Nationals Arm Race

Another year, another playoff failure.  Beat it to death already.  Time to move on.

Lets talk about the post-season “To Do” list is for the Nats.  We’ll have eventual posts to talk about other stuff, like Tender decisions, 40-man decisions ahead of the Rule5 draft, etc.

In this post, we’ll squint at the overall roster, look at blatant holes that will need filling, and discuss how they might get filled.  Call it the cliche’s “General Manager for a day” post for the Nats this coming off-season.

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Pending Free Agents we are waving good-bye to and the holes they thus leave (as per the invaluable Cots site at BaseballProspectus):

• Mark Melancon: though i’d love to re-sign him … see later in the post.
• Wilson Ramos: his injury is a shame for both player and team; he likely lost $50M in guaranteed FA money and the team lost a clear QO-compensation pick.  He may not even be able to catch again, which dumps him to the AL, where his market is significantly cut thanks to the lessening of demand for bat-only DH types.  Ramos is in serious career jeopardy right now; would he decamp back to the Nats on some sort of minimally guaranteed deal with performance incentives?
• Stephen Drew: also one I hope re-signs; see later in the post.
• Chris Heisey: one who I think is replaceable; look for another cattle call for RH bat options this coming spring training.
• Matt Belisle: despite not making the NLDS roster, he was great for Washington this year and is worth another contract.
• Mark Rzepczynski: He’s been very effective for us, and overall had a good 2016.  His 2015 was awful, but he was good before that.  Such is the life of specialist relievers.
• Sean Burnett and Mat Latos: both given Sept 2016 tryouts; neither seem likely to be retained.
• Jonathan Papelbon: worth mentioning if only for the payroll flexibility.

Total payroll “savings” from these FAs: roughly $22M.  Papelbon’s $11M, Ramos’ $5.3M and the rest total about $6M.

Guys who I think are clear Non-Tenders (probably a topic worth its own post).

• Yusmeiro Petit: $3M option with $500k buyout for 2017; pitched poorly in 2016, didn’t make the post-season roster and should be replaceable on the roster by any number of our AAA starters.
• Ben Revere: $6.25M salary this year, due an arbitration raise for 2017; struggled badly in 2016, lost his job to a guy who had about 2 week of CF experience and didn’t make the post-season roster.
• Aaron Barrett: as heartless as it would be; he’s arb-eligible, still hurt, not likely to be ready by opening day and is completely replaceable as a RH middle reliever).

Total savings from these non-tenders: roughly $10M

Guys who I think its Time to Trade and the holes they thus leave.  This also may be worthy of its own whole post.

• Gio Gonzalez: I think the Nats can take advantage of a historically weak FA market for starters and Gio’s very friendly contract (two $12M options for 2017 and 2018) and move him.  Yes he struggled this year, but if you look at what middle rotation innings eaters like him are getting these days, $12M is a bargain and he should fetch something we value.  Moving him lets some of the guys who are clearly biting on the heels of a deserved rotation spot earn it for 2017 and thus the Nats “save” $11.5M in salary for the 2017 roster.
• Danny Espinosa: As much as I have argued against this, his 2017 playoff performance has solidified in my mind the need to move him.  He has his pros (a plus defender range wise, perhaps the best SS arm in the game, and serious power for a SS) and his cons (he hit just .209 this year, he strikes out at about a 30% clip, and his switch hitting capabilities are really in question).  Nonetheless, there has to be some demand for a 25-home run capable plus defender SS in a lineup that can afford one crummy batting average at the bottom of the order.  Perhaps an AL team that doesn’t have to also bat a sub .200 BA pitcher.

Total savings from these guys getting moved (not counting payroll received in return of course): $15-$16M.

So, adding up all three lines, assuming a steady payroll ceiling similar to this year’s and not counting arbitration raises (or Strasburg‘s new contract), you’d have roughly $47M with which to work.  Not bad.  Strasburg’s new contract will take $5M away from that flexibility (he made $10M last year, will make $15M next) and arbitration raises for Harper, Rendon and Roark will cost some cash, but that’s a post for another day.  Lets call it $30M in available FA dollars when all is said and done.

