Just another long-winded year-end review

Why isn’t Werth on the list of “Watch Your Six”, his LOOOONG contract notwithstanding?
He under-performed in just about EVERY way imaginable this year…and yeah, I know the Nats are struck with him for the next SIX years. Obviously I expect he will improve next year, but he sure stunk up the joint a lot this year.

SPINNER...played better in his rookie year than Desmond, has more mobility and is, IMHO, a better player. I see Utility Player for Desmond…if he can make the necessary adjustments…otherwise trade bait when Rendon’s ready to move up.

Flores…needs to play every day…in Syracuse… to continue his road to recovery so I give the backup C role to Pudge. (C’mon, you knew I’d say that!)

COFFEY… I think he performed better than expected and should come back next year though I won’t cry crocodile tears if he doesn’t.

And who is this Tommy Malone of whom you speak? ;-)
OTOH, Tommy Milone…we agree not good enough stuff for long term success in the majors…MAYBE OK as a long reliever?

LIVO…And finally, I’m TRYING to work my way to acceptance that 2012 will be a year without Livo, but I DON"T HAVE TO LIKE IT!

And thanks for providing a target for my barbs. At least, I didn’t shoot the poison darts!

we of course know that how we feel about relievers now will be very different from how we feel about them at the end of ST and again very different from the end of next season. i dont recall anybody not thinking that burnett would be an A+ pitcher. I think bally should stick around on the 40 man; judging him on so little a body of work then tossing him aside is too risky. Remember the disgust being logged on the interwebs each time hannrahan came into a game? he turned out alright i guess.

I can’t say I’m totally sold on Ramos defensively. shortly someone is going to throw some numbers at me to dispel that notion. I’m just going off the eye. He’s no pudge (yet) but I also subscribe to your concept that offense needs a lot more help than defense this winter. there will be few enough runner stealing second or coming home that ramos’ defense may be a non-issue

Lastly, if the stairs debacle taught me anything about rizzo, it’s that signed players may likely remain on the roster long after their usefulness.

Then again, we’re all nuts – well, some of us more than others. Twenty-four hours after the final out of the season, and here we are: desperately seeking solutions to all problems, real and imagined.

We love this team, don’t we?

Or…we just need to get a life. Possibly a bit of both? But what the hell, I’ll play.

Ax me, your list of keep-at-all-cost (you call it “not going anywhere”) should be much shorter. I’d carve it down to four : Zimm, Strasburg, Morse, and Ramos. Anybody else, and I mean anybody, has a price.

Once we have said that, what else we go to talk about? Price, that’s all.

Guy once axed a woman if she’d go to bed with him for ten thousand dollars. Sure, she said. OK, says he, how about ten dollars? What do you think I am, she responded. We’ve already established that, says he, now we’re just negotiating the price.

Zimm, Strasburg, Morse, and Ramos. After those four – the cornerstones, around which we shall build – it’s just a question of “how much?”

And we shouldn’t want him too, either.

Saying that further improving a good pitching core doesn’t make sense because, well, they’re good and therefore the clear answer is to focus on the bad offense doesn’t make any rational sense. Yes, one is good and the other bad, but all that matters is how much you are able to affect the score of the game. C.J. Wilson was worth 5.9 wins; Lannan, 81st in value out of 94 qualifying pitchers, was worth 1.3. So if they signed Wilson and didn’t offer Lannan arb, the difference would be 4.6 wins. And that is no different if they managed to upgrade a position player by the same amount… which isn’t even feasible considering who is available on offense Because even though they were 9th best at preventing runs, to the tune of 3.99/g, there were other teams that fared much better. The Phils gave up 3.27. That means that where the Nats would have to score 648 runs (4.0 versus the 3.99 they gave up) over the course of the season to score more than they allowed, the Phils would only need to score 531 to achieve the same thing. Basically, it doesn’t matter whether you do it through making good pitching greater at preventing runs or making bad hitting better at scoring them… and by the way, their pitching still wasn’t all that:: 7th out of 16 teams is far from not having any room for improvement.

What really causes me issues with what you wrote is about Espinosa. He was, at 24 and as a rookie, 8th in WAR compared with all other 2Bs, bringing both plus defense and plus offense (proof of the latter is that his wRC+ was 9th). So what that he strikes out a lot… when you consider the whole package (as wRC+ does) you see that he is strong with the bat… and all in his rookie year, meaning five more years of team control. I can’t fathom who you’d want to replace him with anyway. The FA list for 2B is full of worse players who are also all older. Can you explain?

And taking Desi over him… I’d love to hear the specifics to back that up. The younger Espinosa is a plus fielder; Desi is not. He may strike out a lot, but his BB% (8.6) is over three points higher, which is A LOT. In fact, Desmond walks less than all but 21 players (out of 164 who qualify). Espinosa has a higher SB%, which really mitigates the small difference in SB: getting caught is a killer, while being succesful is only mildly helpful, which is borne out when you apply linear weights (SBs are, on average, worth .18 runs, while CS loses you .45, which means that when you compare the two players, Desmond actually produces fewer runs f=through base stealing than does Espinosa). Most importantly, Most importantly, Espinosa’s ISO (the best metric for power) is .178 vs. 1.04 (or 15th worst) for Desi. That difference is just massive, and is really important, again using linear weights to make it clear why: with homers worth an average of 1.6 runs, Espinosa’s 21 to Desi’s 8 means that the former’s were worth 33.6 runs, while the latter’s were only worth 12.8. That in itself is a difference of over two wins.

