Nationals Arm Race

Editor note: thanks for all the suggestions; this post has evolved and edited as I’ve gotten them in comments.

So, given the unbelievable comeback win this week against Atlanta, I dug up an old topic for us to argue about.  The “Greatest” and “Worst” ever games in Nats history.  I had an old draft of this from the off-season, and this week’s Atlanta game coupled with the franchise’s first ever no-hitter being thrown in the last game of the 2014 regular season, as well as some new truly gut-wrenching playoff losses, I thought it was a nice time to re-post this list.

(side argument; was last night’s game a “great” game given the comeback or an “awful” game, given the arguments we all just made in the last post?)

This list started with a throw-away post I did a couple years ago titled “the greatest Nats games I’ve witnessed,” but the comments section turned into a great list of the larger “greatest ever” suggestions.  I’m counting on our crew to remind me of games that should make the best and worst lists.

Here’s my updated Greatest Nats Game List.  Subjectively ordered from best on downwards.  Feel free to argue.  🙂

1. October 11th, 2012: NLDS Game 4: Jayson Werth walk-off homer in an epic battle against Lance Lynn, hitting the 13th pitch of the at-bat (!!) on a line-drive into the seats.  Ironic that what I think is the most special game in Nats franchise history occurred the day before what I consider to be the worst game in franchise history.  (note; thanks to my former coworker Eric Hay for correcting me on my pitch count memory here in the comments).
2. April 14th, 2005: First home game as a franchise: April 14 2005 (even though half the crowd was stuck outside waiting to go through metal detectors for the first two innings thanks to George W. Bush‘s publicized appearance to throw out the first pitch).
3. March 30th, 2008: Nats Park Opener 2008. I was in Las Vegas for a bachelor party that weekend and took a 4am flight out of Vegas to get back to Washington in time to catch the game.  It was cold, it looked like the bullpen had blown it … and then Ryan Zimmerman hit the latest in a long string of walk-off homers to win it in the bottom of the 9th.  Fantastic.
4. September 29th, 2014: Jordan Zimmermann‘s season-closing no-hitter 2014, with the amazing game-ending catch by Steven Souza.
5. June 18th, 2006: Fathers Day versus the Yankees 2006.  An attendance record that stood for this franchise until the 2012 playoffs, a walk-off win over the powerful visiting Yankees and a bright spot during an otherwise dismal season.
6. June 8th, 2010: Stephen Strasburg‘s 14-k debut: still the franchise record for strikeouts in a game and just about the most electric debut this team has ever seen.  A college-aged kid made the Pittsburgh Pirates look like a little league team.  The Nats manipulated Strasburg’s service time to avoid the “super-2” status; it was worth the wait.
7. October 7th, 2012: NLDS Game 1: 2-run rally in the 8th on Tyler Moore‘s flair to beat the Cardinals in St. Louis in the first ever playoff game for the team.  In theory it should have completely set up the Nats to cruise through the series.  Didn’t quite happen that way (see worst games ever)
8. October 6th, 2014: Beating Madison Bumgarner in the 2014 NLDS; our only 2014 post-season win and the only time Bumgarner lost that post-season.
9. September 4th, 2006: Ramon Ortiz‘ near no-hitter in 2006, a game where he took a no-hitter into the 9th, hit his first (and only) career home run, but wasn’t able to even get a complete game after Albert Pujols crushed a ball 450 feet to dead-center at RFK the batter after he lost the no-no.  Still a fun night.
10. April 28th, 2012: Bryce Harper‘s debut in LA , featuring his tomahawk double straight over Kemp’s head for his first hit and watching him run around the bases like the excited teen-ager he actually was.  Should Harper have been up with the team from the get-go?

Not sure how we beat my #1 game until we see some dramatic walk-off post-season series winner.

Honorable Mentions:

• June 21st, 2015: Max Scherzer loses a perfect game with two outs and two strikes in the 9th, grazing the elbow of Jose Tabata.  He retires the next hitter for just the 2nd no-hitter in Nats history.  Scherzer’s previous start was a 1-hit shutout with 16 Ks, and these two games represented one of the best 2-game stretches for any starter in the history of the game.
• July 8th, 2010: Adam Dunn 3-homer day in 2010.  There have been two three other Nats to hit three homers in a day: Alfonso Soriano did it in 2006 and Ryan Zimmerman did it against Baltimore in a losing effort in 2013, and Bryce Harper just accomplished it on 5/6/15, hitting homers in his first three at-bats against Miami (in his last at-bat, he had an RBI ground-out).
• Only two Nats have ever hit for the cycle: Brad Wilkerson did it in the 2nd ever game the team played (4/6/2005) and Cristian Guzman did it on 8/2/08.
• June 22nd, 2011: Wilson Ramos walk-off homer to complete a 5-1 comeback in the 9th against Seattle.
• September 22nd, 2012: Gio Gonzalez gets his 20th win, a first for the franchise, and breaks the 200K barrier for the first time by a Washington pitcher since someone named Walter Johnson played here in in 1916.
• September 23rd, 2007: the last game at RFK, with the largest crowd of that awful season in attendance.
• Last game of 2012, beating the Phillies and clinching best record in baseball.
• September 6th, 2010: Danny Espinosa‘s 2-homer MLB home debut.  Espinosa had debuted a few days earlier on the road, but in front of the home crowd and his family, he had a monster day, going 4-5 with 2 homers and 6 RBI.  Was this the apex of his career?
• April 28th, 2015: 8-run comeback against Atlanta, winning 13-12 on Dan Uggla‘s 9th inning 3-run homer.  I’ll put this in the “good” category considering the unbelievable win-expectancy odds the team beat to win this game.
• June 14th, 2005: The Frank Robinson–Mike Scioscia toe-to-toe argument game, which was followed with an “eff-you” homer from Jose Guillen to propel the Nats to a home win.
• September 17th, 2014: Nats clinch NL East in Atlanta; a great moment of course … but it wasn’t even here.  But clinching so early and in Atlanta, which had owned the Nats head-to-head even when the Nats were good, was satisfying.
• October 1st, 2012: NL East clincher; even though the team lost … the crowd started buzzing in the 9th inning as those monitoring the Atlanta game on their phones learned that they were losing, thus clinching the division for the Nats and resulting in their first playoff appearance.  The stadium finally posted the result, annointing the Nats as division champs and they started high-fiving … even though it was the bottom of the 9th and they were losing.  The team had clinched a wild-card berth earlier in the week, but this was the event that the team openly celebrated.  Should a game we lost be on this list?
• April 20th, 2009: Jordan Zimmermann’s debut vs Atlanta. A 3-2 win after a two-hour rain delay. Jordan goes 6 strong innings to provide the first glimpse of the Nats’ turnaround from what would be consecutive 100-loss seasons, though because of the rain and how bad the team was there were only about 5,000 of us in the stands that night.
• June 12th, 2005: Nats defeat Seattle 3-2 for their 10th consecutive home win win on the strength of a Junior Spivey(!) two-run homer. I never felt RFK rock like it did that day. Incidentally, Mike Morse played shortstop for Seattle that day.
• August 4th, 2005: John Patterson’s 14K game against the Dodgers. Nats win 7-0 in what was the highest ever game score (92) for a Nats’ starter until JZ’s no-no in 2014.
• August 21st, 2014: Nats defeat Arizona 1-0 on an Anthony Rendon walk off single in the bottom of the 9th–their fifth walk off win in six games. Except for Strasburg’s debut, I never felt the NEW stadium rock for a non-playoff game like it did at that moment.
• August 7, 2012. Roger Bernadina makes ridiculous catch behind a pillar in Minute Maid park to preserve a 3-2 Nats win in 12 innings. What everyone thought was a walk-off, game winning double for the Astros turned into a backbreaking loss.
• July 28, 2009. Josh Willingham hits two grand slams in same game.  Arguably better than Dunn’s 3-homer performance because of the team aspect to it.  This remains the greatest RBI performance in Nats history (8 RBI on the day, two more than the 2nd best 6-RBI day by Espinosa, mentioned above).

