Rountdable #4 - Part 3 : Everything Else

HARPER

Trying to keep the segues moving (not to be confused with trying to keep the segways moving, which is apparently Jimbo's job) I think you put as much thought into Old Dirty Perez as you needed to Basil. He might fill in the back of the rotation, but more likely he's Simontacchi-esque insurance. Patterson, Hill, Chico should be #1-#3 (I'm still with you Johnny!) but who gets the last two slots? Personally I like Redding's at #4, and Lannan in the 5 hole. Redding has been an effective major leaguer when healthy and Lannan is only 23, not like the ancient 27 yr old Jay Bergmann.

CHRIS

I don't think you can really look at a starting rotation like that. As we've seen each of the last few years, what you start out with is never what you end with. All those guys you mention are going to get time this year. It's just a matter of when.

Because of that, some of the players like Lannan are going to have a tough time. Redding's contract means he's a virtual lock to start with the team. Perez' probably has a release trigger if he doesn't make the club (like Colome's did last season), so if he doesn't fall on his face, he's got an inside edge. You start penciling those names in, and there's not nearly as much room for Lannan and Chico and Bergmann. The first two have options. (does Bergmann?) They can be sent to the minors and replenish the team later once Hill and Patterson break.

BASIL

Lannan, Cy Young winner. Chico, Hall of Famer. Mock, greatest pitcher of all time. Detwiler, most excellent sentient in the universe.

Sorry, I was just reading Pravda . . .

Anyway, both of you make good points. Perez isn't really worth much of a mention, and the rotation depth (such as it is) needs to be managed in an orderly and effective manner. At the least, our veteran flotsam is a little better this year, and, unlike last year with the Hanrahans of the world, this year's presumed white knights come from our own organization more or less.

CHRIS

Overall, the pitching staff has a decent chance to be better than last year. Not a lot better. But a bit better. If they manage to allow the same number of runs as last year, that's an improvement. We had 45 starts from pitchers with ERAs over 6. 21 were from stiffs with ERAs over 7.

By 'upgrading' to merely bad, they can knock a few runs of their total.

HARPER

It's odd. When I think of last season I think the Nats got pretty lucky; Hill really pitching very well, Redding coming back into form, Bergmann's first half success, that Levale vs Santana game. But looking back for every success there was a complete failure, Simontacchi, SouthEast Jerome, all those other Levale games. With a few very minor breaks they will have a better rotation - but as you say it may not show with the move to the smaller park.

What concerns me is not who's going to bounce around the back of the rotation (at least until end of the season call-ups) but what happens if the relief breaks down. Look at the team's relief ERAs over the past 5 years: 4.40, 4.00, 3.55, 4.49, 3.81. I bring this up not to show a cyclical pattern to the ERAs but to show there is a big element of randomness here and last year the Nats got nice and lucky. Are the Nats going to have 6 different relievers have ERAs under 4.00 and pitch 40+ innings in 2008? Is Jon Rauch going to get through the season without his arm falling off? I'm sure they'll find some decent pitchers here - they seemed to excel at that - but I think it's going to be a bit rougher this year.

Of course I'd trade a slight increase in starter quality for a slight drop in reliever quality anyday...

CHRIS

I'd agree with that. The sheer workload of the relievers last year is something to be concerned about going forward, but... They're also relatively deep there. They've got too many acceptable arms battling for spots as it is. Someone like Schroder -- who could be a pretty good setup guy for half the teams in the league -- has to get lucky to make the roster out of spring.

BASIL

Trade Rauch!

Just kidding. Well, maybe.

One thing I think the fanbase might be missing is that reliever performance tends to be pretty volatile; we're not talking about really big samples, and the ones who are worked particularly hard often become injury risks. So I think there's this expectation that Rauch, for instance (and in particular), will be a major player on the first big-time Nats contender, whenever that is. Maybe he will be, but I'd say the odds are more likely he won't.

Which isn't to say the Nats won't have good relief pitching by then. They probably will. Many of the good relievers will just come by surprise when we get to that point. As, come to think of it, Rauch and Saul Rivera and Hector Carrasco and Gary Majewski and others were.

HARPER

I think this gets back to a point I've been trying to make in the offseason. The franchise is really moving in the right direction. Compared to this time last year, the minors are obviously better, the hitting is likely to be better, the pitching has a chance to be better, and the team...well it might win fewer games. The improvement is probably going to be minimal in 2008 and a few bad breaks and the Nats could be a 70 win team. I hope the support doesn't suffer if this happens.

CHRIS

Oh, there's definitely reason for optimism. They ARE on the right track, even if I haven't agreed with every intermediary step -- and even if Ted Lerner's accountants did.

