Offseason Update: Oct. 9, 2021
It’s post-mortem season on the beat writer side and Cade Cavalli cheerleading over at Baseball America.
STATE OF THE FARM
Mark Zuckerman’s article (linked above; warning – the reasons for the “MASN Commenter” trope are in abundance) gets to the perennial chicken-and-egg question about the failure to draft or the failure to develop. Obviously, it’s both, with a hard lean toward the latter. The evidence? Every list of relievers drafted by Washington but pitching elsewhere.
What continues to confound me is how Washington can identify talent on other teams’ rosters, trade for them, and turn them into either useful players or subsequent trade chips. It would seem to me that this could be done sooner, i.e. before that talent is drafted elsewhere.
The early returns on the 2021 draft are promising, but as yesterday’s GBI showed, you can take a look at the guys who were all that and bag of chips from past GBIs at the GCL/Auburn levels and you get a lot of this. Find me one that wasn’t an IFA or a high draft pick [insert Seth Romero joke here].
Like I wrote two years ago, things are better than they were, but I’m having a hard time believing the cycle won’t repeat itself if they don’t do better with the non-IFAs and lower-level picks.
KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE CBA NEGOTIATIONS
The upcoming CBA could potentially change things that affect the minors. For example, MLB could decide that it can no longer tolerate tanking (2021 was the second 162-game season with four 100-loss teams, the first was in 2019) and implement an NBA-style lottery. Or it could decide that maybe an NFL-style schedule might help, though it would probably have to be limited to interleague play and by geography (which would also preclude any pipe dreams of English-soccer-style relegation).
Probably the biggest sea change would be an international draft, however, five years ago it was considered a stumbling block when things were relatively amicable between MLB and the MLBPA. Things are much more contentious now, and I’d like to think that some of the veterans are starting to notice that selling out the kids hasn’t worked out in the long term.
2021 DSL NATIONALS
One of the first things we noticed when they started up play was how few guys were left from 2019 – about a half-dozen. The Nats had, after all, been skewing younger after years of signing (what they hoped would be) “late bloomers.”
2021 was no different on that front: The hitters averaged 17.8 years old (Lg. Avg. 17.9) and the pitchers averaged 18.8 years old (Lg. Avg. 18.7). Two of the six repeats were batters and the other four were pitchers. This pattern appears to be the m.o. across the DSL as some teams’ avg. age for pitchers was over 19.
What was different though is that this group of youngsters were winners, finishing 3rd, percentage points behind 2nd, and three games out of 1st. Even better, they had the best pitching in the entire DSL — 3.22 R/G, 2.93 ERA (vs. 4.78 and 4.28 Lg. Avg.’s).
Obviously, the hitting wasn’t as good (3.93 R/G) but, as the slight gap between the ERA and R’s suggests, the defense was good with the 8th-best FPct. (.962 vs. .953 LA), the 10th-least errors, the least passed balls, and the second-least wild pitches.
The thing to watch for next year will be how the Nats (and everyone else, really) handle things. With one less short-season team (at least for the Nats), some of the DSL guys may repeat simply because there isn’t enough room in the FCL, presuming the Nats don’t or won’t field a second FCL Team (three organizations fielded two FCL teams, four fielded two AZL teams).
Without further ado, the Obligatory Top 5’s:
| TOP 5 BATS | TOP 5 ARMS |
| 1. Erick Tejeda, 1B .293 GPA, 3HR, 24RBI |
1. Gabriel Agostini, LHRP 1.11/2.25/0.90, 6BB in 32⅓ IP |
| 2. Eliesel Santana, LF/RF .254 GPA, 9-2B, 17BB in 41G |
2. Jose Atencio, RHSP 1.58/2.13/0.86, 0.7 BB/9IP |
| 3. Juan Garcia, 3B .243 GPA, 10SB, 28BB in 54G |
3. Jose Cedeno, RHSP 1.24/2.70/0.74, 11.3 K/9IP |
| 4. Jose Colmenares, C .231 GPA, 46% CS% |
4. Jefrem Leon, RHRP 1.46/3.12/0.93, 4.7 H/9IP |
| 5. Winder Diaz, IF .230 GPA, 28BB, 8E |
5. Raynel Moron, RHSP 4.30/2.84/1.39, 0HR in 44IP |
Honorable mention to 17-y.o. 1B Jhoan Contreras, who split time between 1B and DH with Tejeda, and 18-y.o. Eliel Marcano, who issued just two walks in 24IP.Folks interested in seeing the full team’s statistics can find them here.