How about more generally a quick list of the non-game related Greatest Nats Non-Game related Events?

• September 29th, 2004: The day the team officially was announced to be moving to Washington.
• December 5th, 2010: The Jayson Werth signing.  To me, that was a signal that a) the owners (previously accused of being penny-pinchers) were finally listening to the council of Stan Kasten and Mike Rizzo and were investing in the team.  It was also a statement contract to the rest of the league; the Nats were willing to spend, and were ready to compete.  Within two seasons the team was in the playoffs after having two 100+ loss seasons.
• May 2006: MLB picks the ownership group led by Ted Lerner to buy the team.  The group includes vastly experienced baseball man Stan Kasten and his vision is clearly seen with the new stadium’s design.
• August 2010: Signing Strasburg
• August 2011: Signing Harper
• October 3rd, 2012: Teddy wins for the first time.  We had privately wondered when Teddy would finally win the president’s race; would it be on his bobble-head night?  Nope; turns out the night after clinching our first playoff appearance, Teddy won.

 

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… And now the Worst Games in Nats History.  I don’t have any way to really quantify the “worst” games for a team that lost 100+ games two years in a row just recently.  So please feel free to add on your suggestions.  I don’t think any of them will beat the top three losses listed here though:

1. NLDS 2015 Game 5 (Drew Storen 9th inning meltdown)
2. NLDS 2014 Game 2 (Zimmermann yank, another Storen post-season blown save, and then subsequent 18-inning loss)
3. NLDS 2014 Game 4 (7th inning Aaron Barrett/bullpen debacle)

Honorable Mentions for me (with plenty of input from Zuckerman’s lists, links at the bottom, readers):

• April 5th, 2010: The “Phillies Invasion” game; Opening day.  What started as a fantastic opening day (it was sunny and 80 degrees in early April) turned into a nightmare for Nats fans: the team got beat 11-1 on the field … and the park was perhaps 75% filled with Philadelphia fans.  Turns out the team “courted” event planners in Philadelphia and sold them thousands of tickets, which they turned into day-trips to/from Philadelphia on drinking buses for Phillies fans who (at the time, since they were great) couldn’t easily get home tickets.  As you might imagine, the crowd was incredibly pro-Philadelphia, booed the home team, was mostly drunk and aggressive having been drinking since 9am on their party buses, and there were times that we (sitting in the upper-deck, having given up our season tickets after getting screwed in the seat relocation process), literally felt afraid for our safety.  It was an embarrassment to everyone involved and led to some very specific changes (I believe from then on you had to be calling from a DC-local phone number to book tickets to opening day).
• September 8th, 2015: After blowing game 1 in a critical head-to-head series against the division leading Mets, the bullpen implodes and blows a 7-1 lead, losing 8-7 in a must-win game that left the team 6 games behind with 24 to play (in other words, effectively eliminating them from the divisional race).  Over-manager Matt Williams yanked Jordan Zimmermann after just 100 pitches and then watched his bullpen issue six walks with two outs in the 7th, turning a 7-1 deficit into a 7-7 tie game.  The team at one point had a 99.2 win probability and turned the game into a loss.  To add insult to injury, Williams ordered Anthony Rendon to bunt in the 9th, which he failed to execute successfully, leading to a GIDP to end the game.
• July 15th, 2005: Mike Stanton, making his Nats debut, committed a walk-off balk.   Quite a rarity; its only happened a few times that baseball researchers can find in the last 30 years or so.
• April 18th, 2010: Jason Marquis failed to record an out on April 18th, 2010 against Milwaukee.  The team was down 10-0 before they even came to bat.  That’s a gut punch for the fans who paid to get into the game … to basically know that you’re going to lose before you even get a beer.
• July 2012, the Nats blew a 9-0 lead against Atlanta.  With Strasburg on the mound. And they blew that lead in just four innings.
• September 6th, 2006: Nick Johnson breaks his leg on the field, colliding with Austin Kearns going after a pop-up.  Johnson missed the entirety of the 2007 season recovering from this injury, in his prime as a player.
• April 19th, 2009: judgement day for Jim Bowden‘s cattle-call bullpen construction for the 2009 season; after blowing their third straight 9th inning lead, new GM Mike Rizzo cleaned house; releasing two relievers (Shell & Ledezma) and demoting a third (Rivera).  Within two days their opening-day closer (Hanrahan) was demoted as well, and the tone was set for an ugly 103-loss season.
• August 21st, 2010: Strasburg motions for his pitching coach to come to the mound … because he’s blown his UCL.  Ironically, the team announced his surgery and year off on the same day (two days later) that their previous high-profile TJ surgery survivor Jordan Zimmermann makes his season debut after his own rehab from the surgery.  The fall-out from this also included Rob Dibble, who on-air basically challenged Strasburg’s manhood for coming out of the game.  Dibble never called another game for the team.
• May 25th, 2006: Frank Robinson is forced to remove emergency catcher Matt LeCroy mid-inning after he had committed two throwing errors and allowed *seven* steals.  Robinson was so embarrassed for what he was forced to do to LeCroy that he broke down at the post-season press conference.
• September 17th, 2005: The Nats blow a 5-run lead in the ninth inning to officially eliminate themselves from post-season contention.  It is hard to believe now, but the 2005 Nats were 51-30 at the halfway point and in first place … and then went exactly 31-50 the rest of the way there as the MLB-stewarded team failed to make any meaningful acquisitions at the trade deadline to improve the team (and why would the owners-by-occupation?  Why help a competing, owner-less ward of the league team beat them to the playoffs?).  I don’t recall this as being that significant a game or event, having long since seen the writing on the wall as the team clearly was floundering to the finish line.
• September 2nd, 2008: Jesus Flores injury game; Chase Utley barreled into Flores’ left leg in what I always thought was a dirty play.  Flores missed the rest of that season.  This is exactly the kind of play that now is barred thanks to too many catchers having season-ending injuries.  In the grand scheme of things, this might not be that “bad” of a game but it really sticks with me.

