Monday’s News & Notes

18 Commments

1. Too bad about Turner. Guess the Padres will now be looking to trade him this month . . . Meanwhile, Ross continues to look like a solid acquisition as well. I wonder whether the Nats will look to push him to AAA soon.

   General admission is $1 on Mondays at Potomac, so if you’ve wanted to see Giolito, here’s your opportunity. (I’m not responsible for the threat of thunderstorms.)

   1. There you go, abdicating responsibility!

2. I can’t remember a time when our farm system has been so… boring. There’s such a huge gulf between the haves and have-nots, and there’s increasingly fewer ‘haves’ left in the organisation. With Taylor, Cole, Grace, Jordan, Hill, Difo, Solis and Rivero all bouncing around between Washington and the minors, there’s hardly anyone left of interest.

   You’ve got Giolito and Lopez in Potomac, and our former Padres (soon-to-be) in Harrisburg, and that’s about it. Voth and Pivetta are sort of interesting, if you squint, but just about everyone else is doing very little to maintain their prospect status (see: Goodwin, Skole, Renda, Ward, Severino, etc.)

   Luke, I love your work, but I understand your wavering commitment. Hopefully, the upcoming draft will bring some fresh faces, because this season is shaping up to be pretty bleak.

   1. Sorry, I hope you don’t take that as a complaint. I’d take 2015 over 2005-2009 any day! Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I seem to remember enjoying the farm more when we were naively pinning our hopes on Brandon Watson, Matt Chico, Collin Balester and Kory Casto.

      Oh well, we may not have any winners in the minors, but we’ve got a pretty good team where it matters most.

      1. What, you don’t miss the days when we were the 30th ranked farm system in baseball.
         There are at least 15-18 teams that would kill to have our farm system. That being said, I do understand it.
         Now if Matt Skole could regain his prospect status, that would get me excited.

         1. We’re witnessing the frustration of dependent minor league teams in a later drafting successful mlb team’s championship window. Guys we like who should be playing in AAA like Taylor have their development made secondary to winning games now. Moreover, I feel the new slotting rules made after the Goodwin/Purke draft make it tougher to offer signing bonuses that can attract viable system depth. Maybe this is the year that I need to start caring more about the gcl and the DSL because I don’t see compensatory playoffs for the lack of elite prospects.

            1. Don’t forget that Karns, Burns and Souza are all having pretty good MLB seasons for other teams.

            2. The good news is that short season ball is around the corner, so Jakson Reetz and Victor Robles are soon to make their season debuts.

            3. You’re probably right about the slotting system preventing finding gems in later rounds. But even so, our drafting philosophy under Rizzo has always skewed so conservatively beyond the first round, and now with the change in rules, the organisation has lost the one advantage it had (offering large bonuses to guys that were perceived to be difficult to sign- guys like Ray, Cole, Purke, etc.). Beyond these one or two exceptions each year, we’ve relied very heavily on college players, particularly 4th year players. In the past 6 drafts, we’ve taken only 7 high schoolers, 6 JuCo, and 46 college players in the first 10 rounds. Most of these guys are low-risk, low-reward types, while the HSers (Giolito, Taylor, Cole, Ward, Reetz, Roberto Perez and Hayden Jennings) have proven to have higher ceilings.

               We still also haven’t seen the Nats re-enter the international market. I believe we’ve been under out IFA budget in every year since the cap was established.

            4. I don’t think the Nationals are interested in busting their IFA budget cap the way many teams have, except perhaps for a truly exceptional player. Given the number of the prospects that they’ve started to get from their international program (Lopez, Bautista, Severino, Read, etc.) they may well be right.

            5. Fedde was on schedule and slated for GCL.

               In a related story, Matt Purke goes today at A ball.

               I can’t buy into the championship teams draft lower argument. The Cardinals seem to be stocked just fine.

               I also don’t think that breaking the bank (15 million dollar bonuses) internationally is the answer. For a lot less than that 15 million, you could hire a bunch more scouts to better scour the United States and Latin America to uncover tomorrow’s Vlad Guerrero/Rey Lopez types.

               It isn’t anyone’s fault; the system took a big leap forward last year with the same coaches and development people, it seems. Unless we are privy to the instructional mechanics within the organization, we don’t know why.

               But the what is clear – a lot of capable players, “prospect” or not, have regressed and plateaued this year. Why? Is it a player acquisition issue or a player development issue? Is the shuffling at the minor league level putting certain coaches and development people out of position?

               As for the remedy, there are clearly a boatload of prospects coming out of the DSL ’14. And, toolsy folks who were at GCL last year.

               And, the Nats have trade chips that they would do well to flip for more than first round picks. The team needs position player depth in the OF, 1B, and 3B at the A+-AA levels now, and closer-late inning talent, so that in a year they are replacements. I hope this is reflected in college products in the draft.

