Johnson, Suero, Read Honored with Organizational Awards

Weeks of speculation by dozens (OK, basically: us) was ended last night when the Nationals honored Daniel Johnson, Wander Suero, and Raudy Read with its 2017 Organizational Awards.

Johnson ended a two-year run by Jose “Orange” Marmolejos as the Player of the Year with an upset win over Victor Robles with a .298/.356/.505 line across two levels (.300/.382/.493 for Robles) and just increased his odds of being traded exponentially; ten organizational award winners have been traded since 2009. Johnson led the age-appropriate minor-leaguers in HR’s with 22 (28-y.o. Neftali Soto had 23, 30-y.o. Brandon Snyder had 24).

Suero, as speculated in the comments, was an unobjectionable choice in a season where no pitcher posted an ERA under 3.00 while throwing more than 100 innings. The 26-y.o. led the Nats minors in saves with 20, 10 apiece at AA and AAA. He pitched in 54 games, finished 45 of them, had an ERA of 1.79 with a WHIP of 1.07 while striking out 65 in 65⅓ innings. Call me crazy, but I think he’d have rather been added to the 40-man and called up.

Finally, there’s the ineffable Bob Boone Award, which went to Raudy Read in its fifth edition (previous winners: Tony Renda, Wilmer Difo, Austen Williams, and Rafael Bautista). Read lowered his passed balls total from 20 recorded instances to 14 while committing a career-high 10 errors. But he also more than doubled his HR total from nine to 17 and recorded his second-highest slugging percentage of .455.