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Perhaps a separate category for “Worst Nats ‘Events’” would include the following (partly pulled from Zuckerman’s crowd-sourced 2010 lists, but updated post 2015 season with the ridiculous Baker/Black manager incident.  Also using Dan Steinberg‘s worst 10 Nats events post on 11/3/15)

• Aug 2008: Failing to sign Aaron Crow at the signing deadline.  While in hindsight this was a fortunate miss for the Nats (Crow has been a good but not great reliever and is currently out for TJ surgery, while his comp pick turned into Drew Storen), at the time this was an embarrassing misstep for the organization and another black mark on its GM Bowden.
• Feb 2009: the team is forced to admit that “Smiley” Gonzalez is not who he says he is, that he’s *four* years older, and that his $1.4M bonus was probably a sham.  Combined into this event’s fallout of course was the forced resignation of Bowden (which to many DC fans was one of the “greatest” events in Nats history), the termination of Jose Rijo and a complete dismantling of our operations in the Dominican Republic.  Our pipeline of DR talent would basically disappear for years, a situation that affects the team to this day.
• June 27th, 2009: Jim Riggleman abruptly resigns as manager the day he finally guides the team above .500 after  years of ineptitude.  While nearly everyone in the baseball world blamed Riggleman, my take at the time was a bit more supportive of his reasoning.  But this was still a huge amount of unwanted press for this team.
• May 22, 2010: Nyjer Morgan misses on an attempted catch, throws his glove down like a petulant little leaguer and gives up an inside-the-park homer.  Just one more embarassing moment for Morgan, who was also suspended for throwing a ball at a fan.
• 2012 Shutdown-gate; how do you feel about this event?  Do you find yourself *still* defending the team’s actions?  Or, if you didn’t agree with them, still irritated that the team went into its first post-season series without its Ace?  I call this a “worst event” because, frankly, I just wish the team was never in this position.
• Dec 2014: word comes out that Jayson Werth will spend 5 days in Jail for a reckless driving incident.
• Sept 27th, 2015: Jonathan Papelbon chokes Bryce Harper in the dugout after Harper flies out in a 4-4 game in the 8th the day after the Nats were eliminated.  And then Papelbon is *allowed to go out for the 9th* inning where he promptly gives up 5 runs.  He’s suspended for the rest of the season the following day and the Nats become a national punching bag.
• November 3rd, 2015: Word leaks that the team vastly low-balled Bud Black and had to re-neg on the managerial job offer, a week after it was offered and the team thought it had its man.  Hours later Dusty Baker was named manager.
• December 8th, 2015: brand new manager Dusty Baker manages to defend Aroldis Chapman‘s domestic violence investigation *and* stereotype all non-white baseball players in an ill-fated Winter Meetings interview.  He was forced to clarify his comments soon after.  Not exactly the kind of attention the team wants or needs after its embarrassing managerial search.

FWIW, here’s some 2010 links from Mark Zuckerman on his “top 5” list for both best and worst days/games.   Nearly every game mentioned from our early days is also in this post with context.

Here’s some useless trivia related to the Nats home openers, now that we have the Nats 10th home opener in the books.

Nats Trivia: capacity of Nats park? 

• 41,888 at opening
• 41,546 in 2010
• 41,506 in 2011
• 41,487 in 2012
• 41,418 in 2013
• 41,506 for 2014

Interesting how the capacity has slightly decreased each year but jumped for this year.  Do we know where they’re adding/removing seats?   By the way, RFK capacity: 45,596 per wikipedia/ballparks.com.

Nats All-time Record attendance?

• 45,966 10/12/12 game 5 2012 NLDS

Other/Previous Attendance Records

• 45,274 Opening Day 2013 (new and current Regular Season record for Nats park)
• 45,017 10/10/12 first home playoff game
• 44,685 8/20/11 vs Phillies (longer standing Nats park record)
• 41,985 6/24/09 vs Boston. (Nats reg-season record standard bearer for a while in the new stadium)
• 45,157 Fathers day 2006 vs Yankees (long standing Regular season Record)
• 45,596 RFK franchise opener (long standing franchise attendance record)

Opening Day Attendances and weather through the years

• 2014: 42,834 (1:05 Friday game, 50s and overcast)
• 2013: 45,274 (1:05 Monday game, 60 and beautiful)
• 2012: 40,907 (1:05 Thursday game 56, partly cloudy)
• 2011: 39,055 (1:05 Thursday game, 41 degrees and overcast)
• 2010: 41,290 (1pm game Monday, beautiful weather 80s and sunny): this was the “Phillies invasion” game.
• 2009: 40,386 (3pm game on a Monday, chilly 53degr and overcast).
• 2008: 39,389 (season and stadium opener), 8pm Sunday night, nat’l tv, clear but very cold.
• 2007: 40,389 (in rfk, 1pm game vs Florida, 72degrees)
• 2006: 40,516 (in rfk, Tuesday day game vs Mets, 72degr and sunny)
• 2005: 45,596 (in rfk, debut of entire franchise, 62degr and clear, evening game)

Opening Day Box Scores and Results

Nats are 4-6 in their home openers now since moving to Washington, and they’re just 2-6 in non-stadium openers.  Just one starter has thrown more than one home opener for the Nats: Livan Hernandez.  When Livan gets elected to Cooperstown, I hope he’s wearing the curly W.  🙂

• 2014: mlb.com or b-r.com.  Braves d Nats 2-1.  WP: Luis Avilan.  LP: Tyler Clippard.  (Starters: Jordan Zimmermann and David Hale).
• 2013: mlb.com or b-r.com.  Nats d Marlins 2-0.  WP: Stephen Strasburg.  LP: Ricky Nolasco
• 2012: mlb.com.  Nats d Reds 3-2.  WP: Craig Stammen. LP: Alfredo Simon (Starters: Gio Gonzalez and Mat Latos)
• 2011: mlb.com.  Braves d Nats 2-0.  WP: Derek Lowe.  LP: Livan Hernandez
• 2010: mlb.com.  Phillies d Nats 11-1.  WP: Roy Halladay.  LP: John Lannan
• 2009: mlb.com.  Phillies d Nats 9-8.  WP: Jamie Moyer.  LP: Saul Rivera (Nats Starter: Daniel Cabrera)
• 2008: mlb.com.  Nats d Braves 3-2.  WP: Jon Rauch.  LP: Peter Moylan (Starters: Tim Hudson and Odalis Perez)
• 2007: mlb.com.  Marlins d Nats 9-2.  WP: Dontrelle Willis.  LP: John Patterson
• 2006: mlb.com.  Mets d Nats 7-1.  WP: Brian Bannister.  LP: Ramon Ortiz
• 2005: mlb.com.  Nats beat Arizona 5-3. WP: Livan Hernandez. LP: Javier Vazquez

In January, after most of marquee FA signings had shaken out, I ranked the 2013 rotations of teams 1-30.  I was excited about the Nats rotation, speculated more than once that we had the best rotation in the league, and wanted to make a case for it by stacking up the teams 1-30.

I thought it’d be an interesting exercise to revisit my rankings now that the season is over with a hindsight view, doing some post-mortem analysis and tacking on some advanced metrics to try to quantify who really performed the best this season.  For advanced metrics I’m leaning heavily on Fangraphs team starter stats page, whose Dashboard view quickly gives the team ERA, FIP, xFIP, WAR, SIERA, K/9 and other key stats that I’ll use in this posting.