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So, assuming you’re even reading this far and havn’t already started commenting and arguing about that list of players, here’s the presumed holes that losing these 10 players leaves (in order of mention above):

• Closer
• Starting Catcher
• Backup Utility Infielder
• Backup RH bench bat/corner outfielder
• 6th/7th inning RH reliever
• Loogy
• Long Man/Spot starter/7th guy out of the pen
• Backup Outfielder (CF capable)
• Another 6th/7th inning RH reliever
• #5 Starter
• Starting Shortstop
• (and not really counting the “loss” of Burnett and Latos for this discussion)

If we just filled these holes internally, what would it look like?

• Closer: Make Shawn Kelley the closer and move up Treinen and Glover to be 8th inning guys.  This leaves a hole later on in the pen for the middle RH relievers (see below)
• Starting Catcher: promote Lobaton to starter and install Severino as the backup.  Or switch them; honestly I like Severino’s at-bats; he looks confident.  I don’t think Kieboom is ready for the show, so it makes sense to tender Lobaton for one more year.
• Backup Utility Infielder: Difo becomes the first go-to guy to backup Turner/Murphy, but we’ll still need another utility guy.
• Backup RH bench bat/corner outfielder: not much internally to go to; both the 2016 AAA and AA rosters are basically bereft of decent hitting prospects who might be candidates.  We’ll be trolling the FA market here for sure.  See the next section.
• Two 6th/7th inning RH relievers: We have Gott and Martin on the 40-man; they could step up to replace these two guys like for like.  Right now we have five RH relievers under contract for 2017 (Kelley, Treinen, Glover, Gott and Martin) to go along with two lefties (Solis and Perez); that’s not too bad of a bullpen to start out with, but could be improved.  And this lineup doesn’t “really” have a long man, so you’d have to think one of Gott or Martin is in AAA to make room for a long-man (likely Martin at this point).
• Loogy: its arguable whether we need another lefty with both Solis and Perez under contract, but they went most of the year this year with three.  Matt Grace is still on the 40-man and would be an internal option.
• Long Man/Spot starter/7th guy out of the pen: loser of #5 starter competition (see below)
• Backup Outfielder (CF capable): Michael Taylor, in what likely is his ceiling from here forward.
• #5 Starter: have Sprint Training 2017 tryouts for the #5 starter between Lopez, Giolito, Cole and even Voth (who I’m assuming by that time will be on the 40-man, protected ahead of this coming off-season’s Rule-5 draft).  The winner is #5 starter, and one of the losers could be the long-man (well, if the loser is someone like Cole or Voth, who aren’t nearly as “big” of a prospect as Giolito).  There’s also the distinct possibility that Lopez’s arm is turned into a closer at some point if he can’t turn over lineups.  Check out Lopez’s 2016 splits, specifically SP versus RP and specifically the “Times Facing an Opponent” during the game; as a starter he struggles with the first time through the order, but not as a reliever.
• Starting Shortstop: move Trea Turner to his natural position, leaving a hole in Center.

So, with my “all internal” fill-ins, your 25 man roster for 2017 looks something like this:

• Starters: Scherzer, Strasburg, Roark, Ross, Lopez
• Relievers: Kelley, Treinen, Glover, Gott, Solis*, Perez*, Cole
• Catchers: Lobaton, Severino
• INF Starters: Rendon, Turner, Murphy, Zimmerman
• INF backups: Difo, Robinson
• OF Starters: Werth, Harper
• OF Backups: Taylor, Goodwin

And we’re missing one-two spots that don’t really have natural in-house replacements: another backup infielder and a starting Center fielder.

So, looking at that 25-man roster, where do we see areas of need?  This feeds directly into the Off-season Priorities in the next section.

