouble there: he still has one option remaining (as does Taylor), meaning no mandatory 4/1/17 decisions on either guy. Matriculated to Majors but may also be a “peaked at AAA” type.  2017 will be illustrative.

Round 2: Pick given to Philadelphia as compensation for Jayson Werth signing.  The Phillies used the pick to take a HS SS out of Florida named Roman Quinn.  Quinn matriculated to the majors this year, giving Philly 57 ABs and hitting .263 along the way.

Round 3: Matthew Purke, LHP draft eligible sophomore from TCU: Released/elected Free Agency 11/5/15 after being released and then re-signing in Nov 2014 in a pre-arranged deal to get him off the 40-man.  He signed with the White Sox, and immediately did for them what he never could do for us: pitch well above A-Ball.  They assigned him to AAA, where he posted a 3.26 ERA and then they called him up to the majors.  For the MLB club he struggled (5.50 ERA in 20 innings with an awful K/BB ratio), but the bigger question maybe why he didn’t perform like this for his drafting team.  Is this a failure of player development?  Why couldn’t this team get value out of this big-bonus pick like the White Sox did?  Mid Dec 2016 update, just prior to publishing: Purke was DFA’d by the White Sox to make way for all their new acquisitions; i’m guessing he’ll pick up with another pitching-starved team though and at least start 2017 in AAA.

Round 4: Kylin Turnbull, LHP juco from Santa Barbara CC: zero IP in 2015; on the Potomac D/L the entire year.  Missed the entire 2016 season, after missing the entire 2015 season.  He has a career 4.53 ERA and i’m not sure what the team still saw  in him to not just release him when he got hurt again.  Peaked at  High-A

Round 5: Matt Skole, 3B Coll Jr. from Georgia Tech:  Slashed .244/.337/.437 in a full season at AAA.  119/66 K/BB, 24 homers, 2 SB in 499 ABs.  We definitely have some Skole fans in this space, and we’ve litigated his position enough.  That slash line actually represents a regression from his 2015 partial season in AAA, even with the rise in homers.  The team did not bother to add him at the 9/1 expansion date even with Clint Robinson hitting at the Mendoza line, as good of an indication as any that Skole has peaked at AAA.  He’s playing winter ball in an attempt to showcase his skills; he’s hitting .236 through 89 ABs as of the time of this writing on 11/10/16, dampening his MLFA prospects a bit.  Post-Writing Update: the Nats did put Skole on the 40-man in Nov 2016 … so perhaps he has not yet peaked.  They wouldn’t have put him on unless they wanted him to potentially compete for a 25-man spot, so we’ll see what happens in 2017.

Round 6: Taylor Hill, RHP Coll Sr from Vanderbilt.  6-13 with a 4.60 ERA in a full season starting for Syracuse.  97/38 K/BB in 154 IP.  He was outrighted off the 40-man and passed completely through waivers, an indictment of his career chances at this point.  Peaked at AAA.

Round 7: Brian Dupra, RHP Coll Sr from Notre Dame: Released on 3/16/16 after (presumably) failing to make the AA bullpen.  He just never succeeded above  High-A and was an easy release candidate heading into 2016.

Round 8: Gregory Holt, RHP Coll Sr from UNC: Released 3/20/14.

Round 9: Dixon Anderson, RHP Coll Jr. from UC-Berkeley: Retired 5/14/14.

Round 10: Manny Rodriguez, RHP Coll Sr. from Barry (FL): Released 9/28/15.

Round 11: Caleb Ramsey, OF Coll Sr from U of Houston: slashed .265/.320/.361 in a full-season playing RF for AAA Syracuse.  He was never on anyone’s radar to get a call-up in 2016 but soldiers on.  Peaked at AAA.

Round 12: Blake Monar, LHP Coll Jr from Indiana: released 3/20/13.

Round 13: Casey Kalenkosky 1B Coll Jr From Texas State: did not sign, returned to Texas State for senior season.  Drafted in the 30th round in 2012 by Atlanta, lasted two years and released/retired.

Round 14: Cody Stubbs: LF Juco from Walters State CC (TN): did not sign, transferred to UNC and was drafted in the 8th round of 2013 by Kansas City.   Retired in July 2015.

Round 15: Zachary Houchins, SS Juco from Louisberg College (NC): did not sign, transferred to ECU, drafted in the 13th round of 2014 by Los Angeles Angels.  Hit .262 in High-A in 2016.

Round 16: Deion Williams, SS from Redan HS (GA): Released 3/26/16 after struggling with the conversion to the mound.  No surprise here; he had a career ERA of 6.12.

Round 17: Esteban Guzman, RHP Coll Jr from San Jose State University: did not sign, returned to SJSU for his senior year and was never drafted again and, as far as I can tell, never played professionally.

Round 18: Nick Lee, LHP Juco from Weatherford (TX): 3-1 with a 4.32 ERA in 50 relief innings in AA.  55/42 K/BB.  Lee was outrighted off the 40-man in July of this year and passed completely through waivers.  His wildness just has not been harnessed, and its tough to see a path forwards for him.  He has one more season in our system to try to turn it around; we definitely have needs for additional lefty relievers.  But for us so far, he Peaked at AA.

Round 19: Hawtin Buchanan, RHP from Biloxi (Miss.) HS; did not sign, honored commitment to Ole Mis/Mississippi.  Drafted in the 20th round in 2014 by Seattle and put up a 4.14 ERA in low-A in 2015.  Was released, missed all of 2016 but then was recently picked up by Cincinnati on a MLFA contract.

Round 20: Josh Laxer, RHP  from Madison (Miss.) Central HS: did not sign, also honored commitment to Ole Mis/Mississippi.   Laxer pitched well in Short-A in 2014 but missed all of 2015 with an injury.  Released mid-2016.

Round 21: Todd Simko, LHP Coll Jr.  from Texas A&M-Corpus Christi: retired 7/12/13.

Round 22: Travis Henke RHP  Coll Sr from Arkansas-Little Rock: released on 1/6/14.

Round 23: Khayyan Norfork 2B Coll Sr from Tennessee: slashed .218/.313/.256 splitting time between High-A and AA.   Norfork’s role as a backup middle infielder for the lower rungs of the farm system may have come to an end.  Peaked at High-A/AA.

Round 24: Kyle Ottoson LHP Coll Jr from Arizona State: did not sign, returned for senior season and was drafted by San Diego in the 34th round in 2012.  Pitched one season of short-A ball and was released.

Round 25: Erick Fernandez  C Coll Sr from Georgetown: Released on 7/23/13.

Round 26: Shawn Pleffner OF Coll Jr from Univ. of Tampa: slashed .262/.332/.352 while repeating AA Harrisburg.   His 2016 AA numbers were nearly identical to his 2015 AA numbers; there’s just no room for a non-homer hitting 1B in the modern game.  Peaked at AA.

Round 27: Bobby Lucas LHP Coll Sr. from George Washington: released sometime in 2013 .

Round 28: Kenneth Ferrer RHP Coll Sr. from Elon University: Released or retired prior to the 2012 season.

Round 29: Sean Cotten C Coll Sr. Tusculum College: did not sign, or if he did he never appeared or played.

Round 30: Bryan Harper LHP Coll Jr from South Carolina: 3-2 with a 2.18 ERA splitting time (again) between AA and AAA.  Odd that he never got a shot, especially when the team got squeezed on lefty relievers and had to flip a decent prospect to acquire 5 weeks of Marc Rzepczynski at the end of 2016.  Especially odd considering the relationship that Harper has with the team.  I wonder if the team will lobby him to stay in the system.  For now, Peaked at AAA.  Post-writing update: Harper just went under the knife for Tommy John surgery, probably the reason he didn’t get called up.  He also wasn’t protected from Rule-5 as a result; his career goes on hiatus at a tough time but I’m guessing the Nats stick with him.  And why wouldn’t they?  His brother is here for two more years so I’m guessing so is Bryan.

Round 31: Josh Tobias SS  from Southeast Guilford HS (NC); did not sign, honored his commitment to Florida where he played four years and was drafted in the 20th round of 2015 by Philadelphia.  Hit .291 while moving from low- to high-A ball in 2016.

Round 32: Billy Burns OF Coll Jr. from Mercer Univ. (GA): traded in Dec 2013 straight up for Jerry Blevins.  After a nice 2015 season (he finished 5th in Rookie of the Year voting), Burns struggled in 2016, getting traded to Kansas City and struggling for playing time.

Round 33: Trey Karlen 2B Coll Sr from Univ. of Tennessee-Martin: Released on 6/17/13.

Round 34: Calvin Drummond RHP Coll Jr. Univ. of San Diego (CA): did not sign, returned to U San Diego for his senior year.   Looking up Drummond’s draft and collegiate history is interesting.  Per his baseballcube and baseball-reference pages, Drummond was drafted no less than four times; once out of HS, once as a draft-eligible sophomore (when the Nats drafted him in 2011), then again as a junior and again as a senior.  But the odd part is his history: he went to Orange Coast Juco, then transferred to San Diego where he red-shirted, pitched two decent years as a starter, then transferred again to the baseball powerhouse Arizona Christian University, where he pitched his senior year and was drafted in the 6th round by Detroit.  In 2016, he split time between High-A and AA.

Round 35: Alex Kreis RHP  Coll Sr Jamestown College (ND): Released or retired after the 2012 season.

Round 36: Ben Hawkins LHP Coll Jr from Univ. of West Florida: Released in mid-2013.

Round 37: Derrick Bleeker RHP Juco frm Howard College (TX): did not sign, transferred to the U of Arkansas and was drafted in the same 37th round the following year by Baltimore.  He struggled for Baltimore’s low-A affiliate in 2015 and retired in March 2016.

Round 38: Brett Mooneyham LHP Coll Jr from Stanford Univ. (CA): did not sign, stayed at Stanford for his Senior year and then the Nats picked him in the 3rd round of 2012.  See the 2012 post for more.

Round 39: Peter Verdin OF, Coll Jr from Univ. of Georgia: did not sign, returned to U Georgia for his senior year.  Was undrafted and went unsigned after his senior season.  Smells like a “favor pick,” as he was a local kid: hails from Alexandria, went to Paul VI HS in Fairfax.

Round 40: Stephen Collum OF from Cartersville HS (GA); did not sign, presumably (per baseballcube) went to Cleveland State Community College but has no college stats and was never again drafted.

Round 41: Bryce Ortega 3B Coll Sr. from Univ. of Arizona: had a decent season in 2012 for Hagerstown then either was released or retired.

Round 42: David Kerian SS from Bishop Heelan HS (IA): did not sign, honored his commitment to U of Illinois.  Signed by the Nats as a 9th round senior sign in 2015; see the 2015 post for more.

Round 43: Mitchell Morales SS from Wellington Community HS; did not sign, went to Florida Atlantic University and was drafted 3 years later in 2014 by San Diego in the 29th round.  Struggled in lower A leagues in 2015.

Round 44: Matt Snyder 1B Coll Jr Univ. of Mississippi: did not sign, returned to Ole Miss for his senior year and was a 10th round pick the following year by New York Yankees.  Hit .371 for High-A this year to push his way to AA.

Round 45: Richie Mirowski RHP Coll Sr. from Oklahoma Baptist Univ: Released on 3/19/15.

Round 46: Tyler Thompson OF Coll JR from Univ. of Florida: did not sign, returned to Florida for his senior year.  Got hurt (presumably) and was not drafted after 2012 and never played professionally.

Round 47: Timothy Montgomery LHP from Rockmart HS (GA): did not sign, took a year off, played one year at Berry College and was out of the game.

Round 48: Michael Bisenius OF Coll Jr from Wayne State College (NE): did not sign, returned to college for his senior year, never again drafted.  Played on year with the Sioux City Explorers in the American Association.

Round 49: Hunter Cole OF from Dorman HS (SC), did not sign, honored his commitment to the U of Georgia.  26th round pick in 2014 by San Francisco.  Hit .271 in a full season for AA Richmond in 2016.

Round 50: Anthony Nix OF Coll Sr from  Univ. of California-Riverside:  Released in Jan 2013.

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Trending Summary:

• Matriculated to Majors (6): Rendon, Goodwin, Meyer, Purke, Burns, Hill
• Peaked before Majors (8): Turnbull, Skole, Hill, Ramsey, Lee, Norfolk, Pleffner, Harper
• Did Not Sign in 2011 (21): Kalenkosky, Stubbs, Houchins, Guzman, Buchanan, Laxer, Ottoson, Cotten, Tobias, Drummond, Bleeker, Mooneyham, Verdin, Collum, Kerian, Morales, Snyder, Thompson, Montgomery, Bisenius, Cole
• Released/Retired (18): Purke, Dupra, Holt, Anderson, Rodriguez, Monar, DWilliams, Simko, Henke, Fernandez, Lucas, Ferrer, Karlen, Kreis, Hawkins, Ortega, Mirowski, Nix
• Traded (2): Meyer, Burns

Executive Summary

Well, now you know why we don’t need 50 rounds anymore.  Of the original 51 total picks (three 1st rounders and a lost 2nd rounder total 51 total guys in this class), fully 21 didn’t even sign.  That’s more than 40% of the draftees.  The “success” list is light; Rendon is obviously a win, but not one other player out of this draft is looking like a solid major leaguer right now.  Three of them are doing it for other teams; if Goodwin turns into a valuable piece that makes this draft look a bit better.

The next (and last) in a series: previously we reviewed the 2015 season stats for the 2015 draft class, 2014 draft class, 2013 draft class and the 2012 draft class.

