Nationals Arm Race

Voth has completely remade his career in less than a month. Photo mlb.com official

I havn’t been doing regular check-ins with the minor league staffs for a few years, but I have always maintained little “cheat sheet” notes on the staffs of the levels day in/day out (thanks in no small part to the daily work of Luke Erickson over at Nationals Prospects of course).

It occurred to me, doing updates this week, that the four full season rotations have been about as stable as I can ever remember them this year.  So I thought i’d do a quick swing through the four staffs, with quick notes on who has looked good or bad and what we may see in terms of movement going forward.

Syracuse (stats link here: http://web.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?t=t_ibp&cid=552&stn=true&sid=t552)

• Opening day rotation: Voth, Milone*, Fedde, EJackson, Vargas
• Current rotation: Milone*, Voth, Fedde, EJackson, Vargas
• spot starts/swingman: Simms, Goforth
• bullpen: Collins*, Cordero, CSmith, Miller, Adams, Valdez
• promotions: Torres, Gott, Suero
• up-and-back: Adams, Voth
• demotions: Long,
• dl/restricted/TIL: Barrett, Satterwhite

Rotation thoughts: A month in and the only change we’ve seen to the AAA rotation was the flipping of Milone and Voth thanks to Voth’s brief call-up earlier this week.  Voth has absolutely re-made his career so far this year, going from possible “first man to be DFA’d” off the 40-man to a guy who is forcing his way into the conversation the next time the Nats need a starter.  For May he’s posted a 0.76 ERA, a 0.68 WHIP, has a 30/3 K/BB ratio in 23 innings and has given up just 13 hits.  Man, is he found gold for a team who has traded away an awful lot of pitching prospects over the past couple of seasons?

The veteran insurance policies Jackson and Milone are both pitching about as I’d expect them to be: Milone slightly better, with better base-runner control, Jackson with more wildness and worse stats.   Erick Fedde has not been either good or bad, giving up a hit an inning and maintaining a 4-1 K-BB ratio but not showing any real dominance.  My guess is that he’ll be sticking in AAA for a while.

The last guy in the rotation may be the most interesting: Cesar Vargas was a low-key spring MLFA signing after bouncing around San Diego’s system last year.  He’s come out in 2018 looking serviceable and might be putting himself ahead of the veterans in the pecking order.

Bullpen thoughts: John Simms has looked great in a long-man role.  He’s quietly been serviceable at every level in his journey upwards and you have to wonder if he’ll eventually push for a 9/1 call up.  Most of the rest of the bullpen is too SSS to make real judgements, though we have seen three relievers get pushed to the majors right now (Torres, Gott, Suero) and fourth who was up and is now in AAA (Adams).  Cordero still shows the same issues that have plagued him for a while; he’s got 16/8 K/BB in 11 innings.  Barrett remains  with the system and we hope he can get back to his former self; he’d certainly help out at the MLB level.

Who is making a push for promotion?  Voth

Who is in jeopardy of a demotion (or worse): Smith, Cordero

Harrisburg (stats = http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?t=t_ibp&did=milb&cid=547)

• Opening day rotation: Dragmire, JRodriguez, Darnell*,  LReyes, Estevez
• Current Rotation: Dragmire, JRodriguez, Long, LReyes, Estevez
• spot starts/swingman: AWilliams, Darnell*
• bullpen: Fleck, Guillon*, BHarper*, RMendez, Self,  Ames
• promotions: Valdez
• dl/restricted: Brinley, Bacus
• Missing from 2017: NLee*

Rotation thoughts: The only substantive change in the rotation from the first pass through was to replace Darnell with Long.  Dragmire and Jefry Rodriguez  have both excelled thus far, though Rodriguez’s stats look more like a guy who might be pressing for promotion (more Ks, fewer hits).  Dragmire is showing more of what he displayed last year at AA and he may need the additional challenge of AAA soon.  Estevez and Reyes are not faring as well thus far, with elevated ERAs and WHIPs.  And Long, upon his demotion from AAA, has been poor in his three AA starts, with just 6 punch-outs and a 1.85 WHIP in 13 innings.  Rodriguez seems like the first starter in line for promotion.

Bullpen thoughts:  Austen Williams has looked great since getting moved out of the rotation.  Kaleb Fleck has some interesting stats: he’s got an 18/1 K/BB ratio in 10 innings but has an ugly 5.91 ERA (I’m sure his FIP is like 3 points lower).  Fleck is too good for AA; he spent all last  year in AAA and isn’t proving anything here.  Bryan Harper‘s return from injury is going ok .. he’s got nearly a 2.00 WHIP though.  Long serving Nats farmhand Dakota Bacus got shelled in four appearances and currently sits on the D/L; he had excellent numbers in 2017 but is getting a bit long in the tooth for AA and I wonder if he’s running out of time.  One big name still sits in XST: Nick Lee, who looked promising before injuries derailed his progress.

Who is making a push for promotion?   Fleck, JRodriguez, AWilliams

Who is in jeopardy of a demotion (or worse): Bacus

Potomac

(stats link: http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?t=t_ibp&did=milb&cid=436)

• opening day rotation: Crownover*, Sharp, Baez, Mapes, Crowe
• starters: Crownover*, Sharp, Baez, ?, Crowe
• spot starts/swingmen: Pantoja, Howard*, Guilbeau*, McGowin
• bullpen: JMills*, Bourque, Klobosits, RPena, Peterson, Rivera
• demotions: Fuentes
• dl/restricted: Borne*, Mapes
• Missing: Romero*

Rotation thoughts: The only change to the opening day rotation literally happened yesterday, with Mapes dropping to the D/L and (likely)  McGowin (freshly taken off the AA D/L and demoted to Potomac) likely to take his place.  Mapes has the best starter ERA … but the worst WHIP.  Crownover may have the nicest looking stat line, with a nifty 28/4 K/BB ratio and solid peripherals.  Perhaps the most important high-A arm may be Wil Crowe and so far he’s more than handling high-A; the 2017 2nd rounder  has a great whip, good ratios and is looking like an excellent draft pick.   Baez and Sharp fill out the rest of the rotation; both showing mid 4 ERAs and not really being good enough or bad enough to comment on thus far.  The one big notable missing name here is Seth Romero, who should be featuring in this rotation as we speak but instead apparently still sits not at XST but at home in Houston.  Its hard to prove the “i told you so” guys wrong when it literally took less than a season for his well-publicized maturity issues to come to the forefront.