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Quick diversion: Notice I didn’t say what position Bryce Harper is playing.  Honestly, if Turner is vacating CF and we’re waving good-bye to Espinosa, then I think you have to put Harper in center.  Here’s my main arguments for putting him in center (most of which are “anti-arguments” for those who for some reason think he cannot play center):

1. He’s young.   He just turned 24 for crying out loud; there’s no reason he doesn’t have the youth or athleticism to handle center.  Mantle did it while hitting for power.  So did Mays.  So did Griffey Jr and Aaron for the early part of his career.  Trout plays center.
2. He’s got the arm (he has the 2nd best statistically rated arm in the majors in 2016), he’s got the speed (21 Stolen bases this year).  And now he has years of OF experience on which to depend.
3. He’s played there before and played well.  Here’s his career fielding stats from fangraphs.com: He had more than 700 innings in CF in 2012 and played it to a fantastic UZR/150 figure of 19.1 and 13 DRS.  He was also great there in more limited sample sizes in 2013 and 2015.  I leave out 2014 since that was his injury season and its clearly skewed as compared to his other seasons.
4. By putting Harper in Center, you vastly open open up the roster possibilities on the FA market.  Look at the pending FA last at mlbtraderumors.com and compare/contrast the available options at CF versus LF/RF.

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Top FA/Trade Priorities in 2016-2017 Off-season

Fantasy: I view these as not really possible but are listed as “fantasy” wish lists.  Both fixate on moving unmovable contracts, so they’ll probably remain fantasies.

• Upgrade 1B: dump Zimmerman and upgrade offensively at that position.
• Upgrade LF: dump Werth and the last year of his deal and find a LF-capable bopper.
• Acquire a leading CF: back up the farm system and dump it out for a leading center fielder.  Charlie Blackmon or Andrew McCutchen are names often mentioned thanks to the precarious position their teams face.  Mike Trout is the funny name you also hear since he’s so good he’s virtually untrade-able.  Unlike Tom Boswell, and as discussed in comments here before, re-signing Ian Desmond to man CF poorly would not be my first choice either.  I’d rather go with my “Bryce to Center” plan as laid out above.

Reality

• Corner Outfielder.   See above Harper->CF logic.  If you want to splurge (and hurt your #1 divisional rival) sign Yoenis Cespedes.   Or you could make a big splash and sign Jose Bautista to a 3-yr deal that ends the same time Harper hits FA.  Werth remains serviceable in left, where he is mitigated defensively while Bautista still has value in RF.  This is where I could see a big chunk of the $30M of FA dollars going.  Lord knows we could use another clutch hitter in the middle of the order.
• Closer: Above I said i’d love to re-sign Melancon, but more and more it seems like he’s going to be the 4th prize in a 4-closer musical chairs race.  And he’s gonna get paid.  And I’m not sure that the Nats are going to pay him.  Per the same previously mentioned FA list there’s 5 “active” closers hitting FA: Melancon, Wade Davis, Aroldis Chapman,  Kenley Jansen and Sergio Romo There’s a whole slew of guys who are FA who are former closers though, names like Andrew Bailey, Joaquin Benoit, Santiago Casilla, Neftali Feliz, Jason Grilli, Greg Holland, J.J. Hoover, Jonathan Papelbon (haha, just making sure you’re still reading), Joe Smith, Fernando Salas, and Brad Ziegler.  There’s probably even more frankly; these were just the ones who stood out as I read the list.  Now, i’m not saying most of these guys are legitimate options, but some of these guys were perfectly good as closers and got “layered” by better closers.  Take Ziegler for example: he was just fine for Arizona for a while, then got moved to Boston where he got demoted to 8th inning duties.   I’d take him as a late-innings bullpen option.  
• Bullpen arm: middle reliever: Now, all that being said about Closers, I think maybe what the team does is install one of their existing options as “the closer” and then maybe  hire one of these former closers to be an 8th inning/emergency closer kind of guy.  That’s essentially what they got last year with Shawn Kelley and that’s worked out ok.  I’d go after some of the ex-closer guys listed above, try to get them on an affordable deal (like halfway to closer money maybe) and that’d help off-set the losses of Melancon and Belisle.
• Veteran utility infielder: as noted above, there’s not much in the farm system here.  If you keep Espinosa and put him in this role, then this is moot .. but we’ve read over and again about his disposition when he’s not playing.  This is kind of why I think we need to move him.  He’s more valuable in trade than he is in this bench role.  I hope the team re-ups with Stephen Drew honestly; he was solid, can cover all infield positions as needed, and can probably be had for a similar deal as last year.  I’d be happy with Difo and Drew and wouldn’t be opposed to perhaps another veteran utility guy to pair with Drew and compete with Difo if we don’t think Difo is up to the task.