But for support to suffer, doesn't there have to be much support in the first place? We've got the diehards, of course. But schmucks like us don't carry a franchise. I'd go into a rant about the Post here, but I'll save that for another time!

HARPER

Support is just a euphamism for attendance, which, no there isn't much in the first place. It's going to go up, sure, but suffering can still happen. You and I (and some others, I hope) think the team is a bit too...uh...frugal now. Imagine how it'll be if they go into a new stadium and don't get the bump they want? A good season + new stadium would help the team not see that, but like I said I'm not enthused about this season having more wins. More interest, more hope? Definitely. But not more wins and I think wins -> casual fan interest -> increase attendance -> $$ -> ??? -> Playoffs.

I'd hate to see the improvement momentum squashed just because the Nats don't catch a few breaks in '08 (and yes, I realize this is a total pessimist argument)

BASIL

Oh, you're just a couple of Plan-Pissers!

Chris has put pen to paper on the runs scored vs. runs allowed thing so much that South America is bereft of trees and the White Bros. are swimming in Olympic-sized swimming pools filled with Texas tea sweetener. And this team checks out pretty decently. A modest improvement over last year, with a fine shot at break-even or so for the home slate, and maybe some progressive improvement as the season wears on. It's not sexy, but it's got teeth.

HARPER

"It's not sexy, but it's got teeth" makes a good slogan for the Nats 2008 season, don't it? (or a low-rent online dating service)

Any thoughts on Nick and Dmitri?

BASIL

My thoughts on Nick and Dmitri are pretty simple:

(1) If Nick's healthy, he's the starter; better defense, OBP and all that stuff.

(2) If Dmitri is such a great team player -- which, by the way, is what he's held up as -- then he accepts a role player assignment, with full knowledge that the organization fished him out of the reject pile and then increased his bank account by $10M in gratitude for his services.

(3) The stuff about clearing a path for Marrero is all speculative until Marrero emerges from the high minors as a stud hitting prospect, which we all hope he will be.

CHRIS

What he said.

I really don't understand the drumbeat to trade either of them.

It's not like that $5 million on the bench would go somewhere else other than Uncle Teddy's pocket. And it's not like the Lerner children are going to be eating watered-down gruel while Dmitri dines on an 8-pound steak.

There's playing time for both. There's money for both. I don't see where the problem is.

BASIL

Football mentality. Quarterback controversy, you can't lose your job due to injury, etc.

Manny's a smart guy. He can make it work. And it can work if the players agree to make it work.

HARPER

Nature abhors a vacuum, and people in sports abhor a platoon. Players feel it dulls them down, fans immediately jump the minute one has a slump or a streak calling for an end to it. It's like no one wants managers to manage.

Yeah, Nick should start. It's a no-brainer from all directions but one, who the fans love more, and that shouldn't be how the team makes decisions anyway.

So after all this the sentiment I'm feeling is whatever we get on Opening Day really doesn't matter, at least this year. There isn't anyone with the potential of being "robbed" of a spot nor anyone unfairly kept in their role by veteran momentum. It's not like starting Guzman is holding down Milledge or anything. With the team in transition, good players will find playing time and bad ones will be shuttled off. And if that doesn't happen we'll complain about it mdiseason.

All true, but it hardly as fun as making Spring and the Opening Day roster overly important.

CHRIS

So you're suggesting that Nihilism is the best approach to being a Nats fan?

Works for me!



THANKS TO CHRIS AND BASIL FOR PLAYING ALONG.

Rountdable #4 - Part 2 : Middle Infield

HARPER

You bring up the Boone Boys but that's just the undercard for the main event Triple Threat match; Belliard, Lopez, and Guzman. Three enter - 2 leave. My money is on Belliard and Guzman (who God as my witness won't reach .700 for his OPS this year.)

BASIL

I'm not so sure it's a three-man cage match, at least for now. Guzman seems safe: he's got the contract thing, the contract year thing, the (finally) healthy thing, and the (fluky) batting average thing. That's a lot of things!

Ultimately, I think Lopez has a little bit of an inside track on the starting job at second. Belliard has signed as a utility guy, agreed to an extension at least in part as a utility guy, and is paid like a utility guy. And, when it comes down to it, Manny's a very smart guy and he knows Cristian Guzman cannot be anyone's best option to lead off. Lopez might be.

CHRIS

If he's that smart, then he'll realize that Guzman isn't an answer at short either. If I had to bet, I'd say that Belliard and Lopez will have the most PA of the trio by the end of the season. Those two certainly give the team the best chance to win.