1. (#2 pre-season) Detroit: Verlander, Fister, Sanchez, Scherzer, Porcello (with Alvarez providing some cover).  Scherzer likely wins the Cy Young.  Three guys with 200+ strikeouts.  The league leader in ERA.  And we havn’t even mentioned Justin Verlander yet.  A team starting pitching fWAR of 25.3, which dwarfed the next closest competitor.  There’s no question; we knew Detroit’s rotation was going to be good, but not this good.  Here’s a scary fact; their rotation BABIP was .307, so in reality this group should have done even better than they actually did.  Detroit’s rotation was *easily* the best rotation in the league and all 6 of these guys return for 2014.
2. (#3 Preseason): Los Angeles Dodgers: Kershaw, Greinke, Ryu, Nolasco, and Capuano (with Fife, Beckett, Lilly, Billingsley and a few others helping out); The 1-2 punch of Kershaw (the NL’s clear Cy Young favorite) and Greinke (who quietly went 15-4) was augmented by the stand-out rookie performance of Ryu, the surprisingly good half-season worth of starts from Nolasco, and then the all-hands-on deck approach for the rest of the starts.  This team used 11 different starters on the year thanks to injury and ineffectiveness, but still posted the 2nd best team FIP and 5th best fWAR in the league.
3. (#8 pre-season): St. Louis: Wainwright, Lynn, Miller, Wacha and Kelly (with Garcia, Westbrook, and a few others pitching in).  Team leader Chris Carpenter missed the whole season and this team still was one of the best rotations in the league.  Westbrook missed time, Garcia only gave them 9 starts.  That’s the team’s planned #1, #3 and #4 starters.  What happened?  They call up Miller and he’s fantastic.  They call up Wacha and he nearly pitches back to back no-hitters at the end of the season.  They give Kelly a starting nod out of the bullpen and he delivers with a better ERA+ than any of them from the #5 spot.  St. Louis remains the bearer-standard of pitching development (along with Tampa and Oakland to an extent) in the game.
4. (#22 pre-season): Pittsburgh:  Liriano, Burnett, Locke, Cole, Morton (with Rodriguez and a slew of call-ups helping out).  How did this team, which I thought was so low pre-season, turn out to have the 4th best starter FIP in the game?  Francisco Liriano had a renessaince season, Burnett continued to make Yankees fans shake their heads, and their top 6 starters (by number of starts) all maintained sub 4.00 ERAs.  Gerrit Cole has turned out to be the real deal and will be a force in this league.
5. (#1 pre-season) Washington: Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Haren, Detwiler with Jordan, Roark and other starts thrown to Karns and Ohlendorf).   Despite Haren’s continued attempts to sabotage this rotation’s mojo, they still finished 3rd in xFIP and 5th in FIP.  Haren’s 11-19 team record and substandard ERA/FIP values drug this group down, but there wasn’t much further up they could have gone on this list.   If  you had replaced Haren with a full season of Jordan’s production, maybe this team jumps up a little bit, but the teams above them are tough to beat.
6. (#11 pre-season) Atlanta: Hudson, Medlen, Minor, Teheran and Maholm, (with rookie Alex Wood contributing towards the end of the season).  Brandon Beachy only gave them 5 starts; had he replaced Maholm this rotation could have done better.  Hudson went down with an awful looking injury but was ably covered for by Wood.  They head into 2014 with a relatively formidable  and cheap potential rotation of  Medlen, Minor, Teheran, Beachy and Wood, assuming they don’t resign Hudson.  How did they over-perform?  Teheran finally figured it out, Maholm was more than servicable the first couple months, Wood was great and came out of nowhere.
7. (#26 pre-season) Cleveland: Jimenez, Masterson, McAllister, Kluber, Kazmir.  Too high for this group?  7th in rotation fWAR, 8th in FIP, and 6th in xFIP.  This group, which I thought was going to be among the worst in the league, turned out to be one of the best.  Jimenez and Masterson both had rebound years with a ton of Ks, and the rest of this crew pitches well enough to remain around league average.  They were 2nd best in the league in K/9.  You can make the argument that they benefitted from the weakened AL Central, but they still made the playoffs with a relative rag-tag bunch.
8. (#9 pre-season) Cincinnati: Cueto, Latos, Bailey, Arroyo, Leake (with Tony Cingrani).  Cueto was good … but he was never healthy, hitting the D/L three separate times.  Luckily Cingrani came up from setting strikeout records in AAA and kept mowing them down in the majors.  Latos was dominant,  Leake took a step forward, and Bailey/Arroyo gave what they normally do.  If anything you would have thought this group would have been better.  6th in Wins, 7th in xFIP, 9th in FIP.  Next year Arroyo leaves, Cingrani gets 32 starts, Cueto stays healthy (cross your fingers, cross your fingers, cross your fingers) and this team is dominant again despite their FA hitting losses.
9. (#25 pre-season) New York Mets: Harvey, Wheeler, Niese, Gee, Hefner and a bunch of effective call-ups turned the Mets into a halfway-decent rotation all in all.  7th in xFIP, 11th in FIP.  Most of this is on the backs of Matt Harvey, who pitched like the second coming of Walter Johnson for most of the season.  Wheeler was more than effective, and rotation workhorses Niese and Gee may not be sexy names, but they were hovering right around the 100 ERA+ mark all year.  One superstar plus 4 league average guys was good enough for the 9th best rotation.
10. (#12 pre-season) Texas: Darvish, Holland, Ogando, Perez, Garza at the end.  Texas’ fWAR was the 2nd best in the league … but their accompanying stats drag them down this far.  Despite having four starters with ERA+s ranging from 114 to Darvish’ 145, the 34 starts given to Tepesch and Grimm drag this rotation down.  Ogando couldn’t stay healthy and Perez only gave them 20 starts.  Garza was mostly a bust.  And presumed #2 starter Matt Harrison gave them just 2 starts.  But look out for this group in 2014; Darvish, a healthy Harrison, and Holland all locked up long term, Ogando in his first arbitration year, and Perez is just 22.  That’s a formidable group if they can stay on the field together.
11. (pre-season #6) Tampa Bay: Price, Moore, Hellickson, Cobb, Archer and Roberto Hernandez.   Jeff Niemann didn’t give them a 2013 start, but no matter, the Tampa Bay gravy train of power pitchers kept on producing.  Cobb was unhittable, Archer was effective and Moore regained his 2011 playoff mojo to finish 17-4 on the year.  An odd regression from Price, which was fixed by a quick D/L trip, and a complete collapse of Hellickson drug down this rotation from where it should have been.  They still finished 12th in FIP and xFIP for the year.
12. (pre-season #21) Seattle: Hernandez, Iwakuma, Saunders, Harang, Maurer, and Ramirez.  Seattle featured two excellent, ace-leve performers and a bunch of guys who pitched worse than Dan Haren all year.  But combined together and you have about the 12th best rotation, believe it or not.
13. (pre-season #7) Philadelphia: Halladay, Hamels, Lee, Kendrick, Lannan (with Cloyd and Pettibone as backups).  The phillies were 13th in xFIP, 10th in FIP on the year and regressed slightly thanks to the significant demise to their #1 guy Halladay.  Lee pitched like his typical Ace but Hamels self-destructed as well.  The strength of one excellent starter makes this a mid-ranked rotation.  Had Halladay and Hamels pitched like expected, they’d have finished closer to my pre-season ranking.
14. (pre-season #17) Boston: Lester, Buchholz, Dempster, Lackey, Doubront, and Peavy: Boston got a surprise bounce back season out of Lackey, a fantastic if oft-injured performance from Buchholz, a mid-season trade for the effective Peavy.  Why aren’t they higher?  Because their home stadium contributes to their high ERAs in general.  Despite being 3rd in rotation fWAR and 4th in wins, this group was 17th in FIP and 18th in xFIP.  Perhaps you could argue they belong a couple places higher, but everyone knows its Boston’s offense that is driving their success this year.