Less Likely:

• Backup LF/IB bench bats: While I like Robinson and I think Heisey did a good job this year, one struggled and the other is a FA with no guarantee of returning.  I absolutely expect to see another spring training cattle call of veteran bats of the LF/1B type to compete for roster spots.  I’m appreciative of Goodwin‘s completely unexpected line at the plate upon his call up; do we think he’s a better lefty bat option off the bench than Robinson?  I’m not sure.  I also sense (based on anecdotal evidence read over the years) that Robinson is a clubhouse and teammate favorite, which might make it tougher to cut him when the time comes.  Especially with a player’s manager type like Dusty Baker.  I know this is where MartyC will cry about Matt Skole (likely to depart in MLFA this coming off-season) and I understand; its all about potential versus production and Skole never produced enough during these annual spring training “tryouts” to win his spot.
• Catcher: Here’s where the most arguing may occur.  I’m of the belief, after watching Severino down the stretch, that he could slide right into the starting spot right now.  I thought he looked good at the plate, took confident at-bats, never looked over matched, and (here’s the kicker) *puts the ball in play!*   This lineup has too many strikeouts; Severino struck out just 3 times in his 34 PAs down the stretch.   That correlates to about 50 punch-outs over a 600-plate appearance season; that’s awesome.  He was known for years for his defense, not his bat, so if he can provide even competent ABs he could be a starter.  So i’m up for saving money on the FA market (where the catcher ranks are thin and the prices will get bid up badly as a result).  Now, I could absolutely see us re-signing Wilson Ramos to an incentive-laden deal to keep him in house and hopefully get a good second half out of  him.  Why not?  If he signs for $5-6M (basically his salary this year) and then has games played incentives that could take him up to $7 or $8M why wouldn’t he do that here instead of elsewhere?   We go into the season with Severino and Lobaton with Kieboom in AAA and when Ramos shows up we (finally?) cut bait on Lobaton and have the two remaining guys platoon.  I’d be onboard with that plan.
• Loogy: Why spend money here?  Solis and Perez ably fill the need.  Do we need a third lefty in the pen at the expense of one of the aforementioned righties?  I liked Rzepczynski this year; would he re-sign for reasonable dollars?  Would you want him back?  There’s several interesting names on the FA list; maybe one of them can be had for cheap.

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What can we get in Trade versus buying on the FA market?   Payroll implications?

• I suspect that Gonzalez can fetch some seriously valuable resources.  He’s an innings eating 4th starter who probably thrives in a pitcher’s park and is significantly less expensive at $12M/year than what something comparable costs on the FA market this year.  So can he fetch maybe one MLB-ready player that fits a need above plus maybe one decent prospect?  Is that too much?
• Espinosa probably fetches less, unless you can get a GM to fall in love with his power/defense combo and somehow miss his BA and his K rate.  By way of comparison, Yunel Escobar (a lesser defender with less power but more contact) fetched us two upper-level pitching prospects in Trevor Gott and Michael Brady (by upper-level I mean AA/AAA level, not top 100 prospects).  I’d guess that Espinosa could fetch a bit more since he plays a premium position.  So that could end up being more of the needs above plus maybe an additional prospect.

But who knows what we can and cannot get.  In Mike Rizzo we trust when it comes to trades; no matter how much we bitch about prospects heading out the door, you’re really hard pressed to find a trade where Rizzo got the short end of the bargain or “lost” the deal.  So lets see what he can do.

Payroll implications.  I think we could get a $20M/yr corner OF slugger, a former closer at like $6M/year, resign Ramos at $5M, find a utility infielder in the Drew $3M/year range, and then sign a couple of guys to $1.25M conditional deals like what Belisle and Heisey got and fit right into the $145M payroll budget, even after arbitration raises.

 

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Well; that’s a lot to argue about.  Maybe I should have split this up.  But let the discussions begin!

(did I forget anyone?)