Bullpen thoughts:  Some good and some bad in the bullpen; Rivera and Howard have gotten dinged so far, while Bourque, Mills and Pantoja look solid.  Bourque in particular now boasts a 22/4 K/BB ratio in 12 relief innings; like that ratio.  36th rounder Klobosits still looking solid; how exactly was he still around that late in the draft if he’s already succeeding in high-A?

Who is making a push for promotion?  Bourque

Who is in jeopardy of a demotion (or worse): Rivera perhaps

Hagerstown (stats = http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?t=t_ibp&did=milb&cid=563

• Opening day rotation: BHill/Braymer*, Raquet*/Acevedo, Tetreault/Bogucki, Alastre/Troop*, Stoeckinger*/Johnston
• Current rotation: Troop*, Raquet*, Acevedo, Tetreault, Alastre, Stoeckinger*
• spot starts/swingman: Johnston, Bogucki, Held, Braymer*
• bullpen: McKinney, Brasher, Fuentes
• promotions: Guilbeau*
• dl/restricted: Howell, BHill
• Cut/Released/FA from 2017: Engelbrekt (retired)
• missing from 2017/XST: YRamirez*, DeRosier, CPena, Simonds, Barnett*, Morse, Dickey, WDavis,

Rotation thoughts: It was clear to this observer that the first few turns through the rotation were in the “tandem starter” configuration, with each of the names in the “opening rotation” throwing roughly 3-4 innings each.  That has now settled into the current 6-man rotation, all of which now seem to be getting the lion’s share of the innings each time through.   Of the “starters,” only really Raquet has acquitted himself well, though i’m concerned about the lack of swing and miss in his game (19/8 K/BB ratio in 27 innings supporting a 2.28 ERA and a 1.05 whip).  The rest of the starters are struggling: Stoeckinger hasn’t walked a soul yet in 24 innings … .but has given up 37  hits for an ugly 7.50 ERA.  Tetreault, Alastre and Acevedo  each have ERAs north of 7.00.   Troop and Hill (both 2017 top-10 round draftees) have been less bad but have room for improvement.

The “tandem” starters have been a different story though.  Bogucki and Braymer each have been solid, with Braymer sporting a 23/2 K/BB ratio and a 0.81 WHIP and Bogucki sporting a 20/3 K/BB ratio.  I wonder how long it’ll be before these guys become the “starters” instead of the “finishers.”

Bullpen thoughts: There’s really only a couple of real “relievers” in Low-A, but one of them has been quite solid.  McKinney has a 14/1 K/BB ratio in just 8 2/3 innings and has yet to give up an earned run.

There’s still a slew of guys technically in “XST” or assigned to the Short-A roster who could fill in here, most of whom have prior Low-A experience and could contribute.

Who is making a push for promotion?   Braymer, Bogucki, McKinney

Who is in jeopardy of a demotion (or worse): Acevedo, Alastre

That’s a quick run through the systems.  Did anyone want to point out someone in particular who they think needs to be talked about?

(Editor’s note: I completely forgot to do this analysis in 2018; this is all back-filled):

Here’s the announcement of NRIs: https://www.mlb.com/nationals/news/nationals-annouce-2018-non-roster-invitees/c-266367066

Confirmed by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Washington_Nationals_season .

RHP
Brady Dragmire
David Goforth
Edwin Jackson
Jaron Long
Roman Mendez
Chris Smith
Cesar Vargas

LHP
Tim Collins
Ismael Guillon
Bryan Harper
Tommy Milone

C
Miguel Montero
Jhonatan Solano

INF
Reid Brignac
Chris Dominguez

OF
Ryan Raburn
Moises Sierra

Additionally, the Nationals have extended invitations to Major League Spring Training to the following four Minor League players:

RHP
Jimmy Cordero

C
Taylor Gushue
Spencer Kieboom

INF
Osvaldo Abreu

Did any NRIs make the 25-man roster out of spring?   Yes: Miguel Montero, who played four games (4), then was released.  Money well spent.

Did any of these NRIs appear for the Nats throughout the 2018 season?  Yes, Montero, Collins, Sierra, Cordero, Kieboom.

Special Mention: Edwin Jackson did not appear for the Nats, but he did secure his ML release then ended up being quite productive for Oakland later in the 2018 season.

Our newest little Nats fan!

So, after nearly a 3 week hiatus, i’m back.  And what better way to get back into the swing of things than to do a mailbag!  Nats mlb.com beat reporter Jamal Collier was kind enough to post a mailbag last night.

(In case you were wondering where I was, we traveled to China to adopt a little girl.  The above is a picture of her the day after we met her for the first time as we were walking the streets of Jinan, the capital city of the province where she was living in an orphanage :-).  She’s a natural in the curly-W hat).

Q: Any sense of urgency from the front office to get pen support? could we see a trade soon or will Rizzo play it cool and wait a bit more?

A: I don’t know how there isn’t a sense of urgency at this point.  We’re nearly a third of the way through the season and the bullpen is in shambles.  As we speak, the Nats bullpen ranks 29th in ERA, 27th in FIP, and 27th in fWAR.  Their best reliever so far in 2017 was a scrap-heap NRI pickup in Matt Albers, who now seems to be closing.  Five different guys have saves.  The two guys who we thought would be in the “closer” discussion ahead of the season (Shawn Kelley and Blake Treinen) have ERAs of 6.08 and 7.78 respectively.  The bullpen has 8 blown saves already, some of which were really, really egregious (like May 9th’s scuttling of Max Scherzer‘s 8 inning shut-down effort in Baltimore).