               But we have to acknowledge realities. This has been a system-wide depression, from the majors to A ball, in the development of players to their next skill level. It really should be an active discussion rather than focusing on the elites like Giolito and Turner.

3. The tanking of the talent is unmistakeable. It’s even more conspicuous because of how many players made major developmental leaps at this point last year. And other than Michael Taylor, we can’t fall back on how Nats injuries have forced players to be promoted too quickly. Whereas last year robbed many players with injury, this year has simply seen underperformance.

   There are just too many starting players, at every level, that proved to be ready to make the leap upward and now having done so, have flopped and fizzled. That coupled with players who are performing well below demonstrated capabilities at their levels and who have stalled or simply been exposed.

   ML – Grace, Barrett
   AAA – Dykstra, Cole, Hill, Martin, Davis, Butler, Minicozzi, den Dekker
   AA – Goodwin, Skole, Keyes, Mendez, De Los Santos, Perez, Self
   A+ – Spann, Miller, Bostick, Wooten, Yezzo, Ward, Mesa, Johansen, Napoli, Schwartz
   A – Mooneyham, Rodriguez, Read, Davidson, Dickey

   Ouch!

   Surely some of those folks will rebound, but one has to envision a lot of turnover, international movement up, and perhaps restocking the upper levels with yield for Desmond or Fister/Zimm.

   From what I can see, the only players who have really improved their stock on the field this year have been Turner, Solis, Pivetta, Austen Williams, Nick Lee, Valdez, Carey, Gardner, Keller, Abreu (notwithstanding all of his errors), and that’s pretty much it! Ouch! The upper minors are a nightmare…

   1. Most of the players you have listed aren’t considered prospects and have never been.

      Of those you’ve listed who are prospects:

      AJ Cole is doing fine at AAA

      Goodwin and Skole are struggling at AA after missing time with injuries

      Ward is struggling as a 20 year old in A+

      Rodriguez is a sleeper who hasn’t ever lived up to his potential and has missed time with injury, and Read is 4th on the depth chart of minor league catchers

      So, most of the prospects who have taken steps back are ones who already took steps back last season and have dealt with injuries. In other cases, there is a level of adjustment to a higher level, especially for a player like Ward, who was considered raw coming out of high school and is struggling for the first time in his professional career.

      The farm system isn’t broken. The season isn’t even half over, and several top prospects haven’t even played yet this season.

      1. Meanwhile, Ross, Lopez, and Giolito all look like strong pitching prospects, and Turner/Difo look like the middle infield of the future. Add in MAT, and we have a good top-level of talent. Hopefully some of the other guys fill in this year behind them.

4. We will have to disagree on the significance of this. And whether someone is listed or not on “prospect lists” is completely arbitrary. Stephen Souza was not a listed prospect after 2012, before being added to the 40-man. Skole was. The fact is that all of the above are players that the organization has invested considerable resources in, with the exception of Minicozzi.

   My definition of a prospect is a person who projects to definitely perform well at a higher level. Perhaps a much higher level. A player who gets sent to the AFL is a prospect (Self).So is a player the team sets off for its fall instructional league. Someone the team touts loudly (Bostick, De Los Santos) is a prospect. A high draft pick (Miller, Dickey, Mooneyham, Johannsen, Goodwin) is a prospect. A player who performs extremely well in his early time with the organization is a prospect (Schwartz, Napoli). A player who gets promoted to the bigs and is early in his career is in actuality a prospect – even if not a rookie (Hill, Davis, Martin, den Dekker, Grace, Barrett). A player at a higher level and younger age is a prospect (Mendez). A player who is an all star in his first year at a higher level is a prospect (Keyes, Dykstra). A player whose performance continues to improve with each level (Perez, Yezzo, Wooten) is a prospect.

   Until they fizzle.

   Melissa – which healthy prospects who have experience above the Gulf Coast League have not played this year? I know there are a number of intriguing DSL alums like Robles, but doesn’t it prove my point that we are looking to people who are four years away?

   No power, no speed (Bautista hurt). Hard not to be disappointed.

   No one is saying the farm system is broken. But there are lots of folks who have been around awhile that the organization needs to cut bait on.

   Skole is well removed from his injury two years ago. Cole has plateaued.

   Read may be fourth on a depth chart, but his performance bears no resemblance to the promise of last season. Ward may be 20, but hitting under .240 with no power is nothing for us to be excited about.

   We have all been following the Nats for awhile, and I can’t recall being more disappointed in the performance of the four highest levels’ key players, whatever they may be called, in more recent years.

5. Where the heck is Fedde? Also, where is peric? I almost miss the 4A player of the year nonsense.

   1. Good question. Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of his TJ surgery. He was back on the mound as of March 16, but there’s been little to no news since. If he’s not with Auburn to start their season, then I’ll be worried.

6. Would guess that Fedde will debut with the GCL Nats when their season starts in 3 weeks.

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