15. (pre-season #16) New York Yankees: Sabathia, Kuroda, Pettitte, Nova, Hughes/Phelps.  Hughes and Phelps pitched as predictably bad as you would have expected … but Sabathia’s downturn was unexpected.  Are  his years of being a workhorse catching up to him?  The rotation was buoyed by unexpectedly good seasons from Nova and Kuroda.  Pettitte’s swang song was pretty great, considering his age.  Enough for them to slightly beat expectations, but the signs of trouble are here for this rotation in the future.   Pettitee retired, Kuroda a FA, Hughes a FA, a lost season for prospect Michael Pineda and other Yankees prospects stalled.  Are we in for a dark period in the Bronx?
16. (pre-season #29) Miami: Fernandez, Nolasco, Eovaldi, Turner, Alvarez, Koehler and a few other starts given to either re-treads or MLFAs.  For Miami’s rotation of kids to rise this far up is amazing; looking at their stellar stats you would think they should have been higher ranked still.  Fernandez’s amazing 176 ERA+ should win him the Rookie of the Year.  Eovaldi improved, rookie Turner pitched pretty well for a 22 year old.  The team dumped its opening day starter Nolasco and kept on … losing frankly, because the offense was so durn bad.  Begrudgingly it looks like Jeffry Loria has found himself another slew of great arms to build on.
17. (pre-season #5) San Francisco: Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Vogelsong, Zito, Gaudin.  What the heck happened here?  Cain went from an Ace to pitching like a 5th starter, Lincecum continued to completely forget what it was like to pitch like a Cy Young winner, Vogelsong completely fell off his fairy-tale cliff, and Zito completed his $126M journey in typical 5+ ERA fashion.  I’m surprised these guys are ranked this high (14th in FIP, 16th in xFIP but just 27th in fWAR thanks to just horrible performances all year).  What the heck are they going to do in 2014?
18. (pre-season #10) Arizona: Corbin, Kennedy, McCarthy, Cahill, Miley and Delgado.  Corbin was 2013’s version of Miley; a rookie that came out of nowhere to lead the staff.  Miley struggled at times but righted the ship and pitched decently enough.  The rest of the staff really struggled.  I thought this was a solid bunch but they ended up ranked 23rd in FIP and 14th in xFIP, indicating that they were a bit unlucky as a group.
19. (pre-season #15) Chicago White Sox: Sale, Peavy, Danks, Quintana, Santiago and Axelrod.  Floyd went down early, Peavy was traded.  Sale pitched well but had a losing record.  The team looked good on paper (16th in ERA) but were 26th in FIP and 17th in xFIP.
20. (pre-season #14) Oakland: Colon, Anderson, Griffen, Parker, Straily, Milone, with Sonny Gray giving 10 good starts down the stretch.  This rotation is the story of one amazing 40-yr old and a bunch of kids who I thought were going to be better.   Oakland is bashing their way to success this season and this group has been just good enough to keep them going.  I thought the likes of Griffen and Parker would have been better this  year, hence their falling from #14 to #19.
21. (pre-season #19) Chicago Cubs: Garza, Samardzija, Jackson, Wood, and Feldman: Feldman and Garza were flipped once they showed they could be good this year.  Samardzija took an uncharacteristic step backwards.  Jackson was awful.  The Cubs ended up right about where we thought they’d be.  However in 2014 they look to be much lower unless some big-armed prospects make the team.
22. (pre-season #20) Kansas City: Shields, Guthrie, Santana, Davis, Chen, Mendoza: despite trading the best prospect in the game to acquire Shields and Davis, the Royals a) did not make the playoffs and b) really didn’t have that impressive a rotation.  12th in team ERA but 20th in FIP and 25th in xFIP.   Compare that to their rankings of 25th in FIP and 26th in xFIP in 2012.   But the results on the field are inarguable; the team improved 14 games in the Win column and should be a good bet to make the playoffs next year if they can replace the possibly-departing Santana and the ineffective Davis.
23. (pre-season #23) Milwaukee: Lohse, Gallardo, Estrada, Peralta, and dozens of starts given to long-men and call-ups.  I ranked this squad #23 pre-season before they acquired Lohse; in reality despite his pay and the lost draft pick, Lohse’s addition ended up … having almost no impact on this team in 2013.  They finished ranked 23rd on my list, and the team was 74-88.
24. (pre-season #13): Los Angeles Angels: Weaver, Wilson, Vargas, Hanson, Blanton, Williams: The Angels are in a predicament; their two “aces” Weaver and Wilson both pitched well enough.  But nobody in baseball was really that surprised by the god-awful performances from Hanson or Blanton (2-14, 6.04 ERA … and the Angels gave him a two year deal!).  So in some ways the team brought this on themselves.  You spend half a billion dollars on aging offensive FAs, have the best player in the game languishing in left field because your manager stubbornly thinks that someone else is better in center than one of the best defenders in the game … not fun times in Anaheim.  To make matters worse, your bigtime Ace Weaver missed a bunch of starts, looked mortal, and lost velocity.
25. (#28 pre-season) San Diego: Volquez, Richards, Marquis, Stults, Ross, Cashner: have you ever seen an opening day starter post a 6+ ERA in a cave of a field and get relased before the season was over?  That happened to SAn Diego this year.  Another case where ERA+ values are deceiving; Stults posted a sub 4.00 ERA but his ERA+ was just 87, thanks to his home ballpark.  In fact its almost impossible to tell just how good or bad San Diego pitchers are.   I could be talked in to putting them this high or all the way down to about #28 in the rankings.
26. (pre-season #27) Colorado: Chatwood, De La Rosa, Chacin, Nicaso, Francis and a few starts for Garland and Oswalt for good measure.  Another staff who shows how deceptive the ERA+ value can be.  Their top guys posted 125 ERA+ figures but as a whole their staff performed badly.  26th in ERA, 19th in FIP, 26th in xFIP.  Colorado is like Minnesota; they just don’t have guys who can throw it by you (29th in K/9 just ahead of the Twins), and in their ridiculous hitter’s park, that spells trouble.
27. (pre-season #4) Toronto: Dickey, Morrow, Johnson, Buehrle, Happ, Rogers, and a line of other guys.  What happened here?  This was supposed to be one of the best rotations in the majors.  Instead they fell on their face, suffered a ton of injuries (only Dickey and Buehrle pitched full seasons: Romero, Drabeck were hurt.  Johnson, Happ, Redmond only 14-16 starts each.  This team even gave starts to Chien-Ming Wang and Ramon Ortiz.  Why not call up Fernando Valenzuela out of retirement?  It just goes to show; the best teams on paper sometimes don’t come together.  The Nats disappointed in 2013, but probably not as much as the Blue Jays.
28. (pre-season #18) Baltimore: Hammel, Chen, Tillman, Gonzalez, Feldman, Garcia with a few starts given to Gausman and Britton.  I’m not sure why I thought this group would be better than this; they were in the bottom four of the league in ERA, FIP, xFIP and SIERA.  It just goes to show how the ERA+ value can be misleading.  In their defense, they do pitch in a hitter’s park.  Tillman wasn’t bad, Chen took a step back.  The big concern here is the health of Dylan Bundy, who I thought could have pitched in the majors starting in June.
29. (pre-season #30) Houston: Bedard, Norris, Humber, Peacock, Harrell to start, then a parade of youngsters from there.  We knew Houston was going to be bad.  But amazingly their rotation wasn’t the worst in the league, thanks to Jarred Cosart and Brett Olberholtzer coming up and pitching lights-out for 10 starts a piece later in the year.  There’s some potential talent here.
30. (pre-season #24) Minnesota: Diamond, Pelfrey, Correia, Denudo, Worley and a whole slew of guys who were equally as bad.  Minnesota had the worst rotation in the league, and it wasn’t close.  They were dead last in rotational ERA, FIP, and xFIP, and it wasn’t close.  They were last in K/9 … by more than a strikeout per game.  They got a total fWAR of 4.6 from every pitcher who started a game for them this year.  Matt Harvey had a 6.1 fWAR in just 26 starts before he got hurt.  Someone needs to call the Twins GM and tell him that its not the year 1920, that power-pitching is the wave of the future, that you need swing-and-miss guys to win games in this league.