But its not exactly trade season yet.  You very rarely see trades during this time of year; front offices are preparing for the draft.  Then they’ll spend most of June negotiating with draft picks and making roster decisions on short season squads.  Then there’s the International Signing period leading up to the beginning of July.  Then there’s the all-star break.  Only THEN do you really get into “trade season,” the period in-between the all-star break and the trade deadline on 7/31.  So I’d be kind of surprised to see the Nats pull off a trade right now.  More likely you’ll see more of what they’re doing with Erick Fedde: looking at their AAA and AA teams and wondering who might be able to help.  Fedde could be a nice little 7th/8th inning helper, kinda like Koda Glover was last year.  Perhaps there’s another starter down there who might make sense to do the same in a pinch.  The team still has several options in AAA and on the 40-man roster that they’ve yet to explore: Austin Adams has 31 Ks in 19 innings with a 1.42 ERA for Syracuse so far in 2017 …. to go along with 17 walks (but hey, Enny Romero was able to fix his walk issue, right?).  Trevor Gott‘s numbers aren’t awful.  So perhaps there’s some options.

Oh Side note; the rumor that the Nats had a deal with the White Sox to move David Robertson (AND salary relief!?) for Jesus Luzardo and Drew Ward?   That came from Bob Nightengale from the USA Today, who is one of those reporters who seems to get a lot of “anonymous quotes” from unnamed front office types looking to air dirty laundry, especially from the slimy Chicago White Sox organization (go google his reporting on the Adam LaRoche situation for a decidedly pro-ownership take on that whole situation, trashing the player without anyone taking any credit for the quotes).  So i’m not sure how much credit to give it.  But if its true … then you have to scratch your head as to why the Nats didn’t pull the trigger on that one.  Ward is a limited prospect, completely blocked at the MLB level  and who is Rule-5 Eligible this coming off-season and Luzardo is a lottery ticket coming off TJ surgery who has yet to throw a pitch.  I’d have made that deal in a heart beat; you’re telling me the Nats balked because they didn’t get *enough* money coming back?

Collier says the team is well aware of the issue, is poking around, but as noted above its two months from the trade deadline so there’s not a lot of urgency from other teams.

Q: Does Eric Fedde have a chance that to join the Nats bullpen soon?

A: Duh, yes.  Why else would the team have taken its absolute best starting pitcher prospect  in Erick Fedde and put him in the bullpen mid-May?  I don’t think it was to see how he liked it.  I think it was clearly to fill a need at the MLB level.  And soon.  I’d say they’ll give him a call as soon as he a) shows he can handle pitching back to back days, and b) he clears the super-2 deadline.  When will Super-2 deadline be?  Well, its generally been falling in the 2yr, 135day range.   So we’re right in the range as we speak of being at the super-2 cutoff; to be really safe, teams could wait until the first week of June to do call-ups and likely be clear of the cut-off.  So that works  out well; Fedde gets 3 weeks or so in the bullpen, then gets the call.  That’d be my prediction.

Collier agrees; says absolutely Fedde is coming up in a relief role for 2017 to fill a need, similarly to the way the team moved Trea Turner last year.

Q: When can we expect solis to rejoin the team?

A: Beats me.  Sammy Solis just can’t stay healthy, and his current injury is listed on b-r.com as having “no time table for return.”

Collier reports that Solis is not even throwing yet; i’d say we’re at least a month from seeing him back.  Not good.

Q: Are Trevor Gott, Joe Nathan, and Bryan Harper being considered for call ups in bullpen? 

A: I discussed Gott above: his numbers aren’t stellar but they’re not awful either.  Joe Nathan has been looking his age in AAA: 1.60 WHIP, 5.65 ERA but getting a K/inning.  Does this sound like the bullpen savior?  Bryan Harper had TJ Surgery in November; he’s out the entire year for sure.  So he’s not an option either.

Collier notes that both Gott and Nathan’s numbers are from earlier struggles and both have pitched better lately.  Fair enough; the team has gotten lucky with NRIs so far this year, perhaps Nathan is another possibility.  

Q: When is Dusty going to name Glover as the closer? I think it needs to happen. Let him have a real shot since there are no better options.

A: Who cares who the “Official Closer” is?  You know who has the best bullpen in the Majors?  Cleveland.  You know who Cleveland’s best reliever is?  It isn’t the “closer.”  Its time people started realizing that bullpen usage is evolving.  I don’t care who the guy is getting the useless “save” statistic; I want my best arm pitching in the highest leverage situations, irrespective of what inning it is.  Does Dusty Baker get this?  Probably not … which holds the team back.  But at least  he’s not Matt Williams in terms of bullpen usage idiocy.

Right now Glover seems to be pitching well, but Albers is pitching better.  So those are my late-inning/high leverage go-to guys.

Collier says Baker danced around the issue when most recently asked.  Which isn’t a surprise for a team with 5 different guys who have gotten saves so far this year.

Q: The RHH bench consists of Chris Heisey (0-14 as PH) and Wilmer Difo (1 PH hit?). Upgrades?

A: SSS.  You’re grasping at straws if you’re worried about this team’s offense right now.   Nats team offense is #1 in the majors in BA, #3 in OBP, #1 in Slugging, #1 in wOBA and #3 in wRC+.  For a National league team, that’s astonishing considering that they’re basically punting the Pitcher slot in the order while AL teams have beefy designated hitters in their stead.  So if you asked me if i’m worried about the right handed pinch hitting options, i’d say no.  Heisey was just fine last year, earned his spot this year, and he’ll be ok eventually.   You can’t expect your bench guys to be awesome, all the time; if they were, they wouldn’t be bench guys.

