Initial 2021 Player Reports Completed; Top 100 Shutout Broken
We’re almost done with the 13th month of 2020, the 11th of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic, the first month of 2021, and the first pass on the 2021 Watchlist and Player Reports.
As I noted last month, this is mainly the 2020 Watchlist with some editing and rearranging of the deck chairs. I’ve already ordered the BA handbook and will update with the company line what they have to say, though I must remind folks that scouts were not allowed into most Alternate Training Sites (though some folks have noted that some tried to sneak in) and Washington was one of ten teams that refused to share video, which is one very big reason why the Nats stood pat at the trading deadline.
Yesterday, MLB revealed its Top 100 and unlike Baseball America’s or Keith Law’s, there was one (1) National – RHP Cade Cavalli, coming in at 99.
Much like the USN&WR Top Colleges list or the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, this is overblown. We’re more than a decade into the Mike Rizzo era/front office and it’s pretty clear that, to quote Mark Zuckerman:
The Nationals general manager doesn’t care what any outside publication says about his farm system. He cares only about what he sees with his own eyes and what his scouts and coaches see with theirs.
Last year, there were two in the BA Top 100, same for 2019, 2017, 2012, and 2010. There were three in 2018 and 2016. There were four in 2011, six in 2015. And just one in 2013 and 2014. Both outlying years had players that Nats traded for, not drafted or signed as an IFA.
Given that the Nats won the World Series in 2019 – and traded away quite a few prospects to do it – having none or only one shouldn’t be a surprise. For most of the Rizzo era, it’s been one or two Top 100 guys.
We’ve discussed this before, and we’ll discuss this [Forrest Gump pause] again: Rizzo tends to view all but a few of the Washington minor-leaguers as trade bait. We’ve been frustrated with some that went away, but he’s had some success too, even with minor-leaguers received in return… Wilson Ramos (as hitter)… Tanner Roark… Trea Turner… Joe Ross, just to name a few.
We now return you to your January malaise…
Really pleased we got 2019, because the 2020s are going to be a very difficult rebuild. Once Scherzer leaves after this season and Turner the following season, we’re left with a really bad team, with all of 3 players above average: Soto, Strasburg and Corbin, with only Soto having any hope of improvement. The bleakest part is that we have a pretty historically bad farm system, with little hope of replenishing the holes left by the exodus of Harper/Rendon/Scherzer/Turner/etc.
Sure, there’s a possibility that Rutledge or Cavalli pans out and Garcia or Kieboom turn into above replacement major leaguers, but that still leaves two holes in the rotation and three in the infield (not to mention numerous more holes in the outfield and bullpen).
I think we’re in for 1-2 more mediocre seasons before the wheels really fall off, and the Nationals are in for another lost decade like the 2000s.The only way this team turns things around is with some extremely astute drafts, but that will only be possible with regular top 5 draft picks, which also requires playing abysmal baseball at the major league level. Just look at the Cubs right now for a vision of the Nationals in 2 years (their window closed about 2 years before ours did), even down to how we’ll likely have to sell off Strasburg (like the Cubs with Darvish) when we’re a 60 win team with a SP still owed $140m.
I don’t know that it’s as bleak as that, although it’s going to be a difficult needle to thread. We’re really counting on Rutledge and Cavalli to reach their projected ceilings, and we probably need at least one of Henry, Lara, and Cate to end up as a competent mid-rotation starter to slot in behind them, too. On the positional side, I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion Turner walks; he’s not a Boras client, and once Zimmerman and Scherzer are gone, he’s going to be the de facto team captain. The Nats don’t have a ton in the pipeline, so it would be really, really helpful if the guys they have identified as future contributors, like Antuna, do end up hitting.
So while the farm system is under a lot of pressure right now, I’m not without hope. If the Nats get what they need to get from their handful of top-tier prospects, they may be able to solve the rest of their problems with money. The Nats have some of the deepest pockets in the league. I know we haven’t always thought of the Nats as a big-market team, but the Nats are a big-market team, or at least they act like a big-market team and they spend like a big-market team. (And someday, the MASN litigation will finally be resolved and they’ll control their own TV rights, which won’t hurt.) Going from a $95M rotation to a $60M rotation will free up some money with a quickness as early as 2022.
Seth Romero looked pretty good to me.
Spike lives!
How many sites do you know where you can get a ‘Get Smart’ photo with baseball news?
Not to mention Barbara Feldon looked much better than the guys from Toto
I will take Roseanna over Barbara Felton
But give me a Juliet Mills clone any day lol
Rizzo always looks to put a contending team on the field, not necessarily a division winner favorite. He has done well with DR signings. He has acquired FAs who have helped put the team into the playoffs. Look how many signings have been for 1 year. Methinks he’s getting ready for the FA class next winter.
It will be interesting to see where the Nats are headed. I was sorta glad the wheels came off so dramatically in 2020 to force them away from the “let’s keep the band together” approach that they had taken. The same approach doomed the Phillies of a decade ago and really hamstrung them for years. (The Nats ended up with one big extension for Stras but didn’t make the ones for Harper or Rendon.) By contrast, the Giants kept turning over their marginal players around a few stars and won three even-year championships.
Despite drafting approximately 3 million pitchers during the Rizzo era, the only one who has fully stuck as a starter with the Nats is Stephen 1/1 Strasburg. (Yes, I’m aware that approximately 1 million of them have been traded.) Stras is it, barring some miraculous improvement by Fedde or Voth . . . who they “trust” so much that they just signed a 37-year-old with a 5.16 ERA and 90 mph “heater” to bump one of them out of the rotation.
I do share Will’s unease about the years ahead, but perhaps not fully the sense of doom. I think the scrambling nature of this Nat offseason is going to become the new norm, though, where they have to attempt to rebuild a significant segment of the team every year. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won’t. I have limited confidence that the current farm system has many MLB regulars to provide, but even a steady flow of reserves and relievers would be an improvement over the last decade.
One big difference from the previous decade is that every other team in the division is now “trying.” Most other years, it was only one or two. The Nats no longer can count on beating a couple of the bottom-feeders 15 times a year.