Biggest Surprises: Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Miami and New York Mets to a certain extent.

Biggest Disappointments: Toronto, the Angels, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Baltimore to some extent.

Disagree with these rankings?  Feel free to pipe up.  I’ll use this ranking list as the spring board post-FA market for 2014’s pre-season rankings.

A recurring statement that you often hear when talking about prospects in the minors is “Age Appropriateness” for the level in which the player is playing.  And for good reason; a seasoned minor league player who is playing against younger, weaker competition should have dominant numbers, and when analyzing that player’s performance this should be taken into account.  On the flip side, if a guy advances quickly up the minors and is a “youngster” at a high level and performs poorly, he shouldn’t immediately be written off, since he’s likely overmatched and needs time to “grow” into the level.

This topic comes up here often when talking about pitchers and their performances, and I frequently talk about a guy “being old” or “being young” for his level as a way to either discount good performances or explain away poor ones.  But what is “Too old for a level?”

I have always used a rule-of-thumb measurement advocated by John Sickels at minorleagueball.com for looking at player ages (I cannot find the original Sickels posting but have seen it attributed to him in several forums).  That rule-of-thumb is as follows:

• AAA: Typical Age range is 23-24.  Age 25 depends.  26+ is old
• AA: 22-23.  24 depends.  25+ is old
• High-A: 20-22.  23 depends.  24+ is old
• Low-A: 19-21.  22 depends.  23+ is old
• Short-A: 19-20.  21/22 for draft year guys only.  22+ is old
• GCL: 17-19.  20 for draft year guys only.  21+ is old

Now, the caveats to the above are as follows:

1. This is specifically worried about prospect development; clearly we know that a former major leaguer on a minor league free agent contract in AAA is going to look like he’s really “old” for the level when we need understand his presence there differently.  A rising prospect who is in AAA at the age of 26 or 27 who hasn’t made it to the majors yet is absolutely “old” and is probably closer to minor league free agency or a release than he is to making the big team.

2. Injuries matter.  If a college grad loses a year to TJ surgery and then is sitting in high-A as a 24 year old in his second pro season (think Nathan Karns) you can’t really hold that against him.  But if he’s dominant, you can sort of explain why and say that he needs to be moved up.

Luke Erickson (with Brian Oliver‘s help) came up with similar looking ranges for the various levels and have made it a link off the main page of NationalsProspects.com.  And I talked about this topic a couple of years ago in this space in advance of this same analysis, which I last performed in 2011.

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Without further ado, here’s a look at the actual age ranges of the Nationals four full season minor league teams as they stood on 2013’s Opening Day (yes, i’ve had this data in the can for a month and a half and am just getting around to publishing it).  I last did this analysis two years ago and it is interesting to see how the age ranges have changed slightly over the years.  Here’s 2011’s and 2013’s ranges (click here for a Google spreadsheet of all the detail to check my work and do your own sorting; this link is also in the Links to the right):

2011	AAA	AA	High-A	Low-A
Really Young	25.54 or younger	24.44 or  younger	22.65 or younger	21.88 or younger
Young	25.54 – 26.93	24.44 – 25.37	22.65 – 23.83	21.88 – 22.84
Old	26.93 – 28.79	25.37 – 26.65	23.83 – 24.77	22.84 – 23.65
Really Old	28.79 or older	26.65 or older	24.77 or older	23.65 or older
2013	AAA	AA	High-A	Low-A
Really Young	25.91 or younger	24.02 or younger	23.08 or younger	21.69 or younger
Young	25.92 – 27.75	24.02 – 25.17	23.08 – 24.00	21.69 – 22.66
Old	27.75 – 30.35	25.17 – 26.84	24.00 – 24.91	22.66 – 23.39
Really Old	30.35 or older	26.84 or older	24.91 or older	23.39 or older

Data Taxonomy: I’ve taken every pitcher on every team’s roster in each of the four leagues that the Nats have farm teams in (AAA = International, AA = Eastern, High-A = Carolina, Low-A = South Atlantic), put them into a spreadsheet, calculated their ages at the end of this season (9/1/13) and then calculated the four quartile figures in terms of age.  I only used pitchers in our leagues as opposed to the entire level across all of baseball thinking that different leagues may have different needs (I’m thinking how the California League and the Pacific Coast League has so many hitters parks and thus the pitchers may linger there longer, skewing the numbers).  I also standardized the numbers to be at the end of the season as opposed to the beginning, so that people can talk about a player’s “Age 25 season” for example.

So (using 2013’s AAA as an example): the 25th percentile age is 25.91, the 50th percentile or median age is 27.75, the 75th percentile age is 30.35.   For ease of labeling, anyone in the lowest quartile is “Really Young” for that level, 25th-50th is “Young,” 50th-75th is “Old” and anyone in the 75th percentile or higher is labeled “Really Old.”  I know some don’t like these labels; if someone just moves past the 50th percentile they go from being “Young” to “Old” in a hurry.  But I have to draw the lines somewhere.  The fractions are represented as fractions of an entire year of days, so .91 is 91/100ths of 365 days old.  This say, as opposed to the way that MLB service time is represented in Years.Days and you see numbers like “1.113.”

Looking at 2011 to 2013’s changes: notice how AAA is getting much older.  I think that is due to so many teams giving non-guaranteed MLFA deals to former starters and relievers and stashing them in AAA.  Look at our own team: we’ve got guys like Chris Young, Fernando Abad, and JC Romero all in their 30s, skewing the numbers northward.  Meanwhile both AA has gotten slightly  younger; its median age has dropped slightly.

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Here’s a look at the Nationals’ four full season minor league pitching staffs, with the ages listed and the “age appropriate” label given. Note that I did this right at the beginning of the season so I havn’t captured all the moves made in the last month.

AAA Syracuse

Team	Name	DOB	Age as of 9/1/13	Age Status
Syracuse (Washington)	Bill Bray	6/5/1983	30.24	Old
Syracuse (Washington)	Cole Kimball	8/1/1985	28.08	Old
Syracuse (Washington)	Brad Meyers	9/13/1985	27.97	Old
Syracuse (Washington)	Matt Torra	6/29/1984	29.17	Old
Syracuse (Washington)	Sean West	6/15/1986	27.21	Young
Syracuse (Washington)	Jeremy Accardo	12/8/1981	31.73	Really Old
Syracuse (Washington)	Jeff Mandel	4/30/1985	28.34	Old
Syracuse (Washington)	Patrick McCoy	8/3/1988	25.08	Really Young
Syracuse (Washington)	J.C. Romero	6/4/1976	37.24	Really Old
Syracuse (Washington)	Michael Crotta	9/25/1984	28.93	Old
Syracuse (Washington)	Bobby Bramhall	7/13/1985	28.14	Old
Syracuse (Washington)	Tanner Roark	10/5/1986	26.91	Young
Syracuse (Washington)	Ryan Tatusko	3/27/1985	28.43	Old
Syracuse (Washington)	Daniel Rosenbaum	10/10/1987	25.89	Really Young
Syracuse (Washington)	Ross Ohlendorf	8/8/1982	31.07	Really Old
Syracuse (Washington)	Fernando Abad	12/17/1985	27.71	Young
Syracuse (Washington)	Erik Davis	10/8/1986	26.90	Young
Syracuse (Washington)	Yunesky Maya	8/28/1981	32.01	Really Old
Syracuse (Washington)	Ryan Perry	2/13/1987	26.55	Young
Syracuse (Washington)	Chris Young	5/25/1979	34.27	Really Old

Discussion: Our “really old” guys are no surprise; they’re all basically guys on MLFA contracts.  Well, and Yunesky Maya, who is just playing out the string at this point.  I’m more interested in the “prospects” who are in AAA and their age status, and they mostly look good.   Pat McCoy and Danny Rosenbaum both rate as really young for the level.  Erik Davis and Ryan Perry both rate as young, even despite Perry’s MLB experience.  Otherwise are there even other “prospects” worth analyzing on the Syracuse roster at this point?  It seems that most everyone else on this team is a backup starter or a backup loogy.