Collier agrees; its early.

Q: With Adam Eaton out even as Zimmerman makes a resurgence doesn’t it make this #Nats team the exact same team that lost in NLDS?

A: Not really; last year’s team was good offensively but not this good.  Last year  Bryce Harper struggled most of the year; this year he’s back in 2015 form.  You replaced last year’s empty ABs given to Ben Revere and Danny Espinosa with theoretically “better” at-bats from Trea Turner and Adam Eaton to start.  Even with Eaton gone, Michael Taylor hasn’t been completely awful.   But this team won’t go far in the playoffs without some reliability in the bullpen, no matter now many pitchers their starters throw.  That’s your concern right now.

Collier thinks its pretty much the same team, also noting the bullpen as a weakness.

Rendon leads the 2011 class. Photo Nats Official via espn.com

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.

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.

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.

Fedde probably #1 arm in the system … and its tough after that. Photo via minorleagueball.com

Every year, Luke Erickson over at NationalsProspects.com does a crowd-sourced ranking of the Top 10 “bats” and “arms” in the Nats farm system (link to the “Arms” post)

This year, I had such a hard time deciding upon my top 10 arms for Luke’s survey that I thought it would be worth doing my own post on the subject, temporarily stealing Luke’s idea.  I think its an interesting time for our farm system arm development; we’ve spent the off-season trading away a significant amount of arm depth, and what we have left made it kind of tough for me to even find 10 “arms” that were worth ranking.  Furthermore, how do you really compare starters and relievers?  Isn’t a mediocre starter prospect who has reached AAA better than a high-end reliever prospect in the lower minors?   Is our best reliever prospect (Koda Glover) a “better” or “worse” prospect than a really good-looking starter who is in A-Ball (like a Tyler Watson?)  How do you compare a good starter prospect in A ball with what looks like an org-arm in AAA?  Its potential versus reality, ceiling versus floor.  In the end, you have to make kind of a rolling judgement call to put PlayerA above PlayerB … leading to excellent arguments in the comments section.

So, taking these thoughts into account, here’s my top 10 ranked Arms, splitting guys into starters and relievers.  My rules: a “starter” is someone who was “predominantly” a starter this year.  A reliever is someone who, well, was a reliever and wasn’t getting starts unless there was some weird situation going on.  And since the lowest levels generally were doing tandem starting, if you were clearly a “pitch every 5th day” guy even if you weren’t starting, then i’m calling you a starter for these purposes.  This only comes into play with a couple of guys who were in and out of rotations this year; i’ve put them into the Relievers section.

My Nats top 10 Starters:

Can we count on this guy in October? Photo via getty images

We’ve clearly seen some middle relief issues lately, despite nearly sweeping a 4-game set in Atlanta this past weekend.  And one of the issues we’ve been continually discussing is our left-handed relief options.

We traded Felipe Rivero.  Oliver Perez has a 5.61 ERA.  Sammy Solis just had an MRI on his left shoulder.  Matt Grace has nice looking AAA numbers, but got shellacked last year (2.00 whip in 26 innings) during a brief call-up.  Nick Lee was so ineffective this year that he passed completely through waivers when we DFA’d him off the 40-man.  We just paid cash for twice-TJ survivor and ex Nat Sean Burnett, whose AAA numbers look good but is now on his fourth organization of 2016.

Do we have a LOOGY problem?

Well, maybe.

I constantly have to remind myself of this sentence: “You don’t have to be left-handed in order to get lefties out.”  That and this sentence: “If your lefty splits are good … then you’re still a good LOOGY option.”

Here’s the 2016 versus lefty splits for every reliever on our 40-man, RHP or LHP.  And then lets add in some of the call-up candidates just for fun… (all numbers as of 8/21/16’s Atlanta game via baseball-reference.com):

Right Handed reliever options

• Melancon: .202/.253/.274 for an .527 OPS; as you’d expect, an elite closer gets both lefties and righties out.
• Treinen: .211/.357/.351 for an .708 OPS.  Not bad.
• Kelley: .250/.294/.609 for an .903 OPS.  Not good.
• Petit: .261/.327/.511 for an .838 OPS.  Again, not really that good, but then again that’s not what we’re asking him to do generally.
• Belisle: .150/.203/.267 for an .470 OPS.  Wow; that’s better than any of our lefties.
• Glover: minimal stats in MLB; for 2016 he had a .161 BAA in AAA, .250 in AA and .143 in High-A for lefty splits (which are kind of hard to come by at milb.com).   That looks promising, but he seems to be more effective against righties.

Left Handed reliever options

• Perez: .217/.321/.377 for an .698 OPS.  Its his rightly split that’s killing him.
• Solis: .200/.279/.273 for an .551 OPS.  Awesome … if we can get him back healthy.
• Sean Burnett: Again, minor league splits are harder to come by, but Burnett had a .150 BAA against in 12 IP in his longest AAA stint of the year.
• Bryan Harper: .161 BAA in AAA this year, even better .091 while in AA.  And it’d be cool to have him on a roster with his brother.  But he’s on the D/L right now.
• Matt Grace: .207 BAA in AAA this year … but as noted above he struggled in his 2015 audition.

Rivero, by the way, has this for a lefty split in 2016: .325/.424/.429 for an .852 OPS.  A .325 BAA; no wonder they were willing to part with him.  He was a lefty who couldn’t get lefties out.

What if we thought outside the box a bit?