Web links to use while reading:

• Stats are pulled from milb.com and/or fangraphs.com; put the player name into the search bar to get his seasonal stats
• The MLB Draft Tracker (which I believe is the best draft tracker out there) is the best place to get draft class information.
• The Big Board and the Draft Tracker are the goto resources for prospects for any Nats fan.
• Baseball-reference.com’s draft database for the Nats 2011 class.
• My working XLS in Google for all this data (cut-n-pasted at the bottom).
• TheBaseballCube.com for really obscure stats for players.

Note: in previous posts we’ve used trending up, steady and down for prospect growth analysis.  For me, if a guy has debuted in the majors then he’s automatically a “success” in terms of prospect development and is an automatic “trending up” green.  We’ll add in “matriculated” as a category.  However, doing this analysis I’m finding myself listing guys as “trending down” even if they’ve advanced well in the system but have seemingly peaked and/or failed to reach their potential.  I’ll list them as “peaked” instead of trending down as a result.  Might be unfair, but when looking at guys who in some cases are entering their 6th pro season I think it is fair to pass some final judgement on their careers at this point.

It is also worth noting that the 2011 draft was the last of its kind before new CBA rules went into effect.  So what you see in 2011 isn’t what we see now.  Specifically:

• There used to be 50 rounds; after this draft it went down to 40.  And looking at the rounds 40-50 picks, you can understand why there was little need for those additional 10 rounds.
• There used to be no caps on bonus spending; after this draft, no more massive bonus spending to sign HS prep kids in lower rounds to 1st round money.
• And because of the new caps and the tracking of limits up to the 10th round, we now see teams often making “throw away” college senior signs in the 6th-10th picks to save on bonus dollars to go over-slot for high profile picks or later draft steals.  In 2011, these same guys were getting drafted in the 20th-30th round range instead.

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Without further ado:

Round 1: (#6 overall) Anthony Rendon, 3B Coll Jr from Rice: slashed just .264/.344/.363in an injury plagued 2015 season after posting a 6.6 bWAR season in 2014.  While clearly he remains an injury risk, the potential he shows remains as one of the top players in the league.  Hopefully 2016 will see him returned to his natural position at third base, his natural batting position as 2nd in the lineup, and a return to form generally.  From a prospect development perspective, he’s more than reached his goal and you have to think that some of the teams that passed on him on draft day wish they had a do over.  Matriculated to Majors.

Round 1 (#23 overall): Alex Meyer, RHP Coll Jr from Kentucky: traded straight up for Denard Span in Nov 2012.  Since, the Twins have brought him along slowly, having him repeat AAA and as of the end of 2015 he has just 2 2/3rds major league innings.  What happened?  Perhaps he’s finally getting banished to the bullpen like most development types thought always would happen.  Matriculated to Majors.

Round 1-S (#34): Brian Goodwin, OF Juco from Miami Dade CC South: slashed .226/.290/.340 for Harrisburg in 2015, which represented a demotion from his 2014 assignment in AAA.  He’s on the 40-man roster (having been placed there to protect him against Rule-5), but may not be there for long.  Goodwin skipped High-A during that period when the Nats ownership was penalizing Potomac owners for the state of their field, and you have to wonder if it hurt his development.  He’s playing winter ball this off-season, perhaps in hopes of putting his name back in the mix in this organization.  Peaked at AA/AAA.

Round 2: Pick given to Philadelphia as compensation for Jayson Werth signing.  The Phillies used the pick to take a HS SS out of Florida named Roman Quinn.  He’s progressed nicely, slashing .306/.356/.435 this year in AA as a 22-yr old, albeit in limited action for the 4th successive year (injuries?).  Its impossible to know what the Nats would have done here, had they still owned the pick, but drafting a prep SS seems unlikely.  Then again, if they had this pick they might not have gone with the youngster Goodwin in the 1-S round.  Who knows.  Werth has totaled 9.2 bWAR in his 5 seasons here, which includes his -1.6 bWAR 2015 season dragging his totals down and nearly his whole 2nd season lost to injury.  A good “trade” in terms of the player versus the draft pick for sure. Was it a good contract?  Roughly 10 WAR for his $18M*5 =$90M, so about $9M/war.  Not so good.  We’re still not even to estimates above $7M/WAR and this contract was signed 5 years ago.  An argument for another time.

Round 3: Matthew Purke, LHP draft eligible sophomore from TCU: 3-6, 4.36 ERA with 43/17 K/BB across 64 IP (20 apps, 15 starts).  3.51/3.76 FIP in High-A/AA stints.  White a whirlwind season for Purke; he was released in Nov 2014 and I thought the team had cut ties.  A few days later, they signed him as MLFA in a clearly pre-arranged deal to get him off the 40-man (he was one of the last of a now-banned practice; 40-man draft day deals).   He jumped two levels in 2015 (from LowA through HighA to AA), ending the year as Harrisburg’s spot-starter/swing man and struggling there for the 2nd year in a row (6.35 ERA) … but perhaps not as bad as we think by virtue of the huge delta between his ERA and his FIP.  More concerning is his K rate; he just doesn’t mow ’em down like he used to.  What’s his projection at this point?  Loogy?  Long-man?  I don’t know.  I’m not confident that he’ll ever pan out though, so I’ll say generally Peaked at AA, since it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see him getting lit up again in AA next  year and just getting released.

Round 4: Kylin Turnbull, LHP juco from Santa Barbara CC: zero IP in 2015; on the Potomac D/L the entire year.  Had a relatively middling 2014 in High-A (3-3, 4.41 ERA) then never got out of the gate for 2015.  He was not well heralded at the time of the draft and hasn’t really done much to impress in parts of four minor league seasons (career numbers: 15-17 with 4.53 ERA).  It wouldn’t surprise me to see him get cut at the end of 2016 spring training if he can’t make the Potomac bullpen.  Peaked at High-A.

Round 5: Matt Skole, 3B Coll Jr. from Georgia Tech: slashed .234/.340/.417 between AA and AAA this year, 127/82 K/BB in 465 ABs.  20 homers.  Skole is now two full seasons removed from the awful 2013 injury that has more or less derailed his career.  Remember; it wasn’t that long ago that Skole was the Nats minor league player of the year (2012) and when he was routinely listed as the 3rd or 4th best prospect in the system.  Now he’s 26 in AAA, two years passed over in Rule 5 drafting and seemingly set to reach his 6-year MLFA barrier without really pressing for a MLB roster spot.  Can you see the Nats calling him up in 2016?  He’s limited to 3B on a team that (as it stands) has at least three or four of them on the MLB roster.  I think he may have reached his peak unless he blows up Syracuse early next year.  Peaked at AAA.

Round 6: Taylor Hill, RHP Coll Sr from Vanderbilt.  3-10 with a 5.23 ERA for Syracuse, 70/29 K/BB in 118 IP.  3.85 FIP.  Also gave the Nats 12 IP across 6 appearances in early June when they had a bullpen crunch.  His FIP shows that his ERA for Syracuse was misleading.  I think we know what we have in Hill at this point; softer tossing 4-A guy who can throw innings and serve as a decent utility/spare part arm for the team.  If you put all our SPs into one big depth chart, i’d probably put Hill somewhere around 10th in pecking order, meaning the odds of him really getting a shot at starting in the majors seems pretty slim.  I think he likely sticks in his existing insurance role for at least one or two more seasons before he faces arbitration, where he’ll likely get DFA’d and see his career end.  That’s no judgement on his career; as a senior sign for limited money, the fact that he made it out of short-season ball was a success, let alone getting 40-man placement and MLB innings.  A great job of drafting and development.  Matriculated to Majors.

Round 7: Brian Dupra, RHP Coll Sr from Notre Dame: 3-2, 3.61 ERA between AA and High-A, 43/20 in 52 relief IP.   Dupra started in AA, got bounced around and demoted to Potomac in Mid-June where he stayed the rest of the season as a long-man.  To me, a look at his career shows a guy who can’t compete outside of A-Ball and who is set to be 27 next spring without any success at AA or higher.  I can’t see how he’s long for the organization with the number of college arms drafted recently.  Look for a spring release.  Still an impressive career for a guy in the same boat as Hill; senior sign, limited bonus money, little expectations.  Peaked at High-A.

Round 8: Gregory Holt, RHP Coll Sr from UNC: Released 3/20/14 somewhat surprisingly after a decent season in Potomac.

Round 9: Dixon Anderson, RHP Coll Jr. from UC-Berkeley: Retired 5/14/14 after failing to get promoted and repeating Low-A for the third year.

Round 10: Manny Rodriguez, RHP Coll Sr. from Barry (FL): He was 1-3 with a 6.43 ERA for Potomac this year and was released 9/28/15 at season’s end.  It is probably safe to say that the team feels like Rodriguez’ role is easily filled by a younger draftee from more recent classes.

Round 11: Caleb Ramsey, OF Coll Sr from U of Houston: slashed .287/.354/.343 with 77/45 K/BB in 429 ABs between AA and AAA.  2 homers, 13Sbs.  Ramsey has quietly climbed the ladder for this team for years, but now reaches a cross roads; he doesn’t hit for enough power to justify his corner outfield spot and the Nats really don’t have any room for him in their MLB outfield.  I can’t see him making a 40-man roster and is clearly AAA org guy material at this point.  Look for him to play out the string in 2016 and get let go as a 6-year MLFA.  Peaked at AAA.

Round 12: Blake Monar, LHP Coll Jr from Indiana: released 3/20/13 somewhat surprisingly after a decent Short-A season.

Round 13: Casey Kalenkosky 1B Coll Jr From Texas State: did not sign, returned to Texas State for senior season.  Drafted in the 30th round in 2012 by Atlanta, lasted two years and released/retired.

Round 14: Cody Stubbs: LF Juco from Walters State CC (TN): did not sign, transferred to UNC and was drafted in the 8th round of 2013 by Kansas City.  Hit .283 this year in HighA.

Round 15: Zachary Houchins, SS Juco from Louisberg College (NC): did not sign, transferred to ECU, drafted in the 13th round of 2014 by Los Angeles Angels.  hit .253 in LowA this year.

Round 16: Deion Williams, SS from Redan HS (GA): 1-2, 5.46 ERA with 22/18 K/BB in 29.2 relief innings with Hagerstown.  Williams was drafted as a SS but converted to the mound after a year or so.  Since then, he’s struggled, somehow making it onto the full-season Hagerstown roster in June after sitting in XST for two months.  There, he continued not to impress; his career ERA is now 6.12 across 103IP and the three lower levels of the minors.  Hard to see how he’s even still on a roster at this point.  Trending Down.

Round 17: Esteban Guzman, RHP Coll Jr from San Jose State University (My parents’ alma mater!): did not sign, returned to SJSU for his senior year and was never drafted again and, as far as I can tell, never played professionally.  Odd.  He did regress in his Sr. season, going from a 3.33 ERA to a 4.71 ERA, but to go from a 17th round pick to never playing again smells like an injury.http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/afl/club.jsp?team_id=527

Round 18: Nick Lee, LHP Juco from Weatherford (TX): 3-1 with a 3.12 ERA between HighA and AA, 57/33 K/BB in 52 IP across 40 games.  Lee tried to make it as a starter for a while, but now is having good success as a bullpen guy.  He’s got a good BAA, but too many walks right now.  But he’s holding on strong and could make a push up the system ala Matt Grace in 2016.  The Nats see this as well and sent Lee to the Arizona Fall League this year. Trending Up.

Round 19: Hawtin Buchannan, RHP from Biloxi (Miss.) HS; did not sign, honored commitment to Ole Mis/Mississippi.  Drafted in the 20th round in 2014 by Seattle and put up a 4.14 ERA in low-A in 2015.

Round 20: Josh Laxer, RHP  from Madison (Miss.) Central HS: did not sign, also honored commitment to Ole Mis/Mississippi.   Boy the guys at Ole Miss would have been mad at Mike Rizzo from this draft had things gone differently.   Laxer pitched well in Short-A in 2014 but missed all of 2015 with an injury.

Round 21: Todd Simko, LHP Coll Jr.  from Texas A&M-Corpus Christi: retired 7/12/13 after not making the Hagerstown squad and struggling in Short-A.

Round 22: Travis Henke RHP  Coll Sr from Arkansas-Little Rock: released on 1/6/14 after putting up a 5.79 season pitching out of Potomac’s bullpen all 2013.

Round 23: Khayyan Norfork 2B Coll Sr from Tennessee: slashed .276/.336/.364 in a full season in Potomac, with 2  homers, 10 SBs and a 60/27 K/BB ratio in 341 ABs. Ended the  year with a roster-filling callup to AA.  Norfork’s third straight year in High-A, each time showing the same skill set; some speed, little power, decent bat but OPS figures in the .680-.700 range.  He may stick around for another season to reach MLFA but i’m not sure in what role; perhaps as AA utility guy.  Peaked at High-A/AA.

Round 24: Kyle Ottoson LHP Coll Jr from Arizona State: did not sign, returned for senior season and was drafted by San Diego in the 34th round in 2012.  Pitched one season of short-A ball and was released.

Round 25: Erick Fernandez  C Coll Sr from Georgetown: stuck around in an extreme backup mode (19 total games across three seasons), then released on 7/23/13 when the Short-A squads started to fill up after the 2013 draft.  Signed as a MLFA with Pittsburgh in the 2014 off-season but couldn’t make a squad.  Cut loose at the end of 2014’s spring training and out of baseball.