BASIL

Maybe so. But Manny's also street smart -- or so it seems -- and the line on the street is that Guzman finally has a chance to reclaim value on the deal. (Disregard for a moment that the deal was a loser for all time by August of 2005, if not earlier.) So, until Guzman disabuses the notion, I'm thinking he's given some pretty wide latitude (or longitude?).

One other factor -- maybe not the most important but it's out there -- is that Guzman is tied in at one position. Flop and Belliard, at least theoretically, can contribute at both short and second. That makes them more natural bench options.

However, your outlook on such things seems correct to me when you apportion plate appearances as you do. A lineup isn't carved on tablets, a season is long, and there's plenty of time to administer SS/2B PT in a reasonable manner, given the constraints of the roster.

HARPER

Yes, but everyone, the manager, the players, the fans, want a general sense of stability. Musical positions maybe the reality but certainly not the ideal. The starting nine on Opening Day will be taken as the hopeful starting nine for the Nats for 2008. And the 2008 Nats are still looking at promoting these guys for deadline deals. That leans toward a Guzman / Belliard starting duo. If they do well...Lopez may never see those ABs.

I guess is makes sense not to start Belliard if you think Lopez is the future, but do you? I don't.

CHRIS

I like Lopez' future a hell of a lot more than I like Belliard's, given the latter's age and cup size. (Up top, not down low)

Stability is great, but that shouldn't be the goal in and off itself. Look at the Harper's favorite team, the Yankees. Til Matsui, it was a roving hoard of left-fielders, and they managed ok. They seem to have had more success with instability, even!

The overall point behind what you're saying is right. The team doesn't have any upper-level infielders ready to go. There is no MI of the future. So maybe that's why it's important to see what Lopez can give you, since he's the youngest of the trio, and might need to fill the gap til someone like Ian Desmond can show up and disappoint in three years.

BASIL

I guess with Lopez it ultimately comes down to whether anyone can believe in him going forward anymore. If so, then I suppose he's worth the most playing time among the middle infielders (and certainly in a Lopez vs. Belliard head-on comparison). If not, well . . . he might as well have been non-tendered or dumped for a few pennies on the dollar. It's nice to win an arbitration hearing, but $4.9M is $4.9M, and there exists the (presumed) possibility that he could prove a distraction.

Not that Stan believes in team chemistry . . .

CHRIS

(Or spending money)

Yeah, it's a cheapshot. Deal!

BASIL

Or, in the case of almost any free agent out there, no deal.

(Whoops, forgot about OD Perez!)

HARPER

You must know that I wouldn't personally choose to start Guzman over
Lopez. I did compare him to the festering corpse of Honus Wagner and
all. Just trying to predict what is going to happen and this crystal
ball is seeing Belliard. Perhaps because Belliard is more
ball-shaped.

Roundtable #4 - Part 1 : Outfield

HARPER

Here we are finally. The beginning of the new season, full of more trite rebirth pieces than we'll read if Obama gets elected later this year. Baseball-wise it looks like everything is settled for the Nats so we can go on and discuss what people are really interested in: How sad was it to see Donkey Lips in that Amp commercial during the Super Bowl. Oh ok, I'll save that for the "Ugs and Kisses" Blog.

The Nationals are actually only set in a few places. Wide open in my mind are first base, middle infield, and the back of the rotation. Catcher may be an issue given LoDuca's injury status. Those OF slots are open in name (though I have trouble seeing Dukes, Escobar or some surprise guest moving into a starting role). There's always those last bench and bullpen slots. It should be an interesting spring. Should be. I'm hesitant only because this team does have a nasty habit of not making decisions, even for a season or three.

Let's start with what I think will be a fairly open and shut discussion. The OF will be Austin, Wily Mo, and Milledge, right? They aren't going to turn this into another "Everybody gets 2 weeks" situation like it's been forever, will they?

BASIL

I'd think so, or at least for now. The one issue I could see arising is a Wily Mo versus Elijah one. I've seen it said that WMP is not a bench type -- you have to play him every day for him to get in a groove and have the opportunity to blast a homer per week or so. I can see that reasoning. But I have a feeling he might find himself exposed in real, honest-to-goodness full-time play, and I have a feeling that Dukes is too good to be a fourth outfielder. Of course, there's also a chance WMP blossoms into a big-time power source and Dukes flops or . . . well, continues down a destructive path.

Other than that, I think what you have is typical fill-in time by the Machowiaks and Willie Harriseseseses of the world. Maybe Milledge gets off to a tough start, but Acta is apparently an admirer, so I doubt we're looking at 350+ at-bats from a bench type while Lastings is scouting out Columbus recording studios.

CHRIS

I think Basil makes some good points.