• Reynaldo Lopez: .180/.250/.340 for an .590 OPS.  Interesting; we’ve already talked at length about Lopez being a fire-baller out of the pen for a post-season team and his lefty splits are good.
• Lucas Gioilto: .269/.406/.462 for an .868 OPS; not nearly as impressive.
• Aaron Laffey: just a .254 BAA in AAA this year in a swing-man role.
• Nick Lee: the aforementioned struggling lefty is the only other lefty in the minors above High-A; he’s got a decent .214 BAA against lefties in AA … but his overall ERA/Whip is ugly; 4.73 and 1.77,
• I didn’t go to High-A, where we have a couple of  lefty prospects but they’re no where near consideration for a call-up.

So, we need Solis back; he’s the closest thing we have to a matchup lefty who we can count on.  But clearly Belisle’s numbers make him a matchup option too, despite his being a rightly.  It reminds me of when we had Tyler Clippard, who always had stellar lefty splits.  Perez’s split line isn’t great; I feel like we should be pushing him almost all the way to the mop-up/Petit role right now.

Are you concerned though?  On a whole, the Nats bullpen has been one of the best in all of baseball.  Are the falterings lately just due to a too many innings thanks to a couple of bad starter outings?

Voth was your unquestioned AA star pitcher in 2015. Photo via mlbdirt

After skipping the minor league pitching staff reviews in 2014 (that silly thing called work interfered), I’m back for 2015.  I’ll be reviewing the six minor league levels and the major league levels going from high to low.

In this series, we have already published the 2015 MLB review and the 2015 AAA review.

For some AA review historical perspective, here’s 2013’s version (featuring Nathan Karns), here’s 2012’s version (featuring Danny Rosenbaum) and 2011’s version (featuring Brad Peacock) of this post specifically for Harrisburg/AA.  In the missing 2014 post I likely would have “featured” either A.J. Cole or Matt Grace.

All stats are courtesy of either milb.com’s Harrisburg 2015 Stats page or via Fangraph’s Harrisburg 2015 Stats page.   Also useful here are the Big Board and the Nats Draft Tracker.  And here’s the Baseball America Minor League Free Agent (MLFA) tracker.  And here’s a list of the official MLB MLFA declarations for 2015, though these are more useful for the AAA squad frankly.

Harrisburg Pitching Staff movement throughout the year (* == lefty)

• Opening Day Rotation: Voth, Ross, Espino, Alderson, Swynenberg
• End-of-Season Rotation:  Bates, Voth, Rauh, Simms, Giolito
• End of Season spot starts/swingman:  Purke*
• End of Season bullpen: Mendez, EDavis, Suero, Lee*, de los Santos, Demny
• 9/1 promotions: Bacus, Roark
• Mid-Season promotions: Swynenberg, Espino, Ross, Demny, Simmons, Solis*, Bleier*, Runion, Harper*
• up-and-back: de los Santos
• down-and-back: Spann*
• demotions: Self, Dupra, Mapes, Amlung
• dl/TIL: Benincasa, Alderson
• cut/released/FAs/traded: Sisk, Ambriz, Pivetta (traded)

Harrisburg starters.  The rotation started the season with Voth, Ross, Espino, Alderson, Swynenberg.  Here’s an overview of the starters used, starting with the original five starters.