Round 26: Shawn Pleffner OF Coll Jr from Univ. of Tampa: slashed .269/.342/.355 with 66/41 K/BB in 394 ABs with Harrisburg.  3 homers. Another guy with local ties (born in DC), Pleffner has hung around by virtue of his decent bat (career .294 hitter) even despite the power (just 12 career homers at 1B).  Will he move up the chain one more year?  Clearly he’s blocked at the MLB level, and (honestly) 1B spots in AAA may be filled with the kind of spare part slugger that the Nats may be seeking as a bench option to replace Tyler Moore, so Pleffner may lose out on a roster spot by getting squeezed from both sides.  Peaked at AA.

Round 27: Bobby Lucas LHP Coll Sr. from George Washington: released sometime in 2013 after struggling in LowA in 2012.  The third straight pick with local ties was always a longshot being a senior sign from a small baseball program.

Round 28: Kenneth Ferrer RHP Coll Sr. from Elon University: got hammered in 7 GCL innings after getting drafted and was either released or retired prior to the 2012 season.

Round 29: Sean Cotten C Coll Sr. Tusculum College: did not sign, or if he did he never appeared or played.  Odd.  He had a nice senior season in school and was a college senior; maybe he just decided to hang ’em up before even trying.

Round 30: Bryan Harper LHP Coll Jr from South Carolina:2-2, 2.96 ERA 34/19 K/BB over 45 relief innings between AA and AAA.  The “make the super star happy by drafting his brother” pick has turned out to be a half way decent loogy, and rightfully earned his way all the way to AAA this year.  He needs to get his walks down but they’re not too bad.  He’s in a position to put his name in the hat in case our cache of lefty relievers falters in 2016.  Trending up.

Round 31: Josh Tobias SS  from Southeast Guilford HS (NC); did not sign, honored his commitment to Florida where he played four years and was drafted in the 20th round of 2015 by Philadelphia.  He hit .321 in Short-A for them so perhaps he sticks around for a bit.

Round 32: Billy Burns OF Coll Jr. from Mercer Univ. (GA): after 3 impressive seasons in our system, the Nats traded Burns straight up for Jerry Blevins in Dec of 2013.  Burns debuted for Oakland in late 2014 and played a full season for Oakland in 2015, starting in CF and batting .294 with people talking about getting him Rookie of the Year votes down ballot.  Burns for Blevins, who then turned in to den Dekker … perhaps the Nats didn’t really get value for the Burns pick, but also likely never would have realized who they had on their hands thanks to the full OF and names in front of him on the Nats OF prospect pecking order.

Round 33: Trey Karlen 2B Coll Sr from Univ. of Tennessee-Martin: Karlen struggled in the GCL in 2011, never appeared in 2012 and was released on 6/17/13 when the new class of draftees showed up and there was no longer room for him on the short-season squads.

Round 34: Calvin Drummond RHP Coll Jr. Univ. of San Diego (CA): did not sign, returned to U San Diego for his senior year.   Looking up Drummond’s draft and collegiate history is interesting.  Per his baseballcube and baseball-reference pages, Drummond was drafted no less than four times; once out of HS, once as a draft-eligible sophomore (when the Nats drafted him in 2011), then again as a junior and again as a senior.  But the odd part is his history: he went to Orange Coast Juco, then transferred to San Diego where he red-shirted, pitched two decent years as a starter, then transferred again to the baseball powerhouse Arizona Christian University, where he pitched his senior year and was drafted in the 6th round by Detroit.  He’s had minor league success, with more than a K/inning and a career 2.84 ERA while working his way to AA this season.  Would love to hear his story.

Round 35: Alex Kreis RHP  Coll Sr Jamestown College (ND): Struggled in the bullpen for Hagerstown in 2012 and never made it to a 2013 roster, either getting released or retired.

Round 36: Ben Hawkins LHP Coll Jr from Univ. of West Florida: Made the 2013 Potomac bullpen, got shelled, went back to XST after a month and was released a month later.

Round 37: Derrick Bleeker RHP Juco frm Howard College (TX): did not sign, transferred to the U of Arkansas and was drafted in the same 37th round the following year by Baltimore.  He struggled for Baltimore’s low-A affiliate in 2015.

Round 38: Brett Mooneyham LHP Coll Jr from Stanford Univ. (CA): did not sign, stayed at Stanford for his Senior year and then the Nats picked him in the 3rd round of 2012.  Did Mooneyham really improve his draft stock from a complete afterthought in 2011 to a 3rd round pick?

Round 39: Peter Verdin OF, Coll Jr from Univ. of Georgia: did not sign, returned to U Georgia for his senior year.  Was undrafted and went unsigned after his senior season.  Smells like a “favor pick,” as he was a local kid: hails from Alexandria, went to Paul VI HS in Fairfax.

Round 40: Stephen Collum OF from Cartersville HS (GA); did not sign, presumably (per baseballcube) went to Cleveland State Community College but has no college stats and was never again drafted.

Round 41: Bryce Ortega 3B Coll Sr. from Univ. of Arizona: had a decent season in 2012 for Hagerstown then either was released or retired.

Round 42: David Kerian SS from Bishop Heelan HS (IA): did not sign, honored his commitment to U of Illinois.  Signed by the Nats as a 9th round senior sign in 2015.

Round 43: Mitchell Morales SS from Wellington Community HS; did not sign, went to Florida Atlantic University and was drafted 3 years later in 2014 by San Diego in the 29th round.  Struggled in lower A leagues in 2015.

Round 44: Matt Snyder 1B Coll Jr Univ. of Mississippi: did not sign, returned to Ole Miss for his senior year and was a 10th round pick the following year by New York Yankees.  Hit .371 for High-A this year to push his way to AA.

Round 45: Richie Mirowski RHP Coll Sr. from Oklahoma Baptist Univ: had a fantastic 2013 in Potomac, struggled making the jump to AA in 2014 and was released on 3/19/15 when it looked like he wasn’t going to make the AA team for this year.  Still, a great result for a 45th round draftee.

Round 46: Tyler Thompson OF Coll JR from Univ. of Florida: did not sign, returned to Florida for his senior year.  Got hurt (presumably) and was not drafted after 2012 and never played professionally.

Round 47: Timothy Montgomery LHP from Rockmart HS (GA): did not sign, took a year off, played one year at Berry College and was out of the game.

Round 48: Michael Bisenius OF Coll Jr from Wayne State College (NE): did not sign, returned to college for his senior year, never again drafted.  Played on year with the Sioux City Explorers in the American Association.

Round 49: Hunter Cole OF from Dorman HS (SC), did not sign, honored his commitment to the U of Georgia.  26th round pick in 2014 by San Francisco.  Hitting well so far in his career, finishing 2015 in AA with above an .800 OPS.

Round 50: Anthony Nix OF Coll Sr from  Univ. of California-Riverside: hit .215 in the GCL in 2012 and was released in Jan 2013.

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Trending Summary:

• Trending Up/Matriculated (4): Rendon, Hill, Harper, Lee
  
• Trending Steady (0): nobody
  
• Trending Down/Peaked (9): Goodwin, Purke, Turnbull, Skole, Dupra, Ramsey, Williams, Norfork, Pleffner
  
• Did Not Sign in 2011 (21): Kalenkosky, Stubbs, Houchins, Guzman, Buchanan, Laxer, Ottoson, Cotten, Tobias, Drummond, Bleeker, Mooneyham, Verdin, Collum, Kerian, Morales, Snyder, Thompson, Montgomery, Bisenius, Cole
  
• Released/Retired (15): Holt, Anderson, Rodriguez, Monar, Simko, Henke, Fernandez, Lucas, Ferrer, Karlen, Kreis, Hawkins, Ortega, Mirowski, Nix
  
• Traded (2): Meyer, Burns
  

Executive Summary

Well, now you know why we don’t need 50 rounds anymore.  Of the original 51 total picks (three 1st rounders and a lost 2nd rounder total 51 total guys in this class), fully 21 didn’t even sign.  That’s more than 40% of the draftees.  So of the 29 guys who did sign, a slew remain active in the system, our 1st rounder (Rendon) has turned into a 6-win player (when healthy), we flipped two guys (Meyer, Burns) who are also MLB matriculated for other MLB players of use, and we have a couple more guys who may yet get chances (Harper, Hill, Lee).  That’s not a bad return from a draft class, especially considering how many of the 20th+ rounders ended up being successful.

 

(Editor’s Note: sorry for the tardiness on this post: I had it completely written and a WordPress or browser glitch lost 1,000 words of analysis.  So it took a bit of time to cobble back together what I had originally written.  Then the Souza trade hit, then the Cuban thing … and this got pushed).

What a GM Meeting week!  As one of the Fangraphs guys noted, there were so many transactions, so fast, that he literally gave up trying to write individual analysis pieces and went to a running diary of sorts.  I was amazed at the number of significant deals and trades made, especially when it came to starters.  So lets take a look at who shook things up.

Many teams are making big moves (almost the entirety of the the AL it seems) to try to win in 2015.  And many teams have revamped their rotations.  First, here’s a quick run through teams that have made significant acquisitions to their starting rotations (using BP’s Depth Charts page, Fangraphs stats pages and BaseballProspectus‘ page for injury history, Cots at BP for salaries, and of course baseball-reference.com).

Teams who have Improved

• Chicago White Sox: acquired Jeff Samardzija in Oakland’s fire sale to go with established ace Chris Sale, the highly underrated Jose Quintana.  From there the White Sox have question marks: John Danks is just an innings eater at this point and Hector Noesi was not effective in 2014.  But the White Sox have one of the brightest SP prospects in the game at AAA in Carlos Rodon (their fast-rising 2014 1st round pick) and their former #1 prospect Erik Johnson (who struggled in his debut in 2014 but has a good minor league track record).  So by the latter part of 2015 the White Sox could be a scary team for opposing offenses to face.
• Minnesota: just signed Ervin Santana to join a rotation containing the rejuvinated Phil Hughes, the decent  Ricky Nolasco and first rounder Kyle Gibson.  If they (finally) call up former Nats 1st rounder Alex Meyer to fill out the rotation and replace the dregs that gave them #4 and #5 rotation spot starts last year, they could be significantly improved.  Of course, the problem they face is the fact that they’re already playing catchup in the AL Central and still look like a 5th place team in this division.
• Los Angeles Angels: adroitly turned one year of Howie Kendrick into six years of Andrew Heaney, who should thrive in the big AL West parks.  If the Angels get a healthy Garrett Richards back to go along with the surprising Matt Shoemaker, they may have a surplus of decent arms being stalwards Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilson.
• Miami has spent some cash this off-season, but they’ve also gone shopping and upgraded their rotation significantly.   After acquiring the decent Jarred Cosart at the trade deadline, they’ve flipped bit-players to acquire Mat Latos, added Dan Haren and a $10M check  while parting ways with the unproven youngster Andrew Heaney, and should get ace Jose Fernandez back by June 1st if all goes well with his TJ rehab.  Add to that Henderson Alvarez and the Marlins look frisky (their new-found depth enabled them to move Nathan Eovaldi to the Yankees).  Rumors are that Haren won’t pitch unless he’s in SoCal, but $10M is an awful lot of money to turn up your nose at.  This is an improved rotation no doubt, and the rest of the Marlins lineup looks good too.
• New York Mets get Matt Harvey back.  Enough said.  Harvey-Jacob deGrom is one heck of a 1-2 punch.
• Chicago Cubs: added an ace in Jon Lester, re-signed their own effective starter in Jason Hammel, and will add these two guys to the resurgent Jake Arrieta.  Past that you have question marks: Kyle Hendricks looked great in 2014.  And the Cubs gave nearly 60 starts last year to Travis Wood (5+ ERA) and former Nat Edwin Jackson (6+ ERA).  I could envision another SP acquisition here and the relegation of Wood & Jackson to the bullpen/AAA/scrap heap.
• Pittsburgh was able to resign Francisco Liriano and get A.J. Burnett for an under-market deal.  This should keep them afloat if they end up losing Edinson Volquez in free agency.   Otherwise they have decent back of the rotation guys and will get back Jamison Taillon perhaps in the early part of the year.  This could help them get back to the playoffs with the anticipated step-back of NL Central rivals Cincinnati.
• Los Angeles Dodgers said good bye to a stable of starters (Josh Beckett, Chad Billingsly, Kevin Correia, Dan Haren, Roberto Hernandez and Paul Maholm are all either FAs or have been traded away) and signed a couple of guys to go behind their big three of Kershaw, Greinke and Ryu who could quietly make a difference (Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson) if they remain healthy.  That’s a bigger “if” on Anderson than McCarthy, who excelled once leaving the circus that Arizona was last year before the management house cleaning and should continue to excel in the huge park in LA.  Were I Andrew Friedman, I’d re-sign at least a couple of these FA guys for 5th starter insurance … but then again, the Dodgers also have a whole slew of arms in AAA that could be their 5th starter.  Or they could just open up their wallets again; there’s still arms to be had.  Nonetheless, replacing 32 Haren starts with McCarthy will bring immediate benefits, and whoever they end up with as a 5th starter has to be better than the production they got last year out of that spot.

Team most improved: likely the Cubs.

What teams’ rotations have taken step backs or are question marks heading into 2015?