All of this is encapsulated by their respective WARs (but I didn’t want to just throw it out as the supreme judge, figuring that by first breaking it down its validity in this case would be clear): Desi, with 1.4, is 114th of 164; Espinosa has two and a half times that with 3.5 (ahead of Morse, by the way). Oh, and he’s got an extra year of team control, to boot.

I’m not trying to be pissy, I’m just kind of bewildered and wanted to show why. I would love it if you could show me that my thinking should be otherwise, including those of you who seconded the author on this matter.

And just a few more little things. For one, I don’t know why you would part with Henry Rodriquez. Yes, he’s wild, but he will also only be 25 next year so he should continue to improve (it was above 9 BB/9 in AA, over 7 his first time in AAA, and this year, in the big leagues, it’s down to 6.17). And on the flip side, his K rate and GB % are so good that they balance things out to the tune of a 3.24 FIP, which is good for 49th best out of 134 RPs. Finally, he has five more years of team control, including two where he’ll get paid the minimum salary.

In turn, I find it puzzling that you WOULD want to keep Burnett. He is way more expensive and for that you get mere 6.16 career K/9 along with an also poor 3.86 BB/9, which leads to a definitely poor 4.40 FIP.

And why be so sure that Milone should stay in the minors all next year? I can’t find an MLE for him (which estimates what his performance in the minors would translate to him pitching with identical stuff at the MLB level), but at AAA this hear he posted an incredible 2.24 FIP, which leads me to believe he could certainly handle himself in the show (and, again, for all but no cost). Plus, they aren’t going to win this year, so you might as well give some youngsters a shot.

That said, I don’t think one of them should be Harper. AA is said to be the toughest to leap over, and of course low A is the easiest, seeing as how it is comprised of players who aren’t even good enough to be one of the 100 players who are at the four levels above them. And, surprise, while Harper kicked some butt in low A, he hit a wall at AA: his 256/.329/ .395 triple slash at AA is far, far short of suggesting he is ready for the Majors… to the extent that it would appear to be that he has only a tiny chance of getting there by next June, since hitting what would be mid-pack OPS in AA is absolutely no equivalent to doing the same in the ML.

Another thing I don’t get is why you think getting an outfielder, preferably one who can get on base, shouldn’t be a priority. Their third best option in the OF, based off of last year’s results, would be Ankiel who actually perfectly matched Desi’s lowly WAR: 1.4. He also had an astoundingly bad OBP of .296, making him a large factor in their team’s 25th ranked OBP. That means that there was usually no one on base for the power guys to drive them home, which means it was a huge factor in their offense being so bad.

Finally, Fielder doesn’t make any sense for the Nat’s. No one is going to take Laroche, at least until the trade deadline, and the year after you will have an infinitely cheaper Morse there who, by the way, was 8th in WAR, a mere 4 spots below Fielder. And Morse is under team control for another two years, so even though he is going to probably get substantial arbitration raises from his current 1.05 mil., it will be held in check. Fielder, on the other hand, will command 20 mil. or so. So assuming that Morse gets a 400% raise, he will still cost a fourth of what Fielder would, and for what? For 2.2 wins… which makes each cost them seven million dollars.

I welcome any counters to my arguments…

You point out a number of things that show that I should have considered, most creatively, I thought, with how Morse could probably be flipped for a good return, somewhat mitigating Fielder’s cost. And I hear you on being wary about Morse’s stability. That said, he has shown power for a few years now, and his 2010 K% and BABIP were very similar, so I guess I still think there is something legitimately sustainable… maybe, maybe not, but for a not-large market team, potentially creating a not-huge upgrade for a huge price mightn’t make sense. But you have me thinking…

Upton’s better looking than I thought…

One thing I just don’t buy: Desmond’s year was impressive… how? In his lack of power? Inability to walk? Poor fielding? And it is not like he had some amazing turnaround this year: he was ok in April, bad for four months, and good in Sep. That doesn’t mean anything (especially as you suggest with Espinosa — but not, for some reason — Desmond) that it could be that Sept. call-ups make it easier. As for Espinosa, he has shown at every level some power, patience, and fielding ability. I still really just don’t get how anyone could make any equivalence

Make your argument without known to be uselessly small sample sizes, but do add actual evidence to back up your arguments, especially when the extent to which you think the one is better than the other is so hyperbolic.

By the time I made it through all the comments, I had forgotten what Rob had actually written!

Just keep me on the, “keep Dez and Espi in place” bandwagon, until someone actually comes here, or up from MiLB, and actually wins one of the positions from them. At this point, I would be more disappointed by not seeing both of them, than to lose either of them. I truly enjoyed watching them play….especially defensively. I think both will realize improvement next season. As much as I like Morse, and those of you who know me know how much I was on his bandwagon all of last season (and pre-season), but I think Morse regresses back to what I had originally thought about him; a .280is hitter, with 25 HRs and 80 RBI……which is still very nice.