In 2007, Barry Bonds played in 126 games (missing half of September but otherwise just getting routine days off throughout the season), put up a slash line of .276/.480/.565, with 28 homers in 477 PAs, good for a a 169 OPS+.  A 169 OPS+ would have led the majors in 2014, for context of how strong an offensive season he had.  He led the league in walks, intentional walks and OBP.  He was an All-Star.  His bWAR on the year was a healthy 3.4 … but was hampered a point and a half by his sub-par defense since, of course, he  was in the NL and had to struggle around left field day in and day out as a 42-yr old.

He entered Free Agency … and never signed a new contract.  His last game was a 0-3 random September performance for a 90-loss Giants team against the Padres and Jake Peavy.

This week, now that Bonds’ remaining legal issues are past, he’s apparently contemplating a collusion lawsuit against MLB, alleging that the 30 owners basically got together and collectively agreed not to sign him.  He alleges that this collusion ended his career pre-maturely.

At the time, there was a massive circus atmosphere surrounding Bonds.  In November of 2007, just after the World Series ended and the FA period officially began, Bonds was officially indicted on federal perjury and obstruction of justice charges.  Even notwithstanding an outstanding federal charge, Bonds had just broken Hank Aaron‘s record and had a massive contingent of reporters following him around game to game, with heavy, serious questions about the extent of his steroid usage still unanswered but being questioned daily.  Bonds was also well known for being a surly teammate and a horrible clubhouse presence.  I specifically recall thinking about a possible signing of Bonds and completely understanding why teams may not have wanted to do so, because of the PR hit.

So, which makes more sense, that 30 MLB owners, each of whom is competing against the others to try to win, would each individually arrive at the conclusion that they’d rather not have a PR nightmare versus having a 43-yr old guy still capable of batting clean-up in the majors willing to play for the MLB minimum?  Or that the commissioner would lead yet another collusion effort against a player?

Who wouldn’t have wanted to add a potential 5-win clean-up hitter playing for less than $500,000??

We should note, by the way, that we are talking about a commissioner at the time in Bud Selig who was directly involved as an owner in *multiple* proven collusion incidents, which resulted in millions of dollars of penalties being paid to damaged players through the 1980s and 1990s.  We’re talking about a commissioner who was also (basically) still an owner, who clearly worked on behalf of the owners, and who had taken a massive publicity hit to his reputation for his role in enabling the whole PED crisis in the first place and (in my opinion) was certainly ready to move onwards from the daily embarrassment that Bonds represented to the league.

Here’s some additional good reading material on the topic: Si.com’s legal expert Michael McCann studied the case back in 2012 and goes far deeper into all these topics.  Yahoo sports’ Israel Fehr has a nice summary with links to other reporters with more analysis.  And Grant Brisbee has a great retrospective on the idiocy of teams who passed on Bonds but who paid other players that off-season.

My 2 cents: i’m almost certain there was some collusion going on … but that it’ll be very difficult to prove at this point, 8 years onward.  And, there’s enough of an argument that can be made that teams made the same decision that the San Francisco owner made before the season was even over; enough was enough with the daily PR nightmare and he decided to go separate ways.  What do you think?

ps: useless fact: did you know that Bonds was just the 6th pick in the 1st round of his draft year?   Going ahead of him was B.J. Surhoff, Will Clark, Bobby Witt, Barry Larkin and a HS catcher who washed out in the minors named Kurt Brown.  Do you think the Chicago White Sox are kicking themselves for getting absolutely nothing out of their first round pick instead of picking Bonds?  Bonds btw nearly has as much combined bWAR as those four MLBers picked ahead of him … and those are not exactly slouches for players, and includes a Hall of Famer in Larkin.

It really is a shame to see Manny Ramirez go out in the fashion that he has, scurrying away into retirement instead of facing a second PED suspension.  Actually, it was more of a shame to see his first suspension last year, which immediately cast him into a shameful collection of baseball players (McGwire, Bonds, Clemens, Giambi, Sosa, and Palmeiro) who represented the best the game had to offer from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s, but who also defined an era of steroids, PEDs and rampant drug use throughout baseball and probably will never gain entry to the sports Hall of Fame (at least not while they’re alive in all likelihood).