• Boston: after trading away most of their veteran rotation last season, the Red Sox seem set to go into 2015 with this rotation: Clay Buchholz, Rick Porcello, Justin Masterson, Joe Kelly and Wade Miley.  This rotation doesn’t look as good as it could be; Buchholz was awful in 2014, Porcello is good but not great, Masterson the same, Kelly seems like a swingman, and Miley has back to back 3.98 FIP seasons in the NL and will see some ERA inflation in the AL (though not as much as normal since Arizona is a hitter’s park).  But Boston’s entire AAA rotation are among their top 10 prospects, so there’s plenty of depth they could use in trade or as reinforcements. 
• Detroit: Arguable if they’ve really taken a “step back,” but you have to question their direction.  In the last two off-seasons they’ve traded away Doug Fister, Rick Porcello, Drew Smyly, prospect Robbie Ray and have (seemingly) lost Max Scherzer to free agency so that they can go into 2015 with this rotation: David Price, Justin Verlander, Anibel Sanchez, Alfredo Simon and Shane Greene.   Is this a winning rotation for 2015?
• Kansas City: They have replaced departing free agent ace James Shields with newly signed Edinson Volquez, keeping newly acquired Brian Flynn and 2014 draft darling Brandon Finnegan in the bullpen for now.  KC is going to take a step back and will struggle to compete in the new super-powered AL Central in 2015, but have a slew of 1st round arms that look like they’ll hit in late 2015/early 2016.  I do like their under-the-radar signing of Kris Medlen though; he could be a very solid addition to their rotation if he comes back from his 2nd TJ.
• Oakland will have a new look in 2015, having traded away a number of core players.  But their rotation should be OK despite having traded away Samardzija and let Jon Lester and Jason Hammel walk.  Why?  Because they stand to get back two very good rotation members who missed all of 2014 with TJ surgery in A.J. Griffin and Jarrod Parker.  They should re-join the 2014 rotation members Sonny Grey, Scott Kazmir, newly acquired Jesse Hahn and either Jesse Chavez/Drew Pomeranz to form another underrated rotation.  Of course, if these guys have injury setbacks, it could be a long season in Oakland.
• Texas made a couple of acquisitions, re-signing their own Colby Lewis and trading for Nats cast-off Ross Detwiler (who should fit in immediately as their 4th starter), to go with ace Yu Darvish and recently recovered Derek Holland.  But Texas could significantly improve come mid-season when injured starter Martin Perez should return.  The big question mark for Texas is Matt Harrison, who had to have two vertebrae in his back fused and may not return, ever.   But if Harrison can come back, that gives Texas an opening day 1-5 that’s pretty improved over last  year.
• Cleveland didn’t exactly have the world’s best rotation in 2014 but has done little to improve it going forward.  They will continue to depend on Corey Kluber, newly minted Cy Young winner to head the line, but then its question marks.  Carlos Carrasco was great in a combo role in 2014; where’d that come from?  He was awful in years prior.  Is Trevor Bauer dependable?  They better hope so; that’s your #3 starter.  They just signed Gavin Floyd after his injury shortened 9-game stint with Atlanta last year; he’s no better than a 4th/5th innings eater.   Is Gavin Salazar ready for prime time?  He wasn’t in 2014.  And there’s little else on the farm; the Indians don’t have a significant starting pitcher prospect in their entire system. 
• Atlanta: The Braves surprisingly parted ways with Kris Medlen and not-so-surprisingly parted ways with Brandon Beachy, Gavin Floyd, Ervin Santana and Aaron Harang.  That’s a lot of starter depth to cut loose.  They look to go into 2015 with ace Julio Teheran followed by the newly acquired Shelby Miller, the inconsistent Mike Minor, the excellent but scary Alex Wood and under-rated 5th starter David Hale.  That’s not a *bad* rotation … but it isn’t very deep.  They have cut ties with guys who made nearly half their 2014 starts AND the guy who went 10-1 for them in 2012.  They (inexplicably) picked up a starter in Rule-5 draft who had TJ surgery in June; are they really going to carry him that long on the active roster?  They have no upper-end SP talent close to the majors.  If one of these 5 starters gets hurt, Atlanta could be in trouble.
• Philadelphia: all you need to know about the state of the Philadelphia franchise can be summed up right here: A.J. Burnett declined a $12.75M player option to play for the Phillies in 2015 and, instead, signed for 1  year, $8.5M to play for Pittsburgh.  They will head into 2015 with their aging 1-2 punch of Cole Hamels and Cliff Lee, the former being constantly dangled in trade rumors but going nowhere because the Phillies GM clearly over-values what a guy like Hamels and his guaranteed contract can actually bring back in return in this market.  Past Hamels/Lee there’s a bunch of non-descript names (David Buchanan, the waiver-claim Jerome Williams and the untested Cuban FA Miguel Gonzalez).   Can this team even broach 70 wins?
• Cincinnati is moving backwards: they’ve traded away Mat Latos for  pennies on the dollar (Keith Law says there’s “make-up issues.”) and moved the effective Alfredo Simon for other bit players.  They’re putting a ton of faith that one-pitch Tony Cingrani will last a whole season and the youngster Anthony DeSclafini (obtained for Latos) will comprise a workable rotation.  They do have a couple of decent prospects at AAA (Robert Stephenson and Michael Lorenzen) but they seem to be accepting that they’re taking a step back.
• St Louis traded away their least effective starter (Shelby Miller) and acquired the best defensive RF in the game (Jason Heyward).  Not a bad bit of work.  But they now will go into 2015 with a question mark in the rotation; prospect Carlos Martinez will get the first shot and could be good; oft-injured Jaime Garcia is still hanging around, and there’s a couple of good arms in AAA who could matriculate into the rotation via the bullpen as Martinez did in 2014.  It could end up being addition by subtraction (Martinez for Miller) but we’ll see.
• Arizona has boldly re-made their rotation this off-season, dealing away 2014 opening day starter Wade Miley for a couple of SP prospects and dealing for 6 arms in total thus far.  New rotation may not be flashy at the top (the enigmatic Josh Collmenter is slated for the opening day start in 2015) and is followed by former Tampa pitcher Jeremy Hellickson (traded for prospects), the two pitchers acquired from Boston for Miley in Rubby de la Rosa and Allen Webster and then a cattle-call for the 5th starter competition this spring.  Arizona also ended up with former Nats farm-hand Robbie Ray, still have the highly regarded Archie Bradley waiting for his free agent clock to get pushed out a year, plus 2013’s darling Patrick Corbin coming off of TJ, not to mention Bronson Arroyo coming back from TJ later in the season.  So there’s a lot of arms out there to choose from, eventually.  But getting to Bradley-Corbin-Hellickson-de la Rosa-Webster from where they’ll start will be rough.
• San Francisco‘s 2015 rotation could be just as effective as it needs to be (after all, they won the 2014 world series having lost Matt Cain mid-season and given the ineffective Tim Lincecum 26 starts).  They seem to set to go with Cain, WS hero Madison Bumgarner, the age-less Tim Hudson, and then with Lincecum and re-signed aging FA Jake Peavy.  This pushes Yusmeiro Petit to the bullpen for the time being and seemingly closes the door on Ryan Vogelsong‘s SF time.  Rumor had it that they were all over Jon Lester… and missed.  So a big acquisition to permanently sent Lincecum to the pen could still be in the works.  SF’s bigger issue is the loss of offense.  But the NL West is so weak they could still sneak into the playoffs again.  I list them as question marks though because Cain might not be healthy, Lincecum could still suck, and Hudson and Peavy combined are nearly 80 years of age.
  
• San Diego has completely re-made their offense; do they have the pitching they need to compete?   They signed Brandon Morrow to replace 32 awful starts they gave to Eric Stults last year; that should be an improvement.  But they’ve traded away their 2nd best guy (Jesse Hahn) and are now set to have two lesser starters (Odrisamer Despaigne and Robbie Erlin) compete for the rotation.  The Padres re-signed lottery ticket Josh Johnson (coming off what seems like his millionth season-ending arm injury) and still have TJ survivor Cory Luebke in the wings, possibly ready for April 1st.  Their 1-2-3 of Andrew Cashner, Tyson Ross and Ian Kennedy isn’t that inspiring, but in San Diego’s home park, you don’t have to be Sandy Koufax to succeed.  Have they done enough to compete in the NL West?

Which team has taken the biggest step back?  Clearly for me its Arizona.

Who is left?

Well, clearly the two big FA names are Max Scherzer and James Shields.  Scherzer gambled heavily on himself when he turned down 6/$144M.  Would the Tigers make him a new offer?  Are the Nationals possibly involved (I hope not for the sake of the team’s chemistry; what would it say to players if the Nats jettisoned Jordan Zimmermann so they could give Scherzer $150M?).   He’d make a great fit in San Francisco … who wanted Lester but would get nearly the same great performance out of Scherzer.  Meanwhile Shields could fit in Boston or for the Dodgers to give them the depth they’ve lost.

Past the two big names, you have older guys likely to go on one year deals.  There’s no longer really room for Ryan Vogelsong in SF; he could be a decent option for someone.   Aaron Harang has earned himself a likely 2 year deal as someone’s back of the rotation guy.  Guys like Kyle Kendrick or Joe Saunders could be someone’s starter insurance policy.  And of course there’s a slew of injury guys who are like pitching lottery tickets.  Beachy, Billingsley, and Alexi Ogando all sound intriguing as reclamation cases.

But, once you get past Scherzer and Shields, anyone looking for a big upgrade will have to hit the trade market.  The problem there seems to be this: there’s just not that many teams that are already waving the white flag for 2015.   From reading the tea leaves this off-season, Atlanta is giving up, Cincinnati may be close, Philadelphia has begrudgingly admitted they’re not going to win, Arizona has already traded away its assets, Colorado is stuck in neutral, Oakland may look like they’re rebuilding but they still will be competitive in 2015, and  young teams like Houston and Tampa aren’t giving up what they currently have.  So a GM might have to get creative to improve their team at this point.

By now, we’ve grown accustomed to it.  Nats GM Mike Rizzo acquires yet another player with a questionable injury past, hoping to find a new market inefficiency and getting a better player in the long term than how the rest of the league valued the player in the short term.  This topic came up last week as the Nats seemingly severed ties with Matthew Purke and we immediately began talking about the wasted bonus money … three days later he re-signed a minor league deal, but he’s still an integral part of this discussion.

This post attempts to go through all of Rizzo’s injury-risk player acquisitions (draft, trade or FA), to see how he’s doing in terms of these high risk acquisitions.  I may have missed out on someone; please let me know if you think someone else merits discussion.  I’m sure there’s deep-draft picks worth discussing in prior drafts that our readers may remember; please pipe up in the comments section.  In each section they’re basically in reverse chronological order.

Draft

• Erick Fedde, 1st round pick in 2014 (18th overall), RHP from UNLV, $2.5M bonus (over-slot, ~10th pick money).  I reviewed this pick after it happened and maintain the same stance I had in June; I thought Fedde was over paid and over drafted, but (in the Nats defense) the combination of the picks right before us (which included one Brandon Finnegan, who was on the Royals post-season roster) and right after us probably sealed Fedde’s selection.  Verdict: Obviously, it is far too early to tell how Fedde will turn out, so there is no judgement to pass here.  Fedde had the Tommy John surgery in Mid May, so he won’t even throw his first pro pitch until mid next season.
• Lucas Giolito, 1st round pick in 2012 (16th overall), RHP from Harvard-Westlake HS (CA), $2.9M bonus (well over-slot, equivalent to 7th overall pick slot).  Giolito was rumored to be in the mix for 1-1 in 2012 before a “strain” in his pitching elbow caused him to miss most of his senior year.  This “strain” turned out to really be a “partial tear,” but the Nats saw value in getting a potential 1st overall talent mid-first round.  Giolito rehabbed, threw a few innings, then had TJ surgery on 8/31/12.  Since, Giolito’s rehab went perfectly, throwing 40 innings in 2013 and another 100 in 2014.  Despite his limited workload in 2014, he was named the Nats minor league pitcher of the year and has rocketed up prospect charts.  He currently is the unquestioned #1 Nats minor league prospect and should feature as a top 10 prospect in all of baseball.  Verdict: so far, so good.  They say there’s “no such thing as a pitching prospect,” so the wheels could still come off the bus, but Giolito is trending up and the gamble is looking like it will pay off.
• Kevin Dicharry, 24th round pick in 2012, RHP from Texas.   Dicharry was good early in his college career but missed most of his college career with shoulder issues.  His pro debut was good enough: a 2.84 ERA in 25 GCL innings in 2012.  He started 2013 in Short-A, got hit hard in 3 outings, and was abruptly released to my surprise.  Verdict: failure … but it’s kind of hard to say that a 24th round pick was a failure for not panning out, even if he was perfectly healthy.
• Robert Orlan, 30th round pick in 2012, RHP from UNC.  Orlan suffered an elbow injury late in the 2012 college season and was immediately placed on the 60-day DL by the team after they drafted him.  Baseball Prospectus does not have any injury/surgery history, so I do not know what, if any procedures he had done in 2012.  Orlan was decent for Auburn in 2013 but struggled in 2014 and couldn’t make the level jump to full-season ball.  He’s already been relegated to the bullpen and may not be long for the org.  Verdict: not looking good … but again, hard to really pass any harsh judgement on a 30th round pick.  The fact that he has even lasted two pro years makes him a success already.
• Anthony Rendon, 1st round pick in 2011 (6th overall), 3B from Rice.  $6M bonus, well over-slot at the time.  Rendon’s dropping out of the top 2-3 picks was a huge draft-day shock; we’re talking about a college player of the year who scouts had penciled in as the 2011 1-1 pick for nearly two years.  But nagging ankle injuries in both his sophomore and junior year scared off the teams above Washington, who probably tripped over themselves running to the podium to take him.  We know the rest of the story now; by mid 2013 he was a starter, and he posted a 6.5 bWAR season in 2014.  Verdict: huge success so far.
• Matthew Purke, 3rd round pick in 2011, LHP from TCU.  Given a $4.15M MLB contract.  The impetus for this post.  Purke was a 1st round pick out of high school, then went 16-0 in his freshman year of college, earning 2nd team all American honors.  Shoulder bursitis cost him a ton of starts his sophomore year, but the Nats gambled on him anyway.  A healthy Purke would have easily been a top 10 pick in 2011, so the Nats got a potential top 10 talent in the 3rd round.  Of course, we know how this story goes from here: Purke could never get going in 2012 and had to have shoulder surgery.  Then he throws 90 decent innings in 2013 … only to drop off a cliff in 2014 before having TJ surgery.  Now he’s out until at least June 2015.  But, as we’ve seen this week, at least he’s not on the 40-man roster any more.  But more time remains to be seen as to whether Rizzo’s $4M gamble can pay off in any capacity.  Verdict: check back at the end of 2015, but not looking great.
• Sammy Solis, 2nd round pick in 2010.  A herniated disc in his back cost him the entire 2009 season, but he roared back with a solid 2010 to profile as the 2nd round pick he ended up being.
• Nathan Karns, 12th round pick in 2009, RHP from Texas Tech.  Karns was hurt when he got drafted, and didn’t throw a pitch in 2009 or 2010.  He had to have shoulder surgery in June of 2010.  He finally made his pro debut in 2011, and by 2012 was the Nats minor league pitcher of the year after going 11-4 with a 2.17 ERA across low-A and high-A.  By mid 2013 he was making his MLB debut to provide cover for injured starters.   Karns was flipped to Tampa Bay in the Jose Lobaton deal (also bringing back two decent prospects in Felipe Rivero and Drew Vettleson) and spent most of 2014 in Durham (where he took a step back, posting a 9-9 record with a 5.08 ERA in 27 AAA starts).  Verdict: success for the team, given what he helped acquire, even if he’s struggling for Tampa Bay.  (Thanks to commenter JohnC for reminding me to fully list his trade bounty).

