{"id":16736,"date":"2020-09-11T13:32:08","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T17:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16736"},"modified":"2020-09-11T13:33:55","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T17:33:55","slug":"ask-brittany-9-10-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16736","title":{"rendered":"Ask Brittany 9\/10\/20"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Rizzo (finally) gets paid. Photo via mlb.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Man, it seems like its been forever since we’ve seen a Nats beat reporter do a mailbag. And unfortunately the one I found is behind the Athletic’s paywall<\/a>, By Athletic Nats beat reporter Brittany Ghiroli.<\/strong> No worries though; you’ll get the gist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What are your reactions to the (Mike) Rizzo contract?<\/strong>
A: It’s about damn time. I just do not understand why either Mike Rizzo<\/strong> or Davey Martinez<\/strong> entered this season w\/o an extension. The only thing I can think is that both had had informal discussions with the ownership group that promised them extensions at a later time.

Brittany’s take: Finally. 3yr extension, with a big bump in pay from $4M\/year on his previous deal. But she also notes how disrespectful this delay was to the rest of the front office staff, who live and die by Rizzo’s contract status. Hard to disagree.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Have you heard about any extension talks with (Juan) Soto?  <\/strong>
A: I hope they have … but it seems unlikely. Juan Soto<\/strong> has already established himself as one of the league’s elite players, so there seems to be little incentive for him to sign away any flexibility. He got a “big” pre-arb raise, which frankly is still peanuts compared to his value, and he’s already guaranteed to be a Super-2 guy, meaning four arb years. If i’m the Nats maybe i’m doing what they did with Harper<\/strong> and Rendon<\/strong>; buy out the arb years with sizeable raises so they’re not arguing every off-season, see if they can get one post-arb FA year thrown in (he’s FA after 2024 season), and make it worthwhile to both sides.

Brittany notes that Soto’s agent is <\/em>Scott Boras<\/em><\/strong>, so forget about an extension. She is unaware of any extension talk, but points out a couple of Braves deals that could serve as landmarks. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Any details on whether the front office has moved on from competing this year to preparing for a stronger \u201921 season?<\/strong>
A: Well, we saw no trades this year, meaning zero attempts to shore up multiple areas of need on the current roster. But then again, that might have been a factor of the price tag and our own depleted farm system. I mean, would you have wanted to give up Cade Cavalli<\/strong> or Jackson Rutledge <\/strong>for a month of a #3 starter hitting free agency after the season? Hell no. Meanwhile on the field, the team has been frisky this week, but (as of this writing on 9\/11\/20<\/a>) remain 5.5 games out of a wild card spot and still projected for either the #6 or #7 overall pick next July.
Brittany notes the same thing: the lack of moves at the trade deadline tipped their hand.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Any insight on moves Rizzo should consider in 2021 free agency?<\/strong>
A: man, it exhausts me to even start considering this. But here’s 2 minutes on their FA outlook. Using COTS site<\/a>, they are set to lose Eaton, Sanchez, Doolittle, Suzuki, Kendrick, Thames, Holt, Cabrera, Zimmerman<\/strong> and Freeman <\/strong>to FA (yes some of these guys have options but … right now its hard to see any of these options exercised).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that means the team is in need of: 1-2 Starting pitchers, a corner OF, two veteran lefty relievers, a starting quality catcher, and a big chunk of their infield depth. Assuming they go young in 2021 the infield could be anchored by Kieboom, Turner <\/strong>and Garcia<\/strong>, so they’d be in the market for a 1B\/DH platoon, plus a couple of utility guys who can move around. So, not a ton but also some work to do. the have $126M committed before arb raises of roughly $25M (could be more depending on how much Soto <\/strong>gets), so that leaves about $50M of FA room to work with. We can’t get a good SP and a solid catcher for that, but we should be able to get the edges covered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brittany repeats the same list of players, and says the priorities will be similar to what I put.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Man, it seems like its been forever since we’ve seen a Nats beat reporter do a mailbag. And unfortunately the one I found is behind the Athletic’s paywall, By Athletic Nats beat reporter Brittany Ghiroli. No worries though; you’ll get the gist. Q: What are your reactions to the (Mike) Rizzo contract?A: It’s about damn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,5],"tags":[3142,777,185,2370,4317,4462,164,4394,3186,4277,4460,1940,4181,3314,1033,3051,129,36,4455,180,1347,2426],"class_list":["post-16736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chatmailbag-responses","category-natsgeneral","tag-adam-eaton","tag-anibal-sanchez","tag-anthony-rendon","tag-asdrubal-cabrera","tag-brittany-ghiroli","tag-brock-holt","tag-bryce-harper","tag-cade-cavalli","tag-carter-kieboom","tag-davey-martinez","tag-eric-thames","tag-howie-kendrick","tag-jackson-rutledge","tag-juan-soto","tag-kurt-suzuki","tag-luis-garcia","tag-mike-rizzo","tag-ryan-zimmerman","tag-sam-freeman","tag-scott-boras","tag-sean-doolittle","tag-trea-turner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16736"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16741,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16736\/revisions\/16741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}