What is amazing about both drug tests is the basic idiocy displayed in actually getting caught.  The baseball drug testing policy is already considered to be among the easiest and most basic to skirt, continually being criticized by the WADA for its lack of transparency and lack of accountability.  The CBA lays out exactly what drugs are being tested for, and the players pretty much know when and where they’re going to be tested.  The policy isn’t nearly as draconian as what (say) professional cyclists go through, yet players continue to use and get caught.  The fact that Ramirez got caught twice is really amazing.

Manny Ramirez retires with these amazing statistics:

• A career slash line of .312/.411/.585
• A career OPS of nearly 1.000 (final figure: .996 for his career)
• A career OPS+ of 154, roughly meaning he batted 50% better than the average major leaguer for his career.
• 555 career homers, averaging a homer every 14.8 plate appearances.
• 12 All star appearances, 9 silver sluggers and 11 seasons receiving MVP votes (most being consecutively from the years 1998-2006, not coincidentally the height of the steroid era).

Leaving steroid and PED use out of the equation, one can easily say Ramirez is one of the 4-5 best right handed hitters of the last half century.  He can be mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Willie Mays, Albert Pujols, Hank Aaron, and Frank Robinson in terms of being a complete hitter.

Yet, in the end his 2nd drug suspension will define his legacy.  He’ll never be in the Hall of Fame, not while we have a voter base that refused to elect Jeff Bagwell in his first year of eligibility, seemingly on the question of whether or not he “could have been using” despite not one shred of proof otherwise.

I’m of two conflicting thoughts on the eligibility considerations for players who used PEDs.  On the one hand, the most hallowed records in the game (single season home run and career home run records) were shattered by hitters who artificially enabled themselves to surpass the previous records and forever change the game.  Many of the hall voter base are long time baseball writers who grew up idolizing those players whose records were “stolen” by these modern day cheaters, and they will forever penalize the likes of McGwire, Sosa and Bonds for destroying the memory of Ruth, Aaron or Maris.  The 2013 hall of fame ballot especially highlights this issue and may be our best test case for how these players are treated.

On the other hand, the culture of the game at the time encouraged and fostered drug use during the mid 90s, and various opinions from players at the time put the overall usage across the entire league in the 75% range.  We didn’t discount the pitching performances of players in the dead ball era, nor do we ignore the performance of pitchers in the late 60s who dominated their counterparts during a small era of dominance.   We used to have dozens of batters hitting .400 prior to the turn of the century, yet now the best hitters in the league hit in the mid .300s at best.  Players in the early parts of the century played in a non-integrated sport, and players in the 60’s and 70’s notoriously used stimulants on a regular basis to make it through the grind of the season.  At some point voters need to realize that omitting an entire generation of players based on innuendo or suspicion is doing the game a huge injustice and destroying an entire generation of legacy that merits inclusion in the hall of fame.

There is no good solution.  At some point though we need to at least acknowledge this generation’s greatest players.  Unfortunately, it probably will take a veteran’s committee 30 years from now to do it.

Screwing around at cnnsi.com while eating, here’s their list of top 10 most unbreakable baseball records:

1. Cy Young’s 511 career victories
2. Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak
3. Ty Cobb’s career .366 batting average
4. Rickey Henderson’s season SB record of 130
5. Babe Ruth’s career .690 slugging pct
6. Barry Bonds’ season record for walks: 232.
7. Nolan Ryan’s career Ks of 5,714.
8. Jack Chesbro’s season record for complete games: 48.
9. Ted William’s lifetime OBP of .482
10. Hank Aaron’s 25 career all-star games (somewhat aided by multiple games for several years, but he still played in an all star game in 21 of his 23 seasons).

Most of these I tend to agree with … but there are certainly other records out there that are in a similar vein to Cy Young’s career victory record.  Single season wins, single
season innings pitched, starts, complete games, etc all are basically obsolete benchmarks.  Hell, I’d be willing to wager against someone ever winning 30 games in a season ever again.

Not sure i’d say that a 56-game hitting streak is unassailable.  Yes it’s been a while since it happened, but it routinely gets approached.  You see 30, 35, 40 game streaks
with some frequency.
Plus, i think the stolen base is coming back into vogue.  Maybe not close to 118 or 130 in a season, but i think its just a matter of time before we start seeing higher totals.
There seems to be a dearth of quality defensive catchers these days.
anyway, random thoughts.