(post-posting thanks to NationalsProspect’s Luke Erickson, who provided the Orlan injury link and reminded me of Solis’ back injury during college).

Trade Acquisitions

• Denard Span, acquired from Minnesota on 11/29/12 for Alex Meyer.  Span missed a huge chunk of the 2011 season after suffering a pretty bad concussion.  He missed a month in 2012 after injuring his shoulder diving for a ball.  So there was some legitimate injury concerns following Span around, though I don’t recall really discussing it at the time.  I didn’t necessarily like the trade when it happened, but that was more because I thought Bryce Harper could be our center fielder for the next decade.  Nonetheless, after struggling for stretches, Span inarguably was worth every cent of his exercised option for 2015, and though this wasn’t *that* big of an injury gamble, it has paid off.  Verdict: Success.
• Ryan Mattheus was acquired on 7/31/09 from the Rockies for Joe Beimel, just two weeks after he underwent Tommy John surgery.   By mid 2011 he was an effective middle reliever for the team, and contributed a 1.3 bWAR season in 2012 as a good 6th/7th inning right hander.  In 2013 he broke his pitching hand in a fit of pique and basically never recovered; he lost his bullpen spot to Aaron Barrett in 2014 and, being out of options and not really having that great a season in AAA, was released last month.  Verdict: Success, considering what we gave up and considering that he may still be with the organization had he not punched a wall.  (Thanks to commenter Wally for reminding me of the Mattheus acquisition).

Free Agent Signings

• Dan Haren, 1yr $13M for the 2013 season.  Haren had missed time in 2012 for a back issue, and had taken a huge uncharacteristic step backwards in performance from 2011.  It was enough so that some thought (including me) the Nats were going to get a bounce-back season and a return to his #2 starter form.  Uh, no.  Haren at one point in the 2013 season was the *worst* starter statistically in the league (the team was just 4-11 in his first 15 starts, and he had a 6.15 ERA when he was summarily sent to the D/L with a soft tissue injury that even Haren himself didn’t know he had).  He bounced back enough in the 2nd half to save his statistical season, but the damage was done.  Verdict: failure of a signing, but to be fair I don’t believe Haren’s issues in 2013 were lingering back issues.
• Chien-Ming Wang.  Signed a combined 3  years of contracts worth $7M from 2010-2012.  He had shoulder surgery in July of 2009.  He missed the whole 2010 season, most of 2011 too.  But he showed *just* enough in the tail end of 2011 to earn a $4M deal for 2012, where he promptly got hammered.  To make matters worse, the guy whose rotation spot he took (Ross Detwiler) was usually the one coming in to relief him and pretty soon it was apparent the team had gone with the wrong horse.   In the end, Wang gave the team 94 innings and 6 wins for his 3 guaranteed contracts.  Verdict: well, a failure, but didn’t hurt the team as they raced to 98 wins in 2012.  Just cost money.
• Brad Lidge: he missed most of 2011, his final season in Philadelphia, and the Nats took him on a 1yr/$1M flier.  After overcoming sports hernia surgery, Lidge gave up 12 hits and 11 walks in just 9 1/3 innings before being mercifully released, never to play again.  Verdict: failure, but a good gamble.
• Christian Garcia was picked up as a MLFA in mid 2011 after the Yankees gave up on him following his third elbow surgery in 5 years.  He was un-hittable in our minor league system in 2012 (he gave up just 31 hits in 52 minor league innings that year), was called up and was effective enough to be added to the 2012 post-season roster.  Unfortunately, Garcia’s injury luck did him no favors: he lost all of 2013 to a partial flexor tear in his arm, and never made it back in 2014, eventually being released in June of 2014.  All that promise, just couldn’t stay  healthy.  Verdict: can’t possibly call a MLFA mid-season waiver claim a failure, no matter how little the team got out of him.  Another good gamble.

 

Conclusion: actually Rizzo looks pretty good here.  His draft pickups have mostly worked out; just Purke stands out as a possible loser.  His only real injury-risk trade acquisition worked out.  Haren and Wang were pretty high-visibility failures … but Lidge and Garcia were low-cost risks that had good upside if they worked out.

Did I miss anyone?

http://m.mlb.com/video/?content_id=7189149&topic_id=8080130

The title of my previous post was pretty simple: “Nats 2014 Draft == failure.”  And it resulted in a rather spirited debate in the comments about the 2014 draft, the 2008 draft in hindsight, etc.

In that debate, I postulated my benchmarks for judging whether or not a team’s draft was “good” or not.  Here were the six guidelines I stated for judgement, going round by round/section by section in the draft:

• a. 1st rounder: future MLB above average regular to all-star
• b. 2nd rounder: future MLB regular
• c. 3rd-5th: expect at least one future MLB player in at least a backup/bullpen role
• d. 6th-10th: hope for at least one player to reach the MLB level.
• e. 11th-20th: hope for at least three players who matriculate to AA or higher
• f. 20th and above: hope for one-two players to matriculate to AA or higher

Lets go back through all 10 Nats drafts and see whether these guidelines hold up.  For each of the 6 requirements, we’ll give a quick “yes/no the condition was met” for each year.  Critical to this analysis is the Nats DraftTracker XLS, milb.com and baseball-reference.com for searching for old players.  Also useful is the Baseball America executive database, which populated the staff in charge of each draft.

Editors Note post-posting: I’ve added in the total known bonus amounts, per suggestion in the comments.  Data taken from the Draft Tracker.  Actual figures are likely higher because most bonus figures past the 10th round are unknown (but likely minimal).  Also per good suggestion, I’m adding in the draft position for context, since its far easier to get a future all-star if picking in the top 5 versus later on.

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2005: Owner: MLB.  President: n/a.  GM: Jim Bowden.  Scouting Director: Dana Brown.  Drafting 4th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $3,990,500

• a. Yes: 1st rounder Ryan Zimmerman: MLB above average regular (former all-star)
• b. n/a: we had no 2nd rounder; forfeited for Vinny Castilla
• c. Yes:  4th rounder Justin Maxwell turned into a 4th outfielder.  No 3rd rounder.
• d. Yes: 6th rounder Marco Estrada has turned into a decent starter (albeit for someone else after we released him)
• e. Yes: 11th rounder John Lannan and 12th rounder Craig Stammen turned into MLBers, far above expectations here.  18th rounder  Tim Pahuta had long ML career for us, playing 3 years at AA.
• f. Yes: 33rd rounder Ryan Butcher was a 6yr MLFA who left the org but now has MLB experience with Atlanta.  No other 20th+ round draftees made it out of A-ball, but Butcher’s MLB matriculation makes up for it.

2005: Success, inarguably.  6 guys matriculating to the majors is a winning draft, especially considering the lack of a 2nd or 3rd round pick, the ownership confusion, and the budget restrictions put on the team.

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2006: Owner: MLB.  President: n/a.  GM: Bowden.  Scouting Director: Brown.  Drafting 15th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $5,222,000

• a. No: 1st rounder Chris Marrero looks like a 4-a guy at best and 1st rounder Colten Willems never made it above A-ball.
• b. No: the team failed to sign 2nd rounder Sean Black and 2nd rounder Stephen Englund never made it out of low-A.
• c. No: none of their 3rd-5th picks made the majors.  The highest one of these guys got was 5th rounder Corey VanAllen, who did pitch in AAA after passing through the rule-5 draft and finished out his 6-years with the org.  VanAllen is in Indy ball in 2014.
• d. No: they didn’t even sign their 7th, 9th or 10th round picks.  The closest they got to a MLBer here was 6th rounder Zech Zinicola, who played at AAA for quite a while, was rule-5 picked and returned, and now sits in Baltimore’s AA team.
• e. Yes: 12th rounder Cole Kimball made it the majors briefly, while 17th rounder Erik Arnesen, 18th rounder Adam Carr and 13th rounder Hassan Pena all toiled in AAA for several years. 
  
• f. Yes, sort of.  We’re all well aware of the success of 41st rounder Brad Peacock, but he was picked under the “draft-and-follow” system that no longer exists.  So while yes it was a 41st round pick, in our current system Peacock wouldn’t have been picked at all and/or wouldn’t have signed but would have been picked the subsequent year based on his great first-college juco season.   Of the rest of the 20th+ round picks, one guy had a couple months in AA (26th rounder Brett Logan) to serve as a backup catcher; he hit .102/.170/.122 in 20 games in 2007 and was released.

2006: Failure: 3 guys who have MLB appearances but near zero impact for this team.  Peacock enabled the Nats to get Gio Gonzalez but I think we see now that Peacock wasn’t the driving prospect in that deal (now that Derek Norris has made an all-star team).

For as much as went right for the team in the 2005 draft, it went wrong in 2006.  Was the lack of signing their 7th, 9th and 10th round picks evident of “fiscal restraint” demanded by the other 29 owners?  Clearly to me, the focus on HS drafted personnel in this draft has Bowden’s hands all over it, and almost none of them panned out in the slightest.

 

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2007: Owner: Ted Lerner group.  President: Stan Kasten.  GM: Bowden.  Scouting Director: Brown.  Assistant GM/VP, Baseball Operations: Mike Rizzo.  Drafting 6th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $7,619,300

• a. No: The team went one-for-three on its first rounders: Michael Burgess got to AA in his fourth pro season but never further, was flipped for Tom Gorzelanny.  Josh Smoker‘s failure has been well documented here.  But Ross Detwiler, for all the complaining about his usage and role in this space, did make the majors and looked like a good 4th starter (in 2012).  I still believe he could start in this league and is better than a long-man.   However, the condition is that a first round pick turns into a successful regular, and this crop failed in all regards.
• b. Yes.  2nd rounder Jordan Zimmermann is now a 2-time all-star and is probably the best 2nd round pick the organization has ever had.  His successes make up for their other 2nd rounder Jake Smolinksi who has made his MLB debut but not until he became a 6-yr MLFA.
• c. Yes.  4th rounder Derek Norris made the 2014 all-star team for Oakland.  3rd rounder Stephen Souza has debuted in the majors and looks quite promising (albeit blocked) for our AAA team.  5th rounder Brad Meyers toiled for us in AAA for years before being released this spring after a long injury recovery.
• d. Yes: 10th round pick Patrick McCoy made it to AAA for us, signed with Detroit as a MLFA and debuted this year.  We should note for the record though that 6th rounder Jack McGeary was paid as if he was a low-1st rounder and failed pretty spectacularly here.
• e. Yes: 20th rounder Jeff Mandel was a long-serving org arm at AA and AAA.   11th rounder Bill Rhinehart was looking like a find, appearning on Nats system prospect lists for a while and getting to AAA before getting flipped for Jonny Gomes.
• f. Yes: 28th rounder Boomer Whiting made it to Syracuse before getting released in 2011.   48th rounder (!) Kyle Gunderson was flipped for Logan Kensing in 2009 and made it to Miami/Florida’s AAA squad before getting released.  
  

2007: Success: despite the 1st round failures and the McGeary disaster, the breadth of success in the other categories and the production of the remaining guys weighs out.

