Monday’s News & Notes
| Team | Yesterday | Today | Pitching Probables |
| Rochester | Lost, 13-7 | OFF DAY | N/A |
| Harrisburg | Lost, 7-3 | OFF DAY | N/A |
| Wilmington | Lost, 7-1 (5 inn.) | OFF DAY | N/A |
| Fredericksburg | Won, 4-0 | OFF DAY | N/A |
| FCL Nationals | OFF DAY | OFF DAY | |
| DSL Nationals | OFF DAY | OFF DAY |
Omaha 13 Rochester 7
• Teel ⅓ IP, 4H, 5R, 5ER, 1BB, 1K, 2HR
• Je. Rodriguez 3IP, 3H, 1R, 1ER, 0BB, 4K
• Murphy (L, 2-2) ⅔ IP, 4H, 6R, 6ER, 2BB, 1K
• A. Lee ⅓ IP, 1H, 1R, 1ER, 0BB, 1K, 2-2 IR-S
• Meneses 3-5, 3R, 2HR, 4RBI
• Stevenson 2-5, 2R, 2-2B
• Palacios 2-4, RBI, CS
Rochester coughed up six in the 1st, battled back to tie at 6-6 after eight, then imploded for seven runs in the 9th en route to a 13-7 loss in the series finale. Starter Carson Teel retired just one of six batters faced, giving up five runs on a grand slam and a solo homer, and four hits total while walking one and striking out one. Patrick Murphy nearly matched him as he was torched for six runs on four hits and two walks while retiring two (2) of eight batters faced. It was the usual suspects on offense, as Joey Meneses singled once, homered twice, and drove in four; Andrew Stevenson doubled twice and scored twice, and Josh Palacios singled twice and drove in one to extend his hit streak to 11 games and his on-base streak to 24.
Roster moves: LHP Josh Rogers assigned for MLB rehab; RHP Cory Abbott recalled to Washington; RHP Hunter Harvey optioned from Washington.
Hartford 7 Harrisburg 3
• Troop 6IP, 5H, 1R, 1ER, 1BB, 6K
• Fuentes (L, 1-6) 4BF, 1H, 4R, 3ER, 2BB, 0K
• Dopico (BS, 1) 1IP, 2H, 2R, 2ER, 1BB, 1K, HR, 3-3 IR-S
• Dunn 2-3, 2SB(5)
• Hubbard 2-4, RBI
The Senators ‘pen also melted down in the late innings, turning a 3-1 lead into the eventual 7-3 outcome for the fifth straight loss by Harrisburg. Alex Troop turned in a quality start of one run on five hits and a walk over six with six K’s. The loss went to Steven Fuentes, who put on four batters with a hit, an error, and two walks. Danny Dopico came on with the bases loaded and emptied them along with two of his own for the blown save. Jack Dunn and Dondrei Hubbard each singled twice while Gilbert Lara hit a two-run HR to pace the Sens’ offense.
Hickory 7 Wilmington 1 (5 inn.)
• Knowles (L, 3-1) 1⅔ IP, 5H, 5R, 5ER, 2BB, 1K, 2HR
• Merrill 1IP, 0H, 0R, 0BB, 2K
• Meregildo 1-2, R, HR(15), RBI
The rain ended this officially after five innings, but Hickory put it away after a five-run 2nd and then added two more in the bottom of the 4th. Lucas Knowles was knocked from the box with two out in the 2nd after back-to-back HRs. He walked two and struck out one while suffering his first loss. Omar Meregildo broke up the perfect game and ended the shutout with his 15th HR for the one (1) hit by the Blue Rocks.
Fredericksburg 4 Augusta 0
• Aldonis 5IP, 2H, 0R, 2BB, 6K
• Greenhill 1IP, 0H, 0R, 0BB, 1K
• Ge. Diaz 3-3, 2R, 2B
• Martina 2B, 2-3, SF, 3RBI
Five FredNats pitchers combined to shut out the GreenJackets, 4-0, on five hits. Pablo Adonis led the way with five scoreless innings in his Low-A debut, allowing two hits and two walks while setting down six on strikes. Four relievers followed with a goose egg apiece, combining for three hits, two walks, and five strikeouts. Junior Martin singled, doubled, and hit a sacrifice fly for three RBI while Geraldi Diaz singled twice and doubled once to lead the Fredericksburg offense.
FCL Nationals 22-7, 5GA, FCL East
It would be tempting to start making comparisons to the 2013 GCL Nationals, which went 49-9 in the regular season and won all three playoff games.
But it would also be wrong. While the 2022 F-Nats’ pitching is pretty close to league average in terms of age, the batters are dramatically older — with five players 23 or older players among the top 12 in PAs. What remains to be seen is what the Nats will do with the influx of draftees. Last year, they didn’t play for a month. Will they do the same this year? Will there be a slew of releases, like there used to be at the end of spring training? Cue the second single from the #1 album in 1982.
DSL Nationals 14-16, 5½ GB, DSL South
The D-Nats won just twice for the third straight week and are now two games under .500, 5½ games off the pace in the division. It’s kind of the FCL in reverse, where the position players are close to the average age (18 vs. 17.8) but the pitchers are old for the level (19.4 vs. 18.6). If you guessed that means the pitching is better and the hitting is worse, then that, along with $2, gets you a cup of coffee.
2022 DRAFT
The first two rounds of the draft were last night. This afternoon, it’ll be rounds 3-10, then tomorrow it’s 11-20. As many of you know, the Draft is just not my thing. My time is limited and to me, it seems like a waste of it to speculate on who might get picked versus who did get picked.
Unfortunately, my usual excuse – too busy with day-to-day coverage – has been taken away this year, as MLB and Herr Manfred have all teams on break this week. But