• Austin Voth not only was the opening day starter, he led the team in IP and in starts.  He posted a 6-7 record with a 2.92 ERA, 1.11 whip, 3.07 fip and had a 148/40 K/BB ratio in 157.1 innings.  Nobody else had more than 15 starts on the year for the Senators, meaning Voth was the unquestioned leader of this pitching staff all year.  He proved that his precipitous rise in 2014 was no fluke by posting solid numbers.  Thanks to a glut of starters above him, I can’t quite see him breaking into the MLB rotation (ala Jordan Zimmermann, who jumped straight from a solid AA season to the majors), but I can see him jumping ahead of some of the AAA starter-in-waiting guys (Cole, Jordan, Hill) if/when the opportunity arises to provide injury cover in the majors.  Outlook for Next season: AAA rotation and a MLB debut at some point in 20116.
• Joe Ross threw 9 solid starts in AA before getting called up and solidifying his place in the 2016 MLB rotation; see the MLB write-up for more.  Outlook for Next season: Nats #4 starter.
• Paolo Espino threw seven decent starts in AA before getting plucked to move up, spending the rest of the season in AAA.   See AAA write-up for more.  Outlook for Next season: AAA rotation.
• Tim Alderson had just 5 starts as a Feb 2015 MLFA signing before getting hurt and spending essentially the rest of the season on the D/L.  He has already elected free agency.  Outlook for Next season: in another organization.
• Matt Swynenberg made just two AA starts, got bumped to AAA to provide cover and then apparently elected to retire, spending the rest of the season on Syracuse’s restricted list.  See AAA write-up for more (though there’s not much more to tell).  Outlook for Next season: retired
• Colin Bates returned to Harrisburg for his second stint, converting more to a long-man/spot starter in 2015 than the pure reliever he was in 2014.  Results are mixed: he was 6-6 with a 4.28 ERA in 111.1 innings across 28 games/15 starts.  1.37 whip, 4.25 fip.  62/29 K/BB in those 111 innings.  A pretty low K/9 ratio for today’s power-heavy pitching game lends me to believe that Bates has reached his peak; I could see him pushed to the AAA bullpen or staying in AA bullpen again as a swingman based on the numbers, but either way he stands to play out 2016 as an org guy before hitting MLFA.  Outlook for Next season: AA bullpen.
• Richard Bleier gave AA 15 effective starts before getting pushed to the AAA rotation;  See the AAA write-up for more.   Outlook for next season: in AAA for another organization
• Dakota Bacus started in Potomac but got bumped quickly to Harrisburg, where he played most of the season (he was a 9/1 call-up to AAA to provide a few days of bullpen cover).  For Harrisburg he was 6-3 with a 3.51 ERA in 22 appearances and 11 starts.  1.29 whip in AA, 4.11 fip and a 53/29 K/BB in 89.2 AA innings.  Not bad, not great.  Bacus was the return for Kurt Suzuki trade in late 2013 and has steadily climbed the ladder; I can see him in the AAA bullpen next year.  He’s still just 24 and we have a couple more years of control, so he could still have an impact.  He’s survived one Rule-5 draft already; his goal in 2016 should be to put himself in a position to earn a 40-man spot.  Outlook for Next season: AAA bullpen.
• Matthew Spann bounced freely between High-A and AA this year, throwing slightly more innings in High-A but getting 10 starts in AA.  In those 10 AA starts, he was 2-2 with a 4.66 ERA, 1.61 whip, 3.70 fip and had a 35/25 K/BB ratio in 56 innings.  He ended the year where he began it; the High-A rotation.  Spann was the return for David DeJesus and already has 6 minor league seasons in him, so he may have found his peak level.  I could see him back in the mix for the AA rotation for one more season before hitting MLFA/getting released.  The fact that he’s a lefty though gives him a bit more of a stay of execution; his lefty vs lefty numbers are a bit better than against righies, so perhaps he could convert to relief if need be.  But he’s stuck as a starter for an awful long time; most guys wouldn’t last 6 seasons as a starter in the low-minors unless there was something there.  Outlook for Next season: AA rotation.
• Lucas Giolito had 8 starts for Harrisburg after a mid-season promotion from High-A.  He was 4-2 with a 3.80 ERA in those 8 starts, with 1.37 whip, 3.18 fip and 45/17 K/BB in 47.1 AA innings.  Gioloto took a bit of time to adjust to AA; 10 of the 20 earned runs he gave up (and 6 of his 11 walsk) in his 8 AA starts were in his first two appearances.  It took him weeks to get a home start, and he only made two home starts during his AA season.  Eventually he adjusted; throwing 7 innings of one-hit ball with 11 strikeouts in his home debut for Harrisburg.  Giolito got hit; he certainly wasn’t as dominant in AA as he was in High-A, but he’s also just turned 21 and there’s no mistaking the potential in his arm.  I think the team starts him in AA again, hoping for a 5-6 week earned promotion to AAA and perhaps a mid-to-late season call-up potential for 2016.  Outlook for Next season: AA rotation to start.
• John Simms earned his promotion from High-A to AA the same day as Giolito and also got 8 AA starts.  His results were mixed: 2-3 with a 4.40 ERA, 1.42 whip, 3.82 fip and 34/15 K/BB in 45 AA innings.  Simms showed more K/9 in AA than he did in High-A oddly, but wasn’t appreciably more hittable.  This was his second stint in AA and improved slightly from his 2014 numbers (where he had 11 starts with a 5.03 ERA).  Nonetheless, good progress for the 2013 11th rounder.  Outlook for Next season: AA rotation.
• Brian Rauh had an interesting tour of the Nats minor league affiliates in 2015, starting the season in Potomac, getting quickly promoted to Harrisburg, struggling, getting hurt, going to the D/L, doing a rehab assignment in Viera, then working his way back up the chain from Low- to High-A and ending the year back in the Harrisburg rotation.  He proved twice he was too good for High-A, and proved twice why he may  not be ready for AA.  Total AA stats on the year: 8 starts, 4.83 ERA, 1.41 whip, 4.95 fip and 29/10 K/BB in 41 AA innings.   2016 is sink or swim time for Rauh in AA; he can’t go back to Potomac for the fourth straight year.  Outlook for Next season: AA rotation or bust.
• Matthew Purke had a whirlwind off-season, getting DFA’d off the 40-man roster but then quickly re-signed to a MLFA contract for the 2015. season to give it one last go for the former big-money bonus 2011 3rd rounder.  He rose to AA where he pitched as a swing-man, getting 10 games and 5 starts, and did not impress.  6.29 ERA, 1.64 whip, 3.76 fip.  19/7 K/BB in 24 AA innings.  His lower minors numbers were much better … but at this point in his age 25 season, he needs to be competing well at the higher levels.  I think its clear that he’s not going to recover from his shoulder issues and it seems unlikely he’ll rise much above where he already has.  He has already declared as a MLFA and has signed with the White Sox as a MLFA for 2016.  Thus ends a long, drawn-out saga for a guy who I thought was a huge draft day coup for us.  Outlook for Next season: AA in the White Sox organization.
• Others who had a few starts for AA Harrisburg:
  • Nick Pivetta had 3 AA starts after getting promoted from Potomac before getting flipped for Jonathan Papelbon: see High-A write-up for more.
  • James Simmons threw a couple of spot starts in Harrisonburg, inbetween his regular reliever duties.  See reliever section for more.
  • Solis, Fister, Strasburg, Janssen and Roark each had one “start” during rehab assignments in Harrisburg; see MLB write-up for each.

Harrisburg Relievers: taking a look at the relief corps.  We’ll organize relievers by going by IP from most to least.  Anyone with less than 10 IP will get cursory analysis at the end.