Oldest Guy in the Int’l League: Miguel Batista with Toronto’s AAA affilliate.  Yes our own Mr. Batista from two years ago, still hanging around.  He’s yet to get called back up in 2013.  Ironically the 2nd oldest guy in AAA is also on Buffalo and is also an ex-Nat: Ramon Ortiz, who has gotten called up to help cover for Toronto’s injury-devistated staff and has a couple of apperances already.

Youngest Guy in the Intl’ League: Giovanni Soto with Cleveland’s AAA affilliate in Columbus.  He’s not considered a high-end prospect; he’s just a guy drafted out of HS who has made his way level-by-level and is now 22 in AAA.  The 2nd youngest guy in AAA is a more familiar name (Trevor Bauer, also with Cleveland’s team) and the ten youngest pitchers in the league reads like a top-50 Pitching prospects list MLB-wide.

Percentage of Int’l League pitchers on MLB 40-man rosters: 65/210 or 30.9%.   This shows just how much AAA is turning into a spare-parts holding league.

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AA Harrisburg

Team	Name	DOB	Age as of 9/1/13	Age Status
Harrisburg (Washington)	Adam Olbrychowski	9/7/1986	26.98	Really Old
Harrisburg (Washington)	Sammy Solis	8/10/1988	25.06	Young
Harrisburg (Washington)	Rafael Martin	5/16/1984	29.30	Really Old
Harrisburg (Washington)	Cameron Selik	8/25/1987	26.02	Old
Harrisburg (Washington)	Paul Demny	8/3/1989	24.08	Young
Harrisburg (Washington)	Marcos Frias	12/19/1988	24.70	Young
Harrisburg (Washington)	Brian Broderick	9/1/1986	27.00	Really Old
Harrisburg (Washington)	Trevor Holder	1/8/1987	26.65	Old
Harrisburg (Washington)	Aaron Barrett	1/2/1988	25.66	Old
Harrisburg (Washington)	Caleb Clay	2/15/1988	25.54	Old
Harrisburg (Washington)	Neil Holland	8/14/1988	25.05	Young
Harrisburg (Washington)	Rob Wort	2/7/1989	24.56	Young
Harrisburg (Washington)	Pat Lehman	10/18/1986	26.87	Really Old
Harrisburg (Washington)	Matt Swynenberg	2/16/1989	24.54	Young
Harrisburg (Washington)	Ian Krol	5/9/1991	22.32	Really Young
Harrisburg (Washington)	Blake Treinen	6/30/1988	25.17	Young
Harrisburg (Washington)	Nathan Karns	11/25/1987	25.77	Old

Borrowing from my Monthly check-in on the Minor League staffs, who are we really interested in on this roster?  The rotation is Broderick, Treinen, Demny, Clay and Karns.  Broderick is really old for the level, but we already knew that (considering he was in the majors as our Rule-5 draftee two years ago).  Karns and Clay are “old” for the level but not overly so; the median age is 25.17 and they’re 25.77 and 25.54 respectively.  So just a few months older than the median.  Not bad considering Karns basically lost two years of development time due to injuries.   When the team gets Solis back, he’ll still be young.  And most interestingly is Ian Krol who is the 4th youngest guy in the Eastern League but has dominant numbers thus far in 2013.  Most of the “really old” guys are relievers who most would agree are “Org guys” and will naturally fall of the roster when their 6-year FA period arrives.

Oldest Guy in the Eastern League: Willie Collazo on Toronto’s AA team in New Hampshire, who had four years in the PCL and likely is only on a AA roster as a procedural location since he started the season on the DL.  In fact, most of that team’s roster is among the 20 oldest guys in the league.  And as with the AAA team there are ex-Nats all over their rosters.   I think we’re seeing the effects of former Nats front-office member Dana Brown now in Toronto helping to shape their minor league roster with guys he’s familiar with.

Youngest Guy in the Eastern League: One Dylan Bundy, Baltimore farm-hand who already has MLB innings and who some thought could have broken camp with the Orioles.  Unfortunatley for Bundy, he’s been sidelined with shoulder issues all year.  But he’s clearly an up-and-coming talent.  The 2nd youngest guy in the Eastern league is also a big-time prospect: Jamison Taillon in Pittsburgh’s org.  In fact, when Taillon and his fellow uber-prospect Gerrit Cole matriculate to the majors, Pittsburgh is going to suddenly find themselves with one of the league’s elite pitching staffs.

Percentage of Eastern League pitchers on MLB 40-man rosters: 15/182 or 8.24%.  Just a handful (Nathan Karns is one, Bundy is one).

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High-A Potomac

Team	Name	DOB	Age as of 9/1/13	Age Status
Potomac (Washington)	Paul Applebee	5/17/1988	25.29	Really Old
Potomac (Washington)	Robert Gilliam	11/29/1987	25.76	Really Old
Potomac (Washington)	Josh Smoker	11/26/1988	24.76	Old
Potomac (Washington)	Matthew Grace	12/14/1988	24.71	Old
Potomac (Washington)	Robbie Ray	10/1/1991	21.92	Really Young
Potomac (Washington)	Colin Bates	3/10/1988	25.48	Really Old
Potomac (Washington)	A.J. Cole	1/5/1992	21.66	Really Young
Potomac (Washington)	Ben Hawkins	11/4/1989	23.82	Young
Potomac (Washington)	Tyler Herron	8/5/1986	27.07	Really Old
Potomac (Washington)	Gregory Holt	6/19/1989	24.20	Old
Potomac (Washington)	Taylor Jordan	1/17/1989	24.62	Old
Potomac (Washington)	Christian Meza	8/3/1990	23.08	Really Young
Potomac (Washington)	Richie Mirowski	4/30/1989	24.34	Old
Potomac (Washington)	Derek Self	1/14/1990	23.63	Young
Potomac (Washington)	Taylor Hill	3/12/1989	24.47	Old
Potomac (Washington)	Kylin Turnbull	9/12/1989	23.97	Young

Discussion: Our starters at the time of this writing in Potomac are Ray, Jordan, Schwartz, Cole and Hill.   Schwartz wasn’t on this roster when I did the cut-n-paste jobs but he’s almost the same identical age as the man he replaced Turnbull.   Ray and Cole still rate as “Really Young” (they’re the 7th and 10th youngest guys in the Carolina league) despite both guys repeating this level, a testament to just how young these guys were LAST year.  Jordan rates as “old” but with the injury caveat.  Hill is four months older than the median age so frankly he’s right on schedule.   By and large though this is an older staff, which to me is indicative of the college-heavy pitcher drafts Mike Rizzo has done the last few years.  All of our staffs are going to trend old.

