The Nats don't need to be have-nots

I agree that the Nationals don’t have to be have-nots – I think realistically they’re a team that could afford a healthy, but not enormous payroll, perhaps analogues to St. Louis. I do still have faith in the way the organization is going about building a team though, for the overriding reason that the team was in such shambles when the ownership took control of it that a spending spree would have only brought them to mediocrity and would have limited their options moving forward.

If you’re managing the personnel of a baseball team obviously your long-term goal is build a team that wins as many games as possible; to maximize a sort of abstract concept that you could think about as “baseball skill”, I guess. But obviously a team is confined by a number of constraints, the three big ones being roster size, payroll, and playing time (this more so as an issue of keeping players happy). The goal then, of course, is to build the best team you can from within those constraints.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Nationals have not done that this year, simply by virtue of the fact that they haven’t been as aggressive as the could have afforded to be in the free agent market. However I don’t see this as a sign that the Lerners are cheap or that the management is inept; I see it as intelligent asset management.

With a few exceptions decent free agents will command a decent commitment, both in terms of contract length and annual salary, and while it might be tempting to shell out the cash to get a bonus in the short term, there’s not a lot of good done in turning a 55 win team into a 65 win team or a 65 win team into a 75 win team, the general range the Nationals are in now. The fans might be a little happier and team may be a less obvious butt of jokes for lazy sportswriters, but it doesn’t do much good when it comes to helping you get to where you want to be in the long term. Ergo to wind up in a spot where you’ve made significant commitments and tightened your restraints once the team is starting to get competitive puts you in a bad position.

For example, imagine a scenario (2011, perhaps) where Stephen Strasburg is anywhere near as good as he’s being made out to be, Scott Olsen gets healthy and is reasonably productive like he was in Florida, John Lannan continues to be decent, and two of the combination of Martins, Zimmermann, Detwiler, and Balester look like they’re ready to legit decent starters (note: I’m not saying I expect this to happen, my point is that it’s impossible to know).

In that situation the team has its whole rotation set and now the team has a ton of money and roster space to go out and address other issues (i.e. the bullpen) that they wouldn’t have had if they’d gone out and signed, say, A.J. Burnett and Derek Lowe would would have three and two years left on their contracts at $17 and $15 million, respectively. By waiting until the team is on the cusp of competitiveness to see what the team’s biggest holes are, you give yourself an opportunity to better evaluate what the team’s weaknesses are and give yourself more resources to address them.

That’s not to say signing free agents when you’re where the Nationals are doesn’t make sense, but I think they only make sense under one of two conditions, both of which we saw this offseason. One is where a guy is so good and has such a solid track record that you feel comfortable that he’s going to be valuable when your team gets competitive, as was the case with Mark Teixeira. The other is a case where you add a guy who helps but doesn’t require a huge commitment, as was the case with Adam Dunn (and would have been nice to see with a relief pitcher or two…or three….). If the Nationals identify a guy who they think fits into either of those categories, I think they’ll go after them, and I think it’s a sound strategy.

I just do not see where the evidence for being cheap. Besides the team losing. Our problem has been terrible management. We pay more per win the more than half the teams in the country. Who among the following would you describe as underpaid?
2009 wages
1 a. Cristian Guzman 8,000,000
1 b. Adam Dunn 8,000,000
1 c. Austin Kearns 8,000,000
4. Nick Johnson 5,500,000
5. Dmitri Young 5,000,000
8. Scott Olsen 2,800,000
9. Daniel Cabrera 2,600,000
10. Joe Beimel 2,000,000
11. Ronnie Belliard 1,900,000
12. Josh Bard 1,600,000

None of them! These are nice guys, but they are all overpaid. Now tiexera was offered (I think) the second highest salary in the history of baseball by us, but he was willing to make a couple of million less per year to play for the Yankees (keeping NJ is the better option). We made high bids at several top pitchers including CC sabathia and AJ Burnett but they all wanted far to much to play for a losing team. We made the highest bid for a player ever in that slot of the draft last year and he said no. And we are expected to have the highest bid for any just drafted professional player in the history of the World for Strassburg this summer (seriously history of the world). How is this team cheap? You can offer a player money, but you can’t make them sign.