• Gilberto Mendez keeps moving on up the system, posting a 3.84 ERA in a full season (61 innings) as a middle reliever in AA.  1.38 whip, 3.51 fip and 52/17 K/BB in those 61 innings.  Mendez’ numbers inflated somewhat dramatically from his last two years, his whip jumping from 0.94 to 1.38 with the jump to AA.  His K/9 stayed impressive though.  His BAA and BABIP look inflated so perhaps he had some bad luck going.  He’s still young (turned 23 after the season), and he could be a middle relief option in the majors relatively soon.  One thing I like about him is the way he keeps the ball on the ground: just one homer allowed in those 61 innings.  I think the team starts him in AA bullpen again looking for a 5 week promotion to AAA where he can hone his craft against more advanced/mature hitters.  It wouldn’t surprise me to see him in AAA, but right now the team has so many MLB-experienced arms that won’t make the 25-man roster that there might not be enough room in Syracuse for Mendez.  Outlook for Next season: AA bullpen to start.
• Abel de los Santos was a surprise callup in mid July, getting a premature add to the 40-man and a call-up so that he could throw to a handful of batters, then return back to AA.  Perhaps not the best use of an option.  Nonetheless, he was a 22yr old in AA holding his own (much like Mendez; in fact their birthday is just days apart in November).  For the year in AA; 3.43 ERA in 57.2 innings, 1.13 ERA, 3.39 fip and 55/12 K/BB in those 57 innings as an 8th/9th inning guy (he had 8 saves in 11 opportunities).  His numbers look similar to Mendez’s at first, but I think the team starts him in AAA since he’s on the 40-man, in order to get him some more experience against veteran hitters.  Side note: that trade of Ross Detwiler looking pretty good now eh?  de los Santos and new top10 prospect Chris Bostick for the OBE’d Detwiler, who didn’t last half the year before getting flat out released by Texas.  Outlook for Next season: AAA bullpen.
• Paul Demny started the year in AAA, got demoted after 10 innings and spent the rest of the season in Harrisonburg.  He had fantastic numbers in AA this year; 1.88 ERA, 60 Ks in 48 innings splitting time as the closer with de los Santos.  But its also his EIGHTH minor league season in the system.  He’s already declared as a MLFA and you have to think he’s looking elsewhere at this point, given the fact that half the RH relievers between AA and AAA got callups last year and he didn’t.  Outlook for Next season: with another organization.
• Bryan Harper, forever to be known as Bryce’s older brother, had a pretty darn good season, posting a 3.02 ERA in 45 innings with decent peripherals (33/15 K/BB, 1.18 whip, held lefties to a .185 BAA).  He earned a late-season call-up to AAA as well.   He survived the Rule-5 draft but sits behind several other lefty relievers at this point, two of which are already slated for AAA (Grace and Solis).  I could see him losing out on a numbers game and repeating AA in 2016, waiting for injuries to open up the log jam of lefty relievers in the organization.  Outlook for Next season: AA bullpen.
• James Simmons signed out of Indy ball and stuck with the Nats farm system for parts of two seasons, serving as a rubber-armed utility guy between AA and AAA both this year and last.  Oddly, he was hurling for AA, got called up to AAA to make one spot start in July … and then was released soon after.  His numbers weren’t great in 2014 but were improved in 2015, but as a 29-yr old now out of affiliated ball, it may be the end of the road for him.  Outlook for Next season: out of baseball.
• Erik Davis: returned from Tommy John surgery in 2014, got shelled in AAA and then was demoted to Harrisburg for the duration of the season.  He was effective in AA (2.65 ERA in 34 ip) but you have to ask yourself; where does the team go with him?  He’s now 29, still on the 40-man roster and doesn’t look like he made a full recovery in his first year back.  Given that he was a marginal right-handed middle reliever to begin with, I wonder if he’s ever going to have an impact with this team.  He still has a MLB option left (which he’ll use in 2016), but I have him as either option #1 or #2 to DFA if the team suddenly needs 40-man roster space.  If he survives on the roster to 4/1/16, I can see him tried in AAA bullpen again.  Outlook for Next season: AAA bullpen/release candidate.  1/6/16 update: Davis was DFA’d on the 40-man to make room for Daniel Murphy: we’ll update in this space when his roster status is finalized.
• Nick Lee earned a mid-season promotion after closing effectively for Potomac and showed some organizational intrigue while in AA.  While at Harrisburg he posted a 3.75 ERA with 29/19 K/BB in 24 innings.   Lots of walks, but also lots of Ks especially for a lefty.  On a whole, the team liked enough of what they saw to not only send him to the AFL but to also protect him on their 40-man roster.   He seemingly slots in as a lefty specialist in 2016 but sits behind Solis and Grace.  I think he starts in AA with an idea of moving up to AAA.  Outlook for Next season: AA bullpen to start.
• Hector Ambriz was signed in May, then released in June after getting hammered in 10 outings across four weeks.  He remains unsigned.  Outlook for Next season: out of baseball.
• Other Relievers who got innings for AA/Harrisburg in 2015:
  • Wander Suero: Pitched the first half of the season in High-A: see High-A writeup for more.
  • Sam Runion: split time between AA and AAA; see AAA write-up for more.
  • Derek Self started in AA but was demoted to High-A, where he spent most of the year.  See High-A writeup for more.
  • Sammy Solis: 13.1 IP in AA in-between assignments to AAA and MLB.  See MLB write-up for more.
  • Brian Dupra was up and down between Potomac and Harrisburg; See High-A writeup for more.
  • Robert Benincasa threw four innings in April and spent the rest of the season on the D/L.  A lost season.  Outlook for Next season: AA bullpen again.
  • David Carpenter appeared briefly for Harrisburg on a rehab stint; see MLB write-up for more.

Summary

20 guys got starts for Harrisburg in 2015, though the rotation as it were really was dominated by one crew for the first half, one crew in the second half.   A lot of the guys who featured for Harrisburg in 2015 seem like good bets to return for at least the start of 2016 thanks to the log-jam above them.   At some point though we’ll start to see movement through the system; a good number of these guys in AA need to move up or move on.

Spencer Kieboom seems a likely Rule-5 addition this year. Photo via curlyw.mlbblogs.com

We’re almost through the BBWAA awards; the next off-season deadline is one we talk about every year.  According to my handy Off-Season Baseball Calendar 2015-16, teams have until tomorrow 11/20/15 to add players ahead of the rule-5 draft (which occurs the last day of the winter meetings (this year, 12/10/15 in Nashville).

As always, using the indispensable Nationals resource sites Draft tracker and the Big Board, and then looking up candidate acquisitions made via trade, here’s some thoughts on who might merit protection.  The quick Rule-5 rules; any college-aged draftee from 2011 or before who isn’t already on the 40-man roster is Rule-5 eligible this coming off season, and any high-school aged draftee from 2010 or before is newly eligible this year.

