Washington Nationals Must Decide: A) Sign Adam Dunn To An Extension? B) Trade Dunn? C) Take Draft Picks?

My personal plan is that they offer him a contract with a hometown discount first. If he accepts the hometown discount, then he’s a true Nat and we should resign him. You get all of the true Nats perks like major connection to the DC market and hopefully more local endorsement deals. “I’m Adam Dunn. Come to Eastern Motors where your job’s your credit! My job’s my credit, and they gave me a ride fatter than underperforming Randle El’s!” You hopefully get a no trade clause in your contract and everybody’s happy.

If he doesn’t give us a hometown discount, then you shop him. If somebody gives us a major league pitching prospect who projects as a likely No. 3 starter and a potential 2 starter by 2012 or a major bat who will be ready by 2012, you likely hold out until closer to the deadline.

To me, the only option that should be unpalatable to the fan base is to take the picks. If you’re doing that, you’re picking guys who are protected picks and likely to be in the sandwich round, not blue chippers who will be major league ready quickly. I don’t want to pray for hitting the lottery like Soriano twice.

This team has to be ready to hit .500 by 2012 at the latest and in the mix for contention by 2013. If we’re not in the mix, we become merely the Strasburg and Harper circus and those guys will certainly leave us for more bucks when their contracts are up.

At the start of this conversation, I thought we were a 75-81 win team, and I wanted to hold Dunn. Since then, Dunn has continued to play well while his teammates have played worse. They are showing themselves to be more of a 70-75 win team, even with Strasburg lving up to hype. Guys like Lannan who would have to be part of us being a .500 team next year have regressed and we’ve shown ourselves to be closer to the Orioles and Indians then we are to the Braves or Mets, are true competitors in the division.

Our upper minors are worse than most of the contenders we’d be trading with. Flipping through my Baseball Prospectus 2010, the Angels had #52 Mike Trout an OF with pop who they won’t part with, #81 Hank Conger a C who they won’t part with but is probably part of the reason they talk about moving their poor defensive catcher in deals, #89 Jordan Walden who can bring it at 98MPH but had some injury issues last year, #92 Trevor Reckling LHP whose got average velocity but nasty junk with some command issues, #95 RHP Fabio Martinez best RHP in the AFL last year with a 98MPH fast ball and an enormous upside.

We don’t want all of those guys and they won’t move all of those guys, but talking out of my behind at the moment, they would need to move a core prospect, perhaps their 4th best prospect in Reckling. Reckling seems like the junk throwing Zito strikeout type who would complement Strasburg and Zimmermann well, not deprive the Angels of their top prospect and help move us closer to the longer lasting road to success that is paved with 5 legit starters.

If I promised never to have Lannan throw another game, would you consider it RobBob? Hopefully, Lannan would show something between now and when we moved Dunn and perhaps he or another one of our 4/5 starter types could be included in a deal to help get the close to major league ready B+ or above prospect that would make this deal worthwhile.

PR: I’m leaning toward, I think they should. I don’t see anyone in the organization or on the free agent market that you want to invest that kind of money in; he’s already established here, he’s said openly that he wants to stay. You hope that he’s not going to deteriorate; in the post-steroid age, he’s getting up there in that range where power hitters go down for the most part, traditionally. You hope that he’s not going to. But you sign him for another year or two, and (Chris) Marrero’s up, or you go out on the free agent market looking for a first baseman. But I agree; I think they’re going to sign him. He’s a popular guy around here. He’s doing what they’re asking him to. He’s playing a decent first base, or decent enough that you can keep him there for a year or two, and he’ll hit 35 or 40 home runs, give you that production you need. Because without him, in this lineup, there’s a lack of power.

Here’s my response to this:
1) I don’t believe in Marrero. He hasn’t shown us that he can sustain an OPS well north of .800 at any level in the minors to this point. If I believed in Marrero, I would be more likely to give Dunn money but not years. I think Dunn’s going to want at least 3/38 as a raise over his 2/20 in his current deal. If I believed in Marrero, I’d give him almost anything he wants for two years and probably hold onto him. I don’t believe in him, so I’d rather save the money and trade for a prospect package that includes people better than Marrero.

2) I do disagree with keep him there for a year or two. Dunn’s going to feel that DC owes him 3 years after exceeding their expectations for two years.

3) “Without him in this lineup there’s a lack of power” – I’m not looking for power, I’m looking for wins. The Braves, Giants, and Padres took care of their pitching first. In the Giants and Padres case, the pitching has been enough to carry the lack of power. In the Braves case, they’ve filled in the power with prospects like Heyward (which we don’t have) and an affordable free agent in Glaus. Trade Dunn to move yourself closer to these three teams by increasing your odds of getting controllable power. A substantial reason why the Padres are contending is that they got out of the Jake Peavy business at the right time and got substantial prospects back.

Lastly, I’d argue that Dunn’s skill set, power and walks with poor defense, is less valuable to the Nats than it is to other teams because we lack OBP guys early in the lineup. Unless the young players we feature going forward are high OBP guys so that there are ducks on the pond for the dingers, we risk coupling top 10 league home run performance with low RBIs and low wins. Organizationally, there needs to be next to no tolerance Juan Pierresque leadoff guys who don’t walk enough and slap hitting low OBP infielders.

I don’t think you’ll find anyone who says Marrero of any other first base prospect is going to be major league ready in the next 2/3 years, so unless you know you can land a 1B on the market or in a trade you have to keep Dunner…and hope he takes the kind of contract souldrummer mentions above…

That’s almost impossible. It’s about replacing Dunn’s wins above replacement at a variety of positions with the money you save, selling high, and giving us some hope in the upper minors. Syracuse’s success is based on veterans. There’s no calvary there in the lineup and there’s nothing above a 4/5 starter in the rotation.

Harrisburg’s offense stinks. Espinosa hasn’t made much progress this year and Marrero doesn’t look like the answer. Brad Meyers is probably your best pitching prospect there and he’s not progressed to Syracuse and will struggle to this year becasue he’s hurt.

Things start to get better in Potomac. Norris is a blue chip prospect. Burgess is flawed but still young enough that hope hasn’t gone. But still, there aren’t guys who are lighting up the Carolina League in the rotation enough to say that’s likely to be a AA star next year and in the rotation by 2012. Strasburg and Storen were our top pitching prospects by a wide margin the day they entered the organization and they are already here.

That’s why I say hope starts with Hagerstown and below. The entire outfield and Jeff Kobernus (who I may be overrating) are potential prospects and you hope some pitchers progress.

I look at our minor league box scores every day and I’m starting to look at lists that they say our high minors is inferior to the Braves certainly. Unless we’re prepared to start spending like a major market team, I don’t think that spending, buying and holding is going to help us make up ground on the Braves and Mets. The Mets are ahead of us because they’ve gotten lucky with pitching but also because they had Ike Davis and Reuben Tejeda in the upper minors to help out when some of their vets went down.

…uh, what?

See that you’re new around here, and glad to see a fellow Caps fan around. There’s a lot of us around here who root for Dukes to find his game and his career. Don’t have a problem with them moving past Dukes, but he’s more than just a punch line.

Home runs don’t sell tickets. Adam Dunn doesn’t sell tickets. Winning sells tickets. Other that the novelty, that’s why people are buying up tickets for Strasburg’s games, cause they might have a chance to win.

This team is once again on it’s way to losing many more games than it wins this year. If they can get players that will help them win more games in the future than they lose, they should trade Dunn.