Recall that the Royals had to double every other offer on the market to sign Meche. Meche is a good pitcher that might help get them into the playoffs this year, but he is way overpaid. Is he worth more than Beckett? 1. Jose Guillen 12,000,000 2. Gil Meche 11,400,000 salaries of free agents signed by the royals (both way overpaid, but otherwise they would not have signed) compare that to Josh Beckett 11,166,666? Meche makes more than Beckett. KC has to way overpay for free agents and so does the NATS. So the NATS should be doing all it can to not overpay for free agents, but build from within. They are doing a solid job building from within. Look at the rotation! It will just take time.

Our teams problem has been mismanagement. Overpaying for players based on bats with no regard to gloves (ie Dunn, Soriano, Wilkenson, etc). Plus, star free agents almost never agree to play for last place teams for any resonable sum of money.

I wanted to light a fire and get a reaction from the Nats. (Of course, there may not be that many people visiting this site but that’s a matter for another thread.) Or just rant about the comedy of errors (literally and figuratively) that the Nats have become. I mean, even though they won on Monday, they gave up 2 runs on a walk — and neither of those runs was forced in! That is typical of what has been going on this season.

Whether or not that many people visit this site, we finally saw some action as pitching coach Randy St. Claire was fired. Maybe the bullpen troubles weren’t all his fault but he WAS the person in charge of coaching the pitchers. He did a good job last year but maybe that was all he could muster. Something is woefully wrong with the 2009 team and it’s not just one thing. There are so many bone-headed errors. That could be the result of the lack of regular fielding practice. (Four groundballs per infielder doesn’t count as real fielding practice.) Or it could be the poor personnel decisions last offseason. Or both. Or poor coaching.

So many of the pitchers refuse to throw strikes. It’s the pitching coach’s job to get the pitchers doing what they need to do to be effective. St. Claire wasn’t the only guilty party but he was in the middle of it all. Sorry to see him get fired but it might have been necessary for the team to move forward. Hopefully the new guy is better. If not, get a new coach in the offseason.

I won’t address specific points since I’m not claiming to have all the answers. My primary motivation for posting was to show that at least some Nats’ fans are getting fed up with the state of affairs and that the ownership needs to turn around the franchise sooner rather than later. The team does not have a strong fanbase so multiple 100-loss seasons could do serious damage to the team’s long-term prospects. If you think it’s hard to sign free agents now, what about after another 100-loss season? Or two, or three? If that’s the case, then everybody better hope that every single one of the young pitchers works out and no one has any serious injuries in the years to come.

I realize that it won’t be easy to build a winner in D.C. but there are many achievable steps that the team can take. They can find better defensive players. They tend not to be as in demand so the salaries shouldn’t be exorbitant. While we’ll still need a good offense, we need to fill in the roster with role players who play good defense. We don’t necessarily need Mark Teixeira types. We can get mid-level players who know how to do the little things right and fill out the roster with those players. We can look for at least one dependable veteran pitcher over the winter to help out the starting rotation. No matter how much potential there is with the current group, it’s still a joke to have 4 rookies and a 2nd-year player as your complete rotation. Most of these guys would still be in the minors in most other organizations, so that does mean that the Nats are acting like a AAA or AA team.

What I don’t want to see is the development of a loser culture in D.C. where 100-loss seasons are accepted as inevitable. I don’t want to see the team turning into a joke, where they can give up 5-run leads in the last 2 innings on a regular basis and where they give up 2 runs on a walk (without the bases being loaded). The team needs to rebuild, obviously, but it doesn’t need to turn into a caricature of a professional baseball team. At many times this season, that’s exactly what the Nats are becoming. It’s sad to see the lack of respect that the team gets around the country but they haven’t earned any respect except in a few instances here and there. The organization, the coaches, the players and the fans need to get fired up and get determined to see a winning team in D.C. again, soon. (Well, the Nats had a winning record in the first half of 2005.)