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2008: Owner: Lerner.  President: Kasten.  GM: Bowden.  Scouting Director: Brown.  Assistant GM/VP, Baseball Operations: Rizzo.  Drafting 9th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $4,766,500

• a. No: as is well documented, the Nats failed to sign 1st round pick Aaron Crow.
• b. No/Inc: 2nd round pick Destin Hood has already passed through Rule-5 waivers once, but has found himself in 2014 and is hitting great for Syracuse (2014’s AAA line: .308/.353/.502).  It does make one wonder if he’s worth adding to the 40-man once the season is over to keep him; he’s finishing his 7th pro year and is in line for minor league free agency.
• c. Yes: 3rd rounder Danny Espinosa has his critics, but he’s at least a MLB backup or possibly more.  5th rounder Adrian Nieto has stuck with the White Sox after getting plucked in the Rule-5 draft last year and hasn’t been half bad.
• d. Yes: 10th rounder Tommy Milone has shown his capabilities as a MLB starter.  d. 6th-10th: hope for at least one player to reach the MLB level.  6th rounder Paul Demny remains in the system (on the D/L in Harrisburg) but doesn’t seem like he’ll go much higher at this point.
• e. Yes: 16th rounder Tyler Moore has put in meaningful at-bats for the Nats for a few years now.  And 19th rounder Steve Lombardozzi looks to be a solid utility/backup infielder in this league for years.  Lastly I wonder if the team gave up on 15th rounder J.P. Ramirez too soon; he was paid like a 2nd round pick but was released prior to his MLFA period.  He may have only made it to high-A, but his last season was somewhat decent.
• f. No: as far as I can tell, nobody of note came in rounds 20 or above from this draft.

2008: Failure: How would you judge this draft?   We failed to sign the first rounder, which for me is a huge negative.  The second rounder may or may not ever debut in the majors, which is also for me a huge negative because of the huge prevalence of 1st and 2nd rounders on MLB rosters.  But we got four (5 counting Nieto) other MLBers out of the rest of the draft, including some very deep-dive picks that you rarely find (Moore and Lombardozzi, aside from Peacock, are the two lowest round picks to ever make it to the majors for this team).

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2009:  Owner: Lerner.  President: Kasten. GM: Rizzo.  Scouting Director: Brown.  Drafting 1st overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $18,806,000

• a. Yes: no arguing about either first round pick here: both Stephen Strasburg and Drew Storen have pitched at all-star levels in their careers.
• b. No: 2nd Rounder Jeff Kobernus may have made his MLB debut, but he’s nowhere close to being a “regular” in the majors right now and doens’t seem to be trending that way either.
• c. No: 3rd round pick Trevor Holder was a gross over-draft (albeit with known reasons; the team committed an *awful* lot of money to the first two guys on this list) and was released in 2013.  4th rounder A.J. Morris looked quite promising for us, was flipped in the Gorzelanny deal, and this year is pitching effectively for Pittsburgh’s AAA squad after being taken in the minor league Rule-5 portion last off-season.  And the Nats failed to sign their 5th rounder.  So even if Morris pans out as a MLB-capable player, he’s doing it for someone else.
• d. Yes: 9th round pick Taylor Jordan was effective for the team last year and may yet figure in the team’s plans despite his mysterious D/L trip right now.  And 6th round pick Michael Taylor has rocketed up the prospect lists for this team, is crushing AA pitching right now, is on the team’s 40-man roster and may very well get a look as 2015’s starting center fielder.
• e. Yes: 12th rounder Nathan Karns made the org look quite intelligent when he gave spot starts in 2013 after rocketing up the farm system after finally recovering from arm issues.  I wonder if the success they had with Karns was the first impetus for Rizzo to take more gambles on high-end-but-injured arms.  13th rounder Patrick Lehman has bounced around as an org arm for years.  11th rounder Juston Bloxom played a couple years in AA before getting released this year.  16th rounder Sean Nicol is splitting time between AA and AAA this year.   Finally, I wanted to note something I never knew before studying this: the Nats drafted Marcus Strohman in the 18th round out of HS; this is the same Strohman who went in the first round three years later to Toronto and who is currently holding down a rotation spot for the playoff-pushing Blue Jays.  Wow.  He’s listed as a SS on the draft-tracker but clearly is a MLB-calibre starter.
• f. Yes: 22nd rounder Danny Rosenbaum has been Syracuse’s “ace” for three seasons now.  And a slew of guys drafted in the 20s stuck around for years as middle relievers (Mitchell Clegg, Matt Swynenberg, Evan Bronson, Rob Wort, and Shane McCatty).  You just can’t ask for more out of your picks in rounds 20-30.

2009: Success: I’ll take a couple of misses in the 2nd and 3rd rounds given the amount of talent they picked up in the middle and late rounds.  Great draft.  6 guys who have debuted in the majors with at least another one likely coming soon.

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Note: from 2010 onwards, most of the judgement calls are still “in progress.”  We’ll use projections and “small sample sizes” to pass judgement.  It is what it is.  Feel free to criticize in the comments about using projections and national pundit scouting reports to make judgements.

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2010:  Owner: Lerner.  President: Kasten.  GM: Rizzo.  Scouting Director: Kris Kline.  Drafting 1st overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $11,413,200

• a. Yes: 1st rounder Bryce Harper has turned into everything the hype suggested.  Fun fact; when he went on an rehab assignment in Potomac, he was the 2nd youngest guy on the roster.  Remember that when you criticize the guy for not being better than he already is: if he was “playing by the rules,” he’d be jsut finishing his junior year of college.
• b. No/Inc: 2nd rounder Sammy Solis has been one injury issue after another.  He missed all of 2012 with Tommy John, came back slowly in 2013, but now sits on the AA D/L with another “elbow” issue.  He was protected on the 40-man roster last fall, but you have to wonder what’s to come of him.  He’s finishing his 5th pro season and he’s got exactly one start above A-Ball.
• c. Yes/Inc: 4th rounder A.J. Cole was paid like a late first rounder, and after some struggles he’s really come onto the scene this year.  He was already really young for AA and “solved” it, and is now in AAA holding his own.  The other guys in this category are less impressive: both Rick Hague and Jason Martinson are repeating AA and not really hitting well enough to push for promotions.  This could be a side-effect of the huge amount of money committed to Harper and Cole.
  
• d. Yes: 9th round pick Aaron Barrett went from unknown/unrecognized prospect to the Nats 40-man roster last fall to being lights-out middle reliever in the major league pen this year.  As a 9th round college senior pick.  8th rounder Matthew Grace may be next; after toiling as a mediocre starter, he became a reliever in 2013 and has been lights out in AA and AAA this year.  And he’s not just a LOOGY: 56 IP in 33 appearances and he’s given up just 6 ER in that time.
• e. Yes: 15th round pick David Freitas, after getting traded to Oakland for Kurt Suzuki, got traded again to Baltimore and now is in AAA.   12th round pick Robbie Ray has made his MLB debut for Detroit after going over in the Doug Fister deal.  11th rounder Neil Holland toils in the Harrisburg pen admirably.
• f. Yes: 23rd rounder Colin Bates and 26th rounder Christopher Manno both are in the Harrisburg pen.  22nd rounder Cameron Selik made it to AA before hitting his ceiling and being released earlier this year.   And 32nd rounder Randolph Oduber is a starting OF in Potomac with decent splits and a shot of moving up.

2010: Success: It may have been a no-brainer to take Harper, and it may have been an example of the “checkbook” winning in their picks of Cole and Ray, but you have to hand it to this team; they bought two high-end prep guys out of their college and they’re both looking like huge successes.   And they got a MLB servicable reliever out of a college senior sign who they paid just $35,000 in bonus money.  Great work.

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2011: Owner: Lerner.  President/GM: Rizzo.  Scouting Director Kline.  Drafting 6th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $11,325,000

• a.  Yes: 1st rounder Anthony Rendon was on everyone’s “all star snub” lists this year, while their other 1st rounder Alex Meyer remains one of the top pitching prospects in the game and seems likely to debut later this year.   Their supp-1st rounder Brian Goodwin remains on every pundit’s prospect lists even if he seemingly has been passed on the organizational “future starting Center-fielder” depth chart.   There’s no chance the team leaves him exposed in the upcoming rule-5 draft, so he’ll have at least three more years to prove he belongs.
• b. n/a: forfeited for Adam LaRoche signing.
• c. No/Inc: Right now our 3rd through 5th picks are looking iffy; 4th rounder Matthew Purke was paid like an upper first rounder and has been a massive disappointment.  Right now he’s recovering from Tommy John and faces an uncertain future.  4th rounder Kylin Turnbull has gotten lit up in high-A this year, his second crack at the league.  5th rounder Matt Skole may be the most promising of the bunch; he crushed 27 homers in his first season of full-season ball only to miss all of 2013 because of a freak injury.  Can Skole continue developing and make the majors on a full-time basis?  Can Purke at this point?
• d. Yes: With the call-up of 6th rounder Taylor Hill earlier this year, this category is met.  Which is good because the rest of the 6th-10th rounders from this year are struggling.  Two are already released/retired, one is MIA and the lone remaining active player (Brian Dupra) is struggling as a starter/swing-man in AA.  But Hill is a huge win; a college senior draftee on minimal bonus rocketing through the minors and forcing his way onto the 25-man roster.
• e. Yes/Inc:  It is far too early to fully judge this category, but it is looking promising despite the fact that the team failed to sign SIX of its ten picks beween the 11th and 20th round.  11th rounder Caleb Ramsey is already in AA.  16th rounder Deion Williams is on the mound (not a SS as in the Draft Tracker) and is struggling in short-A.   18th rounder Nick Lee is struggling in Potomac this year but has shown a huge arm and seems like he’ll eventually convert to loogy (especially considering his undersized stature); I can see Lee making it far as a matchup lefty reliever with swing-and-miss stuff.  The lone failure at this point is 12th rounder Blake Monar, sort of inexplicably released after a decent 2012 season in Short-A.   
  
• f. Yes: 30th round pick Bryan Harper earned his way to Harrisburg.   45th round college senior pick Richie Mirowski also made it to AA, where he wasn’t half bad last year, though at the moment he’s back in Potomac.   And there’s three other players drafted in the 20th or higher who are active on Potomac’s roster this year and who may get moved up.   Decent production out of the bottom of this draft so far.

2011: Projected Success: As discussed before, I believe the selection of Rendon was a “no-brainer” based on a unique set of circumstances that occured on draft day, but credit the management team for having the stones to pick him when other GMs didn’t.   I’m sure the Mariners (especially) would like a re-do on that draft (they picked 2nd overall, got soft-tossing local product Danny Hultzen, who was sidelined last year with all sorts of shoulder issues and is no sure bet to ever make it back.   They rolled the dice with Purke and so far seem to be losing, but Purke was himself a 1-1 talent at one point (remember, he had his $4M+ deal with Texas pulled thanks to MLB-stewardship at the time) and was probably worth the risk.   I’d like to see Skole reach the majors in some capacity before declaring this draft a full success.

 

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Note: from here onwards, everything is a projection and is based on scouting the stat lines.  I’m going to sound negative where others sound positive and vice versa.  Hey, its better than writing nothing.

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2012: Owner: Lerner.  President/GM: Rizzo.  Scouting Director Kline.   Drafting 16th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $4,503,500

• a. Yes/inc: 1st rounder Lucas Giolito (so far) has shown himself to be at full speed post TJ surgery and is mostly in the top 10-15 of every professional scouting pundit’s list for best prospect in the entirety of the minors.  He’s got a #1 starter ceiling, a huge frame and three plus pitches.  He’s projecting to be everything you’d hope for from an upper first rounder.
• b. No/inc: It is hard to squint at 2nd rounder Tony Renda at this point and project him as a future “MLB regular.”  Sure he’s hitting .297 in Potomac, and sure his numbers at the plate have not varied much in his three pro seasons.  Unfortunately he’s vastly undersized and he has no power in a time where pro middle infielders are expected to provide serious pop.   Maybe he can forge a career like Jamey Carroll or like a Jose Altuve, but the odds are against him.  I don’t mean to discount the guy because he’s 5’8″ but we all know there’s a significant bias in the industry towards undersized guys.  Heck, a pitcher is considered “short” if he isn’t 6’2″ these days.
• c. No/inc: So far the guys picked 3rd-5th are also struggling.  3rd rounder Brett Mooneyham‘s struggles are well documented here.  4th rounder Brandon Miller continues to show great power but has missed much of this season with a hamstring injury (he’s on rehab in the GCL as we speak).  Lastly 5th rounder Spencer Keiboom suffered a blown UCL that basically cost him the whole 2013 season.  He’s got great numbers in low-A this year but is two years too old for the league.  Keiboom’s talents more centered on his defense than his bat, so he may still push forward as a future backup catcher.  But until he does, this category falls in the “no” side.
• d. Maybe/inc: The leading hope for some MLB success out of our 6th-10th round picks right now resides in one of two middle relievers: 7th round pick Robert Benincasa or 9th round pick Derek Self.   You never know; one of these guys could turn into the next Aaron Barrett.  8th round SS Stephen Perez made the all-star team this year in Potomac and could feature as a future utility infielder.  The team has already released its 6th round pick Hayden Jennings, and their 10th rounder (local Rockville product Craig Manual) was a college senior catcher who is backing up other catchers in the system for the time being).  He may continue to hang around but unless he gets a starting gig he’s going to get replaced by someone newer.
• e. Yes/inc: 17th rounder Blake Schwartz has already made it to AA, where he struggled and he now sits back in Potomac (where he was great last year, go figure).  11th rounder Brian Rauh got a spot-start in AA last year but has bounced in and out of the Potomac rotation this year.  16th rounder Ronald Pena is working his way off injury but faces a long road to move up thanks to a lack of swing-and-miss stuff.   The team has already released four of its 11th-20th round picks; the remaining out-field players (12th rounder Carlos Lopez and 19th rounder Bryan Lippincott) both seem to face long odds as college senior draftees still residing in the low minors to even make it up to AA at this point.  To be fair, Lopez missed most of 2013 with an unknown injury, so we’ll give him a slight pass.   Lippincott sits in XST right now.
• f. No/inc: 33rd rounder Mike McQuillan has hung around and currently serves as a utility guy/bench player for Potomac.   A couple of relievers remain on squads: 29th rounder Leonard Hollins is hurt but is on a full-season squad, and 30th rounder Robert Orlan was with Hagerstown to start the season but is back in Auburn.   The rest of the 20th round and up guys features carnage; eight college senior draftees already released to go along with 10 unsigned (mostly high schoolers) picks in the later rounds.  One unsigned pick looks interesting; all-american freshman UNC player Skye Bolt may be a big-time 2015 draft pick.   But otherwise, I’m predicting that we dont’ get even a AA player out of the last  20 rounds of this draft at this point.