Newly Eligible 2012 draft College Players this year worth consideration for protection:

• Spencer Kieboom: no brainer to add; a catcher, getting noticed by scouts for his game-calling and defense, currently in the AFL.
• Brian Rauh: decent season, but still just a  high-A/AA guy who had decent numbers this year.
• Robert Orlan: only mentioned because he’s lefty, and the team protected a college guy last year (Matt Grace) almost entirely b/c he was lefty.
• Ian Dickson: injured half the year, decent to ok in High-A this year, probably not a candidate to protect.

I’m leaving out the following guys who are eligible but are not really protection candidates: Stephen Perez, Craig Manuel, Robert Benincasa, Derek Self, and Ronald Pena.  For main reasons why, see my Statistical Review of the 2015 seasons of the 2012 draftees where I delve into each guy’s season and overall prospects at this point in their careers.

Newly Eligible 2011 High School-age drafted players under consideration for protection:

• Deion Williams, who (as I noted in my Statistical Review of the 2015 seasons of the 2011 draftees post) i’m kind of surprised still has a job in the organization.  Not a protection candidate.
• Chris Bostick: acquired in trade but originally a HS 2011 draftee.  Earned a mid-season promotion from High-A->AA, holding his own in the fall league in a probable Rule-5 consideration audition.

Newly Eligible 2011 signed IFAs under consideration for protection:

• Pedro Severino was probably the #1 candidate to be added to the roster ahead of this coming Rule-5 draft before the team just went ahead and put him on the 40-man along with the 9/1/15 roster expansion guys.
• Raudy Read: another up and coming IFA catcher who made his way to High-A this year, but may be a year too young to really consider protecting.
• Jose Marmolejos-Diaz: Took Hagerstown by storm, definitely getting some notice by prospect mavens and likely viewed as a big part of the farm system.  Definitely needs protection.
• Gilberto Mendez, part time closer for Harrisburg this year but is undersized and doesn’t have the K/9 rates you’d like to see.  But, given the dearth of RH relievers, maybe he’s worth protecting.

Not mentioned: a whole slew of 2011 IFA signings throughout the lower levels of the system.  Hector Sylvestre, Brian Mejia, Wilman Rodriguez, Anderson Martinez, Randy Encarnacion probably being the most notable/most accomplished in terms of advancement in the system.  None of them are Rule-5 protection candidates.

Minor League Free Agents of Note (this list is available at this link on BaseballAmerica).  These are either original draftees of the Nats who have now played in our org for 6 years, or guys who were MLFA signings from last year, or guys who are randomly FAs despite being recent draftees.

• Jeff Howell: had pretty good success converting to the mound, moving up our system quickly in 2015.  Is he worth protecting?
• Matt Purke: still can’t seem to solve AA, maybe its time to cut the cord.

Rule-5 Eligible hold-overs of note:

• Matt Skole: I hold out hope that he returns to being the hitting force he once was for this team.  But he may have peaked in AAA.
• Nicholas Lee: had a nice 2015, got sent to the AFL but has only gotten 4IP of work there.  Could pull a “Matt Grace” and get added surprisingly given that he’s a closer-quality lefty reliever, but then again this team now has a surplus of such guys.
• Bryan Harper: see Lee but add a level: Harper was quite effective in AA and earned a late season promotion to AAA.  Worth protecting?

So, who would I protect?  As of today (after yesterday’s outright of David Carpenter), the team has 5 open slots on the 40-man roster to work with.

• Locks: Kieboom, Bostick, Marmolejos-Diaz
• Maybes: Read, Mendez, Lee, Harper

Thoughts?  Opinions?  Did I forget anyone and/or am I considering the wrong guys?  These IFAs are always iffy in terms of eligibility, and some of the MLFAs are confusing too in terms of their status.

Editor’s update; a mere hours after posting this, the team announced its protections and we were close.   They protected Kieboom, Bostick … and Nick Lee.   I guess I was being a bit optimistic on Marmolejos-Diaz; it is unlikely that a kid his age and having never played above Low-A would stick on a 25-man roster in this day and age.

For a fun trip down memory lane, here’s the same Rule 5 Protection analysis for 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010.

By year, here’s who I predicted we’d add and who we did add.  My “predictions” are kind of iffy, because in some cases I clearly hedged in the post and said something like “if it were me I’d add X,Y and Z but I think they’ll only add X and Y.”

• 2015: Predicted Kieboom, Bostick, Marmolejos-Diaz.  Actual: Kieboom, Bostick, Lee
• 2014: Predicted Cole, Skole, Goodwin.  Hedged on Grace, Martin and Difo.  Actual: Cole, Goodwin, Difo, Grace.
• 2013: Predicted Solis as the only lock (Souza already added). Mentioned in order Barrett, Taylor, Grace, Holland.  Actual: Solis, Barrett, Taylor.
• 2012: Predicted Karns and McCoy, with Hood and Rosenbaum as maybes.  Actual: Karns and Davis.  I think we were all surprised by Davis’ inclusion, despite his good AA numbers that year.
• 2011: Predicted Norris as a lock, guessed strongly on Moore, Meyers and Komatsu.  Actual: Norris, Moore, Solano, Perez.    This was poor analysis on my part; I did not consider the IFAs newly eligible.
• 2010: Predicted Marrero, Meyers and Mandel.  Actual: Marrero, Carr and Kimball.
• 2009: pre-dates my blog and thus no predictions, but Actual was Jaime, Thompson and Severino.
• 2008: I might be wrong, but I don’t see any evidence of the team protecting *anyone* prior to the Rule-5 draft.  A bit of an indictment of the farm system at the time, I’d say 🙂

Rendon swinging away in college. Photo: Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via chron.com

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.

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.

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.

Will Fedde make the 2014 draft a “success?” Photo via chicagonow.com

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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?