Oldest/Youngest Guys in Carolina League: Baltimore’s Frederick affiliate oddly has the two youngest guys (Eduardo Rodriguez, Zachary Davies) and the two oldest guys (Eunchul Choi and Rob Delaney) in the league.  I’ve never heard anything about any of these four, so I can’t really add much commentary here 🙂

Percentage of Carolina pitchers on MLB 40-man rosters: Just 2/115 for 1.74%

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Low-A Hagerstown

Team	Name	DOB	Age as of 9/1/13	Age Status
Hagerstown (Washington)	Blake Schwartz	10/9/1989	23.90	Really Old
Hagerstown (Washington)	Brett Mooneyham	1/24/1990	23.60	Really Old
Hagerstown (Washington)	Brian Dupra	12/15/1988	24.71	Really Old
Hagerstown (Washington)	Brian Rauh	7/23/1991	22.11	Young
Hagerstown (Washington)	Bryan Harper	12/29/1989	23.67	Really Old
Hagerstown (Washington)	David Fischer	4/10/1990	23.39	Old
Hagerstown (Washington)	Dean Weaver	5/17/1988	25.29	Really Old
Hagerstown (Washington)	Dixon Anderson	7/2/1989	24.17	Really Old
Hagerstown (Washington)	Ivan Pineyro	9/29/1991	21.92	Young
Hagerstown (Washington)	Matt Purke	7/17/1990	23.13	Old
Hagerstown (Washington)	Pedro Encarnacion	6/26/1991	22.18	Young
Hagerstown (Washington)	Robert Benincasa	9/5/1990	22.99	Old
Hagerstown (Washington)	Ronald Pena	9/19/1991	21.95	Young
Hagerstown (Washington)	Todd Simko	12/5/1988	24.74	Really Old
Hagerstown (Washington)	Travis Henke	7/9/1988	25.15	Really Old
Hagerstown (Washington)	Will Hudgins	2/12/1990	23.55	Really Old
Hagerstown (Washington)	Wirkin Estevez	3/15/1992	21.46	Really Young

Discussion: as with Potomac, 9 of the 17 guys on this staff are in the “Really Old” category, again a testament to the college-heavy arm drafting of late.  Even Brett Mooneyham is now on the old side of the league median age, and he’s just got one full pro season under his belt.  The one guy listed as “Really Young” is DSL grad Wirkin Estevez

Oldest Guy in the Sally League: Miami’s low-A affiliate in Greensboro has a guy who is already 28 named Miguel Fermin.  He’s in low-A because he’s converting to be a Pitcher after 6 years as a middle infielder.

Youngest Guy in the Sally League: Atlanta’s Lucas Sims, their 1st round draft pick from 2012, who hasn’t even turned 19 as of today (but will have by the end of the season).  The 2nd youngest is a lefty prep draftee in Baltimore’s system named Josh Hader who has an interesting story thus far; he was a HS draftee in the 19th round who put up great numbers in short-season last year, broke with the low-A team and has a 1.74 ERA through four starts as of the time of this writing.  Sounds like a heck of a draft find for Baltimore so far.

Percentage of Sally League pitchers on MLB 40-man rosters: 1 of 196 pitchers.  That one?  our very own Matt Purke, who at this point, I’m not afraid to say, looks like he could be a draft bust.  Not a major one though mind you; the Nats bribed him out of his college commitment with a 3rd round pick but mid first round money in 2011.   But that could end up being a lost 3rd round pick unless Purke can show us something this year.  In some ways it was a great gamble to get a guy who was 15-0 as a freshman … and “its just money” right?  If this kind of draft money allocation were to have happened in the new system, and the team blew its entire wad of money on one injury-prone guy, we’d be much more concerned.

As we get started for a new season of Nats baseball, one with incredible promise and high expectations, I thought I’d put out a fun post for retrospection for all us Nats fans.  What are some of the best Nats games you’ve seen in person?  This post is inspired by a post from William World News, he himself inspired by another post (so this is transitive blog post inspiration here).

Here’s my Best 5 Nats games seen in person, in no particular order:

1. Nats Park Opener 2008: I caught a 4am flight from a Vegas bachelor party to make it.   We had nosebleeds up in the left field bleachers but Dad and I stayed for the whole game.  Jon Rauch blew the save and gave up the lead in the top of the 9th and we all groaned; it was late on a Sunday night and very cold.  Dad and I had metro’d down and started making our way back to the train, thinking that with the cold there may be a long set of extra innings when suddenly Ryan Zimmerman blasted a walk-off homer to win the game.  Very special game.

2. Ramon Ortiz taking a no-hitter into the 9th on September 4th, 2006 at RFK.  We basically saw the greatest game of Ortiz’s career as he shutdown the powerful St. Louis Cardinals on zero hits through eight.  Ortiz also managed to hit the SOLE home run of his career that night.  In the top of the 9th he gave up a hit … and then promptly served up one of the longest home runs I’d ever seen to Albert Pujols, who blasted a ball to dead-center field at RFK that landed in the upper bleachers.  Before Pujols had rounded first base Frank Robinson was out of the dugout to pull Ortiz and let Chad Cordero get the save.  Looking at the box score it was an awfully fast hook; there were 2 outs in the 9th, the Nats were ahead 4-1 and Ortiz was only on 95 pitches.  Why not let him get the CG?  Still a special game.

3. Fathers Day versus the Yankees 2006: Zimmerman walk off again for come-from behind victory, closest RFK ever came to being full outside of the 2005 opener.  The stadium was absolutely buzzing that day and I was dutifully in tow with my own father (along with good friend Pat Boyd and his dad, a diehard yankee fan).  The same group was also at the 2012 Nats-Yankees series, and we saw the game where Bryce Harper struck out 5 times.

4. NL East clincher Oct 1st, 2012; entire crowd singing “Take On Me” when Michael Morse came to the plate, and then despite being behind in the 9th the Nats clinched the division when the Braves lost, which was announced in the middle of the 9th inning as the mobile-phone enabled crowd started cheering and the announcers were forced to post it on the scoreboard.  The Nats were listless that game, getting just 4 hits off of Kyle Kendrick in 7 innings and seemed distracted.  But it was all worthwhile for the champagne celebration afterwards.

5. First home game as a franchise: April 14 2005.  The new Washington franchise played its first 9 games on the road, ostensibly to give the Nats their own stage for their first home opener.  Thanks to George W. Bush‘s attendance, the line to get into the stadium was an hour long and we missed the first inning entirely.   But we got in, the team won behind 8 strong innings from Livan Hernandez and a tradition was started.

Coincidentally, Zimmerman now has 8 career walk-off home runs, a distinct penchant for the dramatic.  Which is a ton considering that the career record is 13, belonging to Jim Thome.  Can Zimmerman keep getting these marquee home runs and put his name on this list?   He seems to have a long career ahead of him and plenty of time to hit a handful more walk-offs (myworldofbaseball has a nice description of each of Zimmerman’s 8 walkoffs).

Games I wish I had been to:

– Strasburg‘s debut: June 8, 2010; my family was in South Africa for the World Cup 2010 so we missed it.  However, I remember my dad distinctly telling me Strasburg’s line on the day.  7ip, 14Ks, 0bbs.  And I thought he was kidding.

– Teddy Wins!  After years of losing, many people had given up hope that Teddy would ever win.  I thought personally his best shot was his Bobblehead day, when “secret service” members guarded him as he tried to finally cross the finish line first.  But it was not to be and I thought perhaps he’d never win.  As it turned out, the prerequisite to Teddy winning was the Nats themselves winning a title, a fitting end to his losing streak.

– Any of the 2012 playoffs, but especially NLDS Game 4 walk-off.  Probably the most special moment in the Nats short history.  I did not “win” any playoff tickets out of my season ticket groups and watched the game from home, on tape delay.  Amazing finish.  I have a photo of Jayson Werth stomping on home plate framed in my son’s room now; ironically its the same photo that now adorns the side of Nats Stadium.

– Final game at RFK: I may have been there frankly.  That was a long time and a lot of losses ago.  If I was there, It didn’t turn out to be nearly as special as it could have been.

What are your best Nats game memories?