Anytime you have 6 pitchers with a sub 2 ERA you have a lot of potential, something to get excited about.
Looking at the sheer size of the Nats FCL team shows the smart teams were the ones that had 2 teams in the league.
There were only 7 teams with the brains for that, it will be helpful if the Nats f.o. gets smarter before next season.
CBA will definitely be something to watch. There’s less overt pessimism about a lockout than there was this time a year ago, so my hope (expectation?) is that MLB and the MLBPA have been quietly talking for a while now and have been putting together the framework for a deal, even though I imagine there are still gaps to close and unaddressed questions to answer.
Just spitballing here, but I expect the new CBA will include an international draft, the designated hitter in both leagues, most of the rule changes tested in the minors this season, some sort of service time rule (I suggested a player who is called up for at least 20 days is retroactively credited with service time for the season to date), probably a salary floor and hard cap, and maybe an agreement to phase in an at least partially lottery-based draft, probably/hopefully not starting with the 2022 draft.
Another thing I’m expecting to happen this winter is for MLB to officially announce it intends to expand to 32 teams by some point this decade. Whether that is actually a *good* idea or not is, of course, debatable.
The DSL pitching staff was indeed excellent. The batters, very poor. However, it’s important to note that the Nationals are one of 14 teams to only field one DSL team, which speaks to a wider systemic problem within the Nats organization (I’ll get to that in a second). Basically, 16 other teams spread their best players across two teams. So while the Nationals had a stable of impressive pitchers (5 with ERAs below 2.00!), that’s the equivalent of most other teams having 2-3 pitchers with sub 2.00 ERAs on each team, which sounds far less impressive, but is the same result.
What is especially damning is the batters, though. We have exactly two batters who hit above league average (.682 OPS): Tejeda and Eliesel Santana. We had 14 that were below average. Meanwhile, just looking at two random 2-DSL-team franchises, the Yankees had – no joke – thirty batters above average (>.682 OPS). The Indians had TWENTY. For whatever it’s worth, both Yankees teams’ batters on average were older than the Nats team, but both Indians teams’ batters were younger than the Nats.
We all know how unlikely it is for minor leaguers to make it to the majors, especially so for those starting in the DSL. But just playing the numbers game, bringing as many players in as possible, like most MLB teams do, will yield more results or give you better odds. It defies logic that the Nationals aren’t playing this game too.
I’ve said it many times, but I’ll repeat it again: this rebuild is going to be needlessly long and painful. If you have the infrastructure (both people, i.e. scouts, coaches, analysts, etc., and systems, i.e. player profiles, developmental plans, etc.) in place to churn out good talent, you can turn a franchise around relatively quickly. Look at the Yankees, who did this in just one season in 2016. The Rays are in a perpetual rebuilding state while remaining highly competitive. Meanwhile, the Orioles famously ignored Latin America for decades, and placed no value in development and analytics (just look at Chris Davis’ contract or the unending list of pitchers that have immediately turned into stars upon leaving the Orioles). Their rebuild is entering its 5th season with no end in sight.
The Nationals are a heck of a lot closer to the Orioles than the Yankees or Rays. There’s a chance to turn this around, and build those systems that have been lacking for the past decade, but it will still take years for them to start yielding major league results. I can’t tell if this is in the works, with the dinosaur, Boone, the “brains” behind the Nationals’ player development “approach”, being forced out, and the head of the “analytics” department (Mondry-Cohen) also leaving this offseason. Perhaps change is afoot. Or maybe, more pessimistically, it’s yet another sign of the lack of care and attention the organization gives to things like this.
Luke touched on a point that also has had me scratching my head, for years — the Nats seem to be a lot better at scouting talent in other organizations than they are at scouting college and high school talent, and with doing honest scouting/evaluation within their own organization. Finnegan, Rainey, Sam Clay, Lane Thomas (who looks like steal), Riley Adams, etc., are recent examples, but it goes way back. Getting Joe Ross as a throw-in was genius. Everyday Felipe was a throw-in of the Karns trade for Sheriff Lobo.