2012: Projected Failure: Frankly, this is looking like it may be a one player draft.  At this point, I don’t think you can look at *any* other player in this draft and project even a bench/fringe 25-man roster guy besides Giolito.  Now ask yourself: if Giolito fulfills expectations and becomes an “ace,” a top 15-20 arm in the majors while the rest of this draft basically becomes high-A and AA filler, does that change your opinion of the draft success/failure?

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2013: Owner: Lerner.  President/GM: Rizzo.  Scouting Director Kline.  Drafting 30th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $2,678,100

• a. n/a: No 2013 first rounder thanks to the supurfluous signing of Rafael Soriano.  As noted at the time, the Nats missed out on players like Sean Manaea, Ryan Stanek or Ian Clarkin, all of whom were available at the time of their lost 1st rounder.  Manaea in particular has flourished, rising up prospect list charts and sporting a healthy K/9 rate in high-A this year.  I’d like to call this in and among itself a failure (given my reservations about paying for saves in general), but have to admit that Soriano has been pretty durn good this year.
• b. No/inc: 2nd rounder Jake Johansen thus far has not lived up to advance billing in his first year in full-season ball.  He’s averaging just 4.5 innings per outing and sports a 5.00 ERA and less than a K/inning.   I can understand the difficult adjustment to pro ball, but I don’t get how his vaunted velocity and size combination aren’t resulting in more swing-and-miss.    He’s given no indication that he can avoid what scouts have been saying all along (that he’s destined for the bullpen), he’s way too wild and way too hittable.
• c. Yes/inc: the Nats collection of 3rd rounder Drew Ward, 4th rounder Nick Pivetta and now especially 5th rounder Austin Voth are making this management team look very smart.  All Voth has done since forcing his promotion to High-A is give up 10 hits and ONE earned run in 33 innings over five starts.  That’s just ridiculous.  And he’s doing it while maintaining a 36/5 K/BB ratio.  There’s zero reason for him to still be in Potomac at this point.  I don’t know what Voth’s ceiling is, but its getting pushed.
• d. No/inc: Thanks to the new CBA’s rules, most 6th-10th rounders are throw-away/college senior picks these days.  So it’ll be awfully hard to depend on one of them turning into a 25-man roster guy.  The best bet out of this draft will be having either 6th rounder Cody Gunter or 7th rounder James Yezzo eventually matriculating to the majors.  The other guys in this category were 15k bonus college seniors, one of whom (9th rounder Jake Joyce has *already* been released).  Do we think either Gunter or Yezzo projects as a major leaguer?  Not right now: Gunter’s struggling in short-A for the 2nd year in a row and Yezzo is an undersized 1B showing little power.
• e. Maybe/inc: Right now the pickings for the guys taken 11th-20th look pretty slim too.  Three were senior signs who have already been released and we failed to sign our 16th round pick Willie Allen (though can’t fault the Nats for that: doing research on him for last year’s draft review showed all sorts of inconsistencies with him, including whether he’s even still playing baseball in college).  But 11th rounder John Simms is looking like a great find; he’s already in the AA rotation and holding his own (though you could argue it was out of need, not performance).  Among those left, 10th rounder Brandon Middleton and 15th rounder Isaac Ballou are starting and playing well in Hagerstown, 12th rounder Andrew Cooper is strugging in low-A, 13th rounder John Costa has yet to debut for the team thanks to TJ surgery, and 17th rounder Geoffrey Perrott was a senior catcher who got a grand total of 13 at-bats in 2013 and has remained in XST so far thisyear, perhaps to serve as a bullpen catcher for others remaining in Viera and perhaps because he was hurt most of last year and may still be recovering.  If Simms continues to rise and we get a couple more longer-lasting prospects out of this crew, we’ll convert this to a success.
• f. Maybe/Inc: The Nats picked seven college seniors in the 21st round or above and so far they’re all with Hagerstown.  Middle infielders Cody Dent (22nd rounder) and Willie Medina (31st rounder) both hit in the .220s last year, are hitting in the .220s (or worse) this year, and seem like they may not last the season.  However the pitchers in this bunch are looking better and better.  28th rounder Joey Webb has a 2.53 ERA, 30th rounder Ryan Ullmann has as 3.10 ERA and got a high-A up-and-back call-up, and 34th rounder Jake Walsh dominated Low-A and earned a call-up to Potomac.  Only 29th rounder Michael Sylvestri seems to be in trouble among these senior signs; after struggling in Short-A last year, he gave up a ton of runs in 6 mid-relief outings and is currently in re-assignment purgatory.  What of the non senior-signs?  24th round pick Matthew Derosier is struggling in short-A and 23rd round outfielder Garrett Gordon seems like he’s a bench player in Auburn.  But a revelation may be 25th round prep draft pick Travis Ott.  He holds a 2.10 ERA through 6 starts in Auburn despite being quite young for the league.  So, the trend seems good that we’ll get value out of the bottom part of this draft.

2013: Projected Failure: Sorry to say; no first rounder, a middle reliever out of your 2nd rounder, perhaps a 5th starter out of the 3-5 rounds, and some org filler from the bottom of the draft?  How many players from this draft do you realistically project to make the majors?

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2014: Owner: Lerner.  President/GM: Rizzo.  Scouting Director Kline.   Drafting 18th overall.  Total Bonus $ spent: $4,149,900

• a. Maybe/inc: 1st rounder Erick Fedde may project as a MLB rotation guy, but he’s not projecting as an ace level arm.  So if he comes back from surgery 100%, if he keeps moving up the chain, if he makes the majors and if he has an impact we’ll give this a yes.  Lots of ifs.
• b. n/a:  we failed to sign our 2nd rounder Andrew Suarez.
  
• c. Maybe/inc: The hopes here fall on 3rd rounder Jakson Reetz and 4th rounder Robbie Dickey, since our 5th rounder was a senior lefty out of non-baseball powerhouse Duke.   How do we dream on Reetz and Dickey?  Maybe Reetz turns into our next Derek Norris while Dickey turns into the next Austin Voth.  Lets hope so, because both so far have had rather inauspicious starts in the GCL (Reetz batting .220 and Dickey posting an ERA in the 12s).   To be fair Reetz is a kid and Dickey isn’t much older, so we have a long way to go before passing true judgement.
• d. No/inc: We failed to sign the 8th round pick Austin Byler (and from reading the tea leaves, it didn’t seem like we were ever even close).  Our 7th, 8th and 10th round picks were low-bonus college seniors with little hope of advancing.  So this category falls squarely on the shoulders of 6th rounder Austin Williams, who looks ok so far in Short-A.
• e. Far too Early: most of these guys who did sign are 15 games into short seasons.
• f. Far too Early: most of these guys who did sign are 15 games into short seasons.

2014: Not promising: An injured first rounder, no 2nd rounder, really just a handful of non senior-signs elsewhere in the draft.  As I opined in the previous post discussion, I just don’t like the looks of this class.

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So.  5200 words later, I think I actually like my guidelines.  I think though that the new CBA forces teams into making a bunch of “throw-away” picks in the 6th-10th rounds, so my criteria needs to be adjusted downward for that category in the last few years.  Otherwise I think it holds.

What say you?

Editor’s Post-posting thoughts.  Based on the analysis above, the franchise has 5 successes and 5 failures (or projected failures) in ten drafts.  After up and down drafts the first four years, we had three straight successes in 2009-2011, but now I feel like we’ve had three successive failures from 2012 onwards.  Here’s a sobering thought about those successes and failures: lets talk about bonus money spent.

• In the 5 drafts I call successes, the team spent (chronologically): $3,990,500, $7,619,300,  $18,806,000, $11,413,200 and $11,325,000 in bonus money.
• In the 5 drafts i’m calling failures/projected failures: $5,222,000, $4,766,500, $4,503,500, $2,678,100, $4,149,900

See a pattern?  With the exception of the unbelievable 2005 draft, the Nats have had successes when spending big money and failures when they don’t.  Maybe its just that simple.

I think, to be fair, it is also worth nothing the three distinct “eras” of Nats draft philosophy:

• Era 1: 2005-2008: MLB hamstrung budgets and Lerner penny pinching era.  2 successes, 2 failures.
• Era 2: 2009-2011: Lerner’s realize the Tampa Bay way: spending through the draft is the best way to acquire talent.  3 successes
• Era 3: 2012-present: the new CBA spells out draconian draft bonus policies.  3 failures.

Era 1 may be just the way it used to go; sometimes you’d get wins in the draft, other times you’d strike out.  Era 2 was the glory years of Nats drafting, though the cynic may point out that picking three consensus 1-1 talents and spending 8 figures in bonus money wasn’t that hard.  Era 3 is more troubling: why has this management team not done better in the CBA/limited bonus era?

 

I thought I’d do a different take on the “history of Nats drafts.”  What was the mood/feel around the team approaching draft day year after year?  Who do we think they were focusing on as the big day rolled around and why?  We focus mostly on the first round pick, where so many of the mock drafts focus, but we’ll also mention significant moves further down.

To be honest, I didn’t really start closely following the draft and track who the Nats were “rumored” to be with until the 2008 draft.   So if you remember something differently than me, please feel free to chime in.  I also focus pretty heavily on the early picks here, simply because teams generally get the most value out of their 1st round picks, and the thought processes in taking the first round pick often is the focus of draft analysis and mock drafts posted head of each actual draft.

The Draft Tracker xls (created by Brian Oliver, now maintained by SpringFieldFan) is vital for any Nats fan interested in tracking the teams’ drafting history.