As distasteful as I find Dukes personally, the guy's got a world of baseball talent and by all rights could be starting on 3/4 of the teams in the league. The question, as we've seen, is whether his temperament will allow him to live up to that potential.

There are about 1,200 ABs to be divided amongst left and center. Give Milledge and Pena 400 at each and Dukes 200 per position, and the problem's solved. Certain managers are good about riding the 'hot hand' and maximizing the production. The problem Acta had last year is that his hot hand was more like a fist full of horse poop. I'm not sure there's any conceivable way of molding Langerhans, Logan and Casto into something acceptable.

BASIL

In some places a fist full of horse poop might be a delicacy, but in baseball terms we're talking about more like the Sally League. What the Nats had out in CF definitely wasn't major league-quality -- which was entirely foreseeable, since we're talking about several years of waiver wire and dump deal guys. That's why (assuming he is competent in CF) the Milledge deal is so important in this context: it breaks the cycle of assorted "flavors" in CF, which is just a kinder way of saying the management stopped tossing out substandard options and forcing the manager's hand to change as a result.

Not to get all "meta-" here, but it's kind of cool to witness transformative events like this for the franchise!

CHRIS

That's the impressive thing right there. Even Milledge as a 4th outfielder represents a substantial improvement over last year. This team wasted 150 LF ABs on Snelling, Casto, Langerhans, Fick, Restovich, and Watson. Of those, only Snelling had some sort of upside. And they wasted almost 450 combined ABs in CF on Logan and Langerhans.

That's 600 ABs that's going to be taken by competent major-league hitters with potential!

HARPER

We can all agree the Nats have better parts. When someone asks me where I think the OF will be in 2010 now I can say "In the majors" as opposed to "fighting for Indy league playing time" or "pouring cement foundations".

But just because the 3 little pigs finally are using bricks, doesn't mean they know how to build a house. I still will harbor my concerns about the proper distribution of playing time until I see one of these new guys allowed to ride out a 3-week long slump. For all the (completely fair) talk about how the Nats had nothing to work with the last few years they still were sitting out Ryan Church in favor of Nook Logan in early September last year. A bad April for Wily Mo and a good one for Justin Maxwell and I fear the cycle could start again.

The good news though, like you guys said, is that the talent is so much better that you have to think the right guy will have a hot stretch at the right time by chance if not by design.

One more quick OF point before we move on...Dukes on the major league squad; is this a given for the sake of being "mentored" or is there a real chance that he'll be in AAA because they want him to play everyday? (of course I ask because I've been thinking the latter...)

CHRIS

There's definitely a crunch for roster spots and Mackowiak and Harris are capable outfielders on guaranteed contracts, so sending Dukes down wouldn't be a complete shocker.

But isn't that the rationale for half of Dmitri's salary? Dukes doesn't exactly have a great reputation with the International League. It seems like the Nats are trying to get him to change the environment he's in to help make lifestyle changes, and throwing him back into the scene of so many of his crimes, while sensible on one level, is completely crazy on another.

BASIL

I agree with Chris. I imagine the Nats are planning to take an almost quasi-military approach with Dukes: "Here's Dmitri. He's your sergeant. Stick with your sergeant, watch what he does -- you'll live. Go off on your own and do something stupid -- you'll die." So to speak. That kind of arrangement, which the Nats have given every impression of intending, makes no sense if they don't execute it from the beginning of the regular season.

But that does leave a roster crunch. Doesn't it seem like this happens a lot? I don't know if it's a Bowden-specific thing, but on a yearly basis it seems like there's a line of double-parked players outside of the Panera Bread in Viera. I know we're on the outfield right now, but the infield thing filters to the outfield, because Machowiak and Harris and the Pete Orrs of the world are directly affected by all of it. It will be interesting to see how it plays out, but I'd imagine the front four of the outfield will break camp intact.

CHRIS

Don't forget the Nepotista on your list!

BASIL

Need I ask: Which one?!

Or has nepotista evolved into a plural usage now too?

CHRIS

Fair point!

That's where looking at the contract status makes sense. They've already given guaranteed deals to a bunch of these players -- more than they have roster spots for, really -- so there's no chance of a Bret(t) making it at the expense of an Aaron. (Unless George -- Brett, not Boone -- comes out of retirement)

HARPER

But if we keep both, we can say we've got a "Boones Farm"! Ha! ha?

Bowden can't help but tinker with players that have options, and I know Dukes must have options. Plus, Jimbo loves going with the AAA "hot hand". If Dukes starts up here and isn't immediately successful then the next slap hitting OF that is smacking singles all over Columbus will take his place. If he's going to OH eventually why not at season's start?