Ryan Tatusko was the headliner in the trade for Cristian Guzmán, but let’s include that Roark guy too. Guzmán went on to play 15 games for the Rangers. Roark started 141 for the Nats. Yes, there have been plenty of others who haven’t panned out. But there are also superlative examples of ones who have, really more examples like this than there are draft picks who have made it over the last decade.
Have the Nationals made a good trade in the past 5 or so years? Obviously, the ones made in July are far too early to judge, but I’m talking about the trades from like 2016/7 onward.
We certainly had a reputation for trade wizardry (you mentioned the biggest), but it feels like the league got smarter somewhere around 2015 while Rizzo & co stayed the same. And now there’s no suckers left to take advantage of.
These are our biggest trades since 2016:
Storen for Revere (wash)
Hearn and Vazquez for Melancon (should’ve been a loss, if Vazquez weren’t such a terrible human)
Schrock for Rzepcyznski (loss)
Pedro Avila for Derek Norris (loss)
Giolito, Dunning and Lopez for Eaton (huge loss. I know someone’s going to make the “but.. World Series” argument, but that doesn’t justify every transaction good or bad that led up to 2019. Adam Eaton was worth 2.6 WAR to the Nationals. Reynaldo Lopez, alone, has been worth 4.5 WAR. Don’t even get me started on Giolito (11.5 WAR). We wouldn’t have needed a rebuild if our rotation was, at the moment, Strasburg, Giolito, Corbin, Lopez, Fedde/Dunning.)
Espinosa for Adams and McGowin (win, if only to get rid of Danny Espinosa. Though McGowin has turned into something of value, at least.)
Luzardo, Treinen and Neuse for Doolittle and Madson (wash? Doolittle was very good, but so was Treinen for the A’s. Luzardo isn’t looking like such a huge loss anymore, but he’s still only 23…)
Mills for Kendrick (win! Actually, sneakily probably the best trade on the list)
Tyler Watson for Kintzler (wash)
Gutierrez, Perkins and Morel for Kelvin Herrera (loss/wash if you’re generous. Gutierrez would be some really helpful depth at 3B right now, and we only got 2 months from Herrera.)
Goodwin for Condra Bogan (loss. Goodwin has turned into a useful 4th OF, while Condra-Bogan retired without pitching above AA.)
Kintzler for Jhon Romero (Wash, potentially a win? This was looking like a loss, after Kintzler suddenly turned into a good reliever after leaving the Nationals, but Romero has surprisingly played himself to the majors. If he can keep it up, then it could be a pretty good trade.)
Murphy for Monasterio (wash, no value was gained or lost)
Gio for Harrison and Lara (wash, no value was gained or lost)
Madson for Istler (wash, no value was gained or lost. Even though the Nationals inexplicable handling of Istler is forever going to haunt me. Istler was throwing excellently in AAA with the Dodgers, and then we sent him to A ball, and now he seems to have retired.)
D. Johnson, Monasterio and J. Rodriguez for Yan Gomes (win, potential wash. Gomes was exactly who we thought we were getting. Meanwhile, Johnson and Monasterio could still turn into something useful. To date, though, this has worked out better for DC than Cleveland.)
Roark for Rainey (wash, unless Rainey can ever develop consistency)
Adams for Nick Wells (loss. Adams is still inconsistent, but doing so in the majors. Wells is inconsistent in the minors)
Johnston for Hudson (Win, potential wash. Hudson was fantastic for the Nats, but Johnston was fantastic in the minors for the Blue Jays this season. If he can keep it up, we might regret giving him away.)
Fletcher, Guilbeau and Alvarado for Elias and Strickland (Loss, loss, loss. Elias and Strickland weren’t worth a bag of ball, much less three actual baseball players.)
McMahon for R. Harper (wash. No value was gained, none lost)
Our best trade in 5 years was McKenzie Mills for Howie Kendrick, and the only reason that trade was as valuable as it was is because we were smart enough to re-sign him to that 2 year deal.
The Daniel Hudson for Kyle Johnston, and Gomes for Johnson/Monasterio/Rodriguez are the other two successful trades of note. Otherwise, there’s a bunch of non-factor trades that didn’t move the needle for us, and quite a few losses, with the Eaton for Giolito/Dunning/Lopez being the most egregious. I don’t think we can really claim the Nationals are particularly adept at scouting players in any way, whether it’s inside or outside the org. And I don’t think the existence of Finnegan, Clay and Rainey are proof of anything, given how poor all 3 have been, but especially the latter 2.