• 2005: Nats picked 4th overall and did not have a 2nd or 3rd round picks (the 2nd round pick went to Colorado for the Vinny Castilla FA signing and the 3rd round pick went to Minnesota as compesation for the Cristian Guzman signing)).  The team was also under MLB control and was (presumably) given quite strict financial guidelines over signings.  Given those considerations, they knew they needed a splash with their #1 overall pick, they needed someone affordable and they needed someone that would speak to their new fan-base.  They wanted college draftees, quick to the majors.  The team was looking at the three top 3rd Basemen in the draft.  Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Braun and Alex Gordon.  All three were playing at good schools with good numbers.  Gordon went 2nd overall to Kansas City and the Nats snapped up Zimmerman.  Zimmerman signed quickly for an acceptable amount ($2.9M as the 4th overall pick) and was playing in the majors by September.   Zimmerman’s selection made sense geographically (he grew up in Va Beach and attended UVA) and it made sense considering the talent available at the Nats pick.  MASN’s David Huzzard printed a retrospective of the 2005 draft ahead of 2014’s draft.
• 2006: Thanks to a couple of FA losses (Hector Carrasco and Esteban Loiaza), the team had two extra picks in the first two rounds.  The team had a roller coaster 2005; first place at mid-season and then a collapse as MLB refused to allow reinforcements.  By draft-day 2006 the team was firmly under the control of Jim Bowden, and his philosophy had always skewed towards “toolsy” players, potential over actual.   But the team didn’t have an owner yet, so were still operating under MLB’s guidelines.  These two facts were quite evident by looking at the haul the Nats had with their early picks.  6 picks in the top 4 rounds and they were all high school players.  Chris Marrero, Colten Willems, Stephen Englund, Sean Black, Stephen King and Glenn Gibson.    The team got Marrero for a relatively cheap $1.6M deal mid-way through the first round, failed to sign Black altogether, and got 5 of these 6 players to sign for around $5M all told.  The team on the field was under-performing thanks to a limited MLB-dictated budget, but Bowden was drafting for the longer run.  Unfortunately none of these high school players ever amounted to much of anything, with only Marrero ever reaching the majors and Willems retiring before ever advancing out of A-Ball.
• 2007: The team had another haul of upper-end draft picks, thanks to their acquisition of Alfonso Soriano and his type-A free agency sending them both an extra first rounder and a supplimental first rounder.   The team took lefty Ross Detwiler from small school Missouri State with the 6th overall pick, a selection that has been lampooned based on who else was available at the time (Madison Bumgarner and Jason Heyward in particular), but literature from 2007 supports his selection at 6th overall.  After Detwiler, the nats spent their two supplimental first round picks on high school raw talents (as was Bowden’s custom), neither of which ever panned out (Josh Smoker and Michael Burgess).  This draft turned into one of the more productive in Nat history, with at least four current major leaguers picked (along with Detwiler, Stephen Souza, Derek Norris and especially 2nd round pick Jordan Zimmermann, so it is unfair to focus on the misses out of 2007.  This was easily Bowden’s best draft while in charge in Washington.
• 2008: The year of Aaron Crow.  Crow had a strong summer and a strong spring and was the 2nd best college arm in the draft, no question.  There was apparently antagonism between Bowden and Crow’s agents from the moment that he was drafted, and the negotiations between the sides never really came together.  The signing deadline came and went with no signature, and Crow went to Indy ball before getting picked the following summer.  There was talk about how the Crow non-signing was purposeful; the Nats spent significantly less money in the draft in 2008 than they had in 2007 and the ownership group was still being labeled as “cheap.”  Either way, this lack of signing was one more bullet in the ammunition guns of opinion makers in the industry about the state of the Nationals organization under the leadership of Bowden.  This would serve to be his last draft; he was embroiled in the bonus scandal over the off-season and relinquished his job ahead of the 2009 season.
• 2009: We all are quite familiar with the story by now; Stephen Strasburg was a laconic out-of-shape hurler in high school who barely merited a college spot, then re-made himself into the “greatest pitching prospect of all time” while at San Diego State.   Despite his reported bonus demands (he ended up with more than $15M deal) and his representation (Scott Boras), the Nats never seriously considered not selecting him with the first overall pick.  For me the big question was who the Nats were going to take at #10. I wanted another starter, and there were some significant college pitchers projected to be available at #9.  Kyle Gibson, Alex White,  Tyler Maztek, Chad Jenkins and Tanner Scheppers were all left on the board to draft a Stanford reliever in Drew Storen.  Keith Law had Storen ranked as his 28th prospect, a guy who was clearly “good” but who was over-drafted by nearly 20 spots.  This had “signability pick” written all over it, a thought that was even more proven when the team drafted college senior Trevor Holder with their 3rd pick and signed him for 1/2 of slot.  Holder wasn’t even his team’s friday starter and had a 4.48 ERA.  So, the team got Strasburg and paid him significant money, and the 2008 draft misstep turned into an effective closer in Storen, so the draft wasn’t a disaster, but with a bit more money allocated (remember, this was the same year they were paying Guzman $8M to be a mediocre shortstop) the team really could have hit it out of the park.
• 2010: After another 100+ loss season, the Nats were fortunate to have another no-brainer, consensus #1 overall pick in Bryce Harper.   But the real story of the 2010 draft was Mike Rizzo’s finally convincing the ownership group and Ted Lerner of the power of the over-slot pick.  The Nationals gave Harper a 40-man deal and a lot of guaranteed money … but they also bought two high-end high school arms out of their college commitments for 1st-2nd round money (A.J. Cole and Robbie Ray).  The Nats were quickly becoming a team that was ignoring the advice of the penurious commissioner Bud Selig, known for railing against teams and owners who ignored his “slot recommendations.”  The Lerners tried to be friends with Selig and play by the rules, only to watch other teams out-spend and out-sign them.  Remember this fact when we see the next CBA come out, assigning slot deals ahead of time and implementing draconian policies on teams that over-spend in the draft.
• 2011: The Nats were looking at a handful of players with their #6 pick; George Springer, Sonny Gray, Taylor Jungman, Jackie Bradley, and the like.  In a pretty shocking draft-day shake-up, teams passed on former college player of the year Anthony Rendon and suddenly he fell into the Nationals’ lap.  The sliding of Rendon to the Nats was amazing; Rendon was considered a clear consensus 1-1 pick for nearly 2 seasons, and the pro track record of BA college players of the year is pretty solid.   The Nats had two extra first rounders (compensation for type-A FA Adam Dunn) and the selection of Alex Meyer with the #17 overall pick was a given; some pundits had the Nats taking him at #6 overall, so much they were enthralled with the huge right hander from Kentucky.   As with 2010, the team continued to write big checks to convince Brian Goodwin, Matt Purke and Kylin Turnbull to leave school early.  The Purke pick in particular showed that the Nats were willing to spend money to get big-time players and were willing to risk the dice on injury concerns.  The Nats had no 2nd rounder (lost as compensation for Adam LaRoche but with three 1st/supp-1st rounders got plenty of cracks at top-end talent.
• 2012:  The Nats had a mid-draft pick after their .500 record in 2011 and were focusing on arms.  By now, Rizzo’s drafting mentality has been made evident; he focuses on college players, and more specifically college arms, unless an outlier falls into his lap.  Well, the definition of a draft-day outlier fell into the Nats lap in 2012 when Lucas Giolito, a big-time prep prospect who was under consideration of being the first ever high school right handed pitcher to go 1st overall early in the process.  Giolito’s size, power and secondary offerings were the makings of a 1-1 pick, but his senior prep season was derailed by what was initially called an “elbow strain” but which turned out to really be a “small elbow ligament tear.”  Nonetheless, the Nats grabbed him, signed him for over-slot money (nearly $3M), and they had their man.  Years later, Rizzo revealed that the next guy on their draft board was St. Louis sensation Michael Wacha … a “what if” question for this team that may be asked for quite a while, given Wacha’s quick rise and overall dominance at such a young age.  The rest of the Nats draft class was entirely about saving dollars to over-pay Giolito and buy him out of his college committment (as is seen by the bonus figures and senior draftees for the rest of the first 10 rounds), and we’re already seeing the after-effects of this strategy; the team has already released 10 of its 2012 draft class after just two pro seasons, and outside of Giolito its hard to see any potential impact players out of the entire class.  The Nats may get a couple of RHP bullpen arms, but little else.
• 2013: The team knew it didn’t have a first rounder thanks to its signing of Rafael Soriano (though to be honest, knowing that they were picking last thanks to their MLB-best record in 2012, they probably weren’t as reticent about losing that pick), and the new CBA had taken affect, meaning that the team had a very limited budget for signing players.  Their first pick wasn’t until the end of the second round, and they went with a big power college arm in Jake Johansen.  It was impossible to predict who would be available to the Nats at the 68th pick (their first pick), so the Nats draft philosophy seemed to revert to default; lots of college players, lots of college arms.  Of their first 15 selected players, just one prep player was selected (Drew Ward) and a number of their guys signed  for significantly under-slot to pay Ward and a couple of other players.
• 2014: After a disappointing 2013 season, the team kept its first round pick in a draft that seems deep on college arms but thin in other areas (especially college hitters).  The Nats farm system, after years of drafting predominantly college arms for the past few drafts, has plenty of arms but is thin on hitters, leading some pundits to presume the Nats are looking at college bats.  But a couple of late spring elbow injuries on significant names (James Hoffman and Erick Fedde) also has other pundits thinking that the Nats will have no concerns about taking a pitcher who is known to need Tommy John surgery (given their handling of the likes of Strasburg, Solis, Zimmermann and their picking of Giolito in 2012).  Mock drafts frequently have the Nats selecting Fedde at #18.  And indeed that is who the Nats select.  A run on high-end college arms just prior to the Nats pick probably sealed their fate on taking Fedde.  They take a good balance of pitchers and hitters in the top 10 rounds, almost entirely out of the college ranks (as is their custom).  Like 2013 and 2012, they gambled on one prep player in the top 10 (this year Jakson Reetz) and bought a high-end prep prospect out of his college committment, but otherwise stayed the course drafting college players.

The following links were crucial to doing this post:

• Nats Draft Tracker (maintained by SpringfieldFan)
• B-R.com’s Draft database of players.

Last year, with my excitement over Washington’s Dan Haren signing and my supposition that Washington had the best rotation in the game, I ranked all 30 team’s rotations ahead of the 2013 season.  Then, after the season was done, I revisited these pre-season rankings with a post-mortem to see how close (or, more appropriately, how far off) my rankings turned out to be.

Here’s the 2014 version of this same post: Pre-season rankings of the MLB’s rotations; 1 through 30.  Warning; this is another huge post.  I guess I’m just verbose.  At this point midway through Spring Training there’s just a couple of possible FAs left that could have altered these rankings (Ervin Santana being the important name unsigned right now), so I thought it was time to publish.

The top teams are easy to guess; once you get into the 20s, it becomes pretty difficult to distinguish between these teams.  Nonetheless, here we go (I heavily depended on baseball-reference.com and mlbdepthcharts.com for this post, along with ESPN’s transaction list per team and Baseball Prospectus’ injury reports for individual players).

Read the rest of this entry »

Nothing like a time-waster for the weekend; Bill Ladson‘s latest inbox plopped Friday afternoon 1/31/14.  Here’s how I’d have responded if someone had bothered to as me these questions 🙂

Q: Even though the Nationals are confident with Denard Span in center field and they have strong center fielders in the Minors, is it possible that they might try to get Matt Kemp at the Trade Deadline or next offseason?

A: Matt Kemp‘s name has come up in this blog in the discussion spaces once before in an interesting “what-if” game.  The question as it was posed was this: “Would you, straight up and with no salary relief, trade Matt Kemp right now for Anthony Rendon?”  Think about it; Kemp is owed $127.5M over the next six seasons ($21-$21.5M per season).  He put up MVP numbers in 2011 (many thought he should have won instead of Ryan Braun, even more so after Braun’s positive PED tests) but has floundered with injury and sub-par performances (relative to his salary) for the past two years.  Meanwhile Rendon is getting paid a fraction of what Kemp’s salary is, is younger and has room to grow, but so far has been merely a league average player.  Its a good question: do you run the risk of a $20M boat anchor on your roster, taking up 1/7th of  your salary cap, or do you roll the dice that Kemp returns to his former glory and earns his pay?  Or do you bet on Rendon becoming a significant player cost contained and under team control for another 5 years?

For me, I think you stay away from Kemp.  That’s a ton of money with no guarantee that 2014 will be any different from 2013, and the Nats already have enough pending payroll problems without adding one more $20M player.

As for the question at hand, I see no inclination for Mike Rizzo to make such a move, now or ever.  He spent a lot of capital (our best starting pitching prospect at the time in Alex Meyer) to get Denard Span, he sought him out and coveted openly him for years, and now he has him.  Span’s not going anywhere.  As for next year, we’re in a wait and see.  One of our best prospects is a CF candidate in Brian Goodwin, but he took a step back in 2013.  If Goodwin steps back up in 2014 or doesn’t pan out, we can exercise Span’s 2015 option at $9M and wait for the next best CF prospect in our system (Michael Taylor) to grow.  If neither prospect pans out, we don’t have to worry about it for a few years.  But, at some point you hope this team can grow another prospect to replace an aging $9M free agent with a minimum salary guy.

Ladson basically says what I say, but in fewer words.

Q: The Nationals still have bullpen questions that were not addressed during the offseason. Do you think the Nats will sign another lefty for the bullpen? Or will they use Ross Detwilerin relief?

A: Do we have bullpen questions?  Where?  We got a lefty (Jerry Blevins) and we have another decent lefty option who pitched decently for us last year (Xavier Cedeno).  I’m quite pleased with the state of our back-end guys (Soriano and Clippard), our 7th and 8th inning options (Storen and Stammen), and our long-man options (Ohlendorf and Roark).   Remember; Clippard has great lefty splits, always has.  If our loogy doesn’t work out that well, we go back to using Clippard periodically as a match-up guy.  Or we call up Sammy Solis.  Hell, we could even try Matthew Purke as a bullpen option (he’s on the 40-man after all); scouts are souring on him ever being an effective starter, but his weird motion and shorter stints could help him feature as a bullpen guy.   I think you use Ross Detwiler as a starter until he proves otherwise; as mentioned in this space time and again, Detwiler was effective in 2012, started well in 2013 and got hurt; I have no doubt that if healthy he can start 2014 as he started 2013.  Ladson says similar things about our lefty options.

Q: How is Adam LaRoche‘s health going into Spring Training? He looked as if he lost a tremendous amount of weight last year.

A: Adam LaRoche looked healthy enough in all those shots that appeared of him killing things on the internet over the winter.  Seriously; who knows what the answer to this question is.  But we know he’s aware of the situation and should be taking steps to maintain his strength and weight in 2014.  It is a contract year after all, and he’s shown a proclivity towards having career years in contract years when he needs them to secure his next paycheck.  I can’t see  him “platooning” like a lot of bloggers seem to be calling for, but I can see him being told by management that he needs to maintain his production or he may be banished in phantom DL trips.  Ladson reports that LaRoche was taking an ADD medication, believes he has it figured out, and predicts a Gold Glove in 2014.  Random prediction but sounds good.

Q: Any chance Nationals could bring back Jesus Flores as a backup to Wilson Ramos?

A: Well, Jesus Flores is still out there as a MLFA.  What doesn’t speak well of him is the fact that he was released in May of last year by the Dodgers.  Clearly to me, he’s no longer a viable major league backup candidate.  I can still see the Nats giving a non-guaranteed contract to one of the few remaining veteran catchers to see if one of them sticks as Ramos’ backup, but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised to see the winner of a competition between Jhonatan Solano and Sandy Leon sticking as the backup.  That being said, both these guys were awful in 2013 in the minors offensively and I don’t have a good explanation why.  Leon seems like the better bet; better history of batting,  younger.   Chris Snyder has had a rough couple years but is still relatively young and has had stretches of decency, if the team wants to go with a veteran backup instead of a rookie.   I dunno what’s going to happen.  On the bright side, Keith Law‘s just-released top 10 for the system (ESPN Insider only) includes one Pedro Severino, giving him relatively glowing grades for his defense.   He’s a couple years away (born in 1993) but if he succeeds in Potomac this year he could be a ready-made Ramos backup sooner than later.  Ladson says the team had a problem with the way Flores called games … hmm, never heard that before.  Ladson also predicts more signings before Feb 1.

Q: I sense a double standard: why give continued chances to Danny Espinosa but essentially shut out Drew Storen? Am I missing something? Similar struggles, but at least Drew fought his way back to the Majors.

A: I’m not sure what “chances” Danny Espinosa is getting at this point, nor am I sure what Storen has been “shut out” of.  The team bought Rafael Soriano, are paying him a ton of money, and he’s the closer as long as he’s here.  That’s that; both Storen and Clippard got pushed down a peg when he got acquired.  Meanwhile, I think its clear that Anthony Rendon is the starter, and Espinosa is playing for a backup role.  Maybe there were just too many quotes taken out of context from NatsFest.  Ladson re-iterates his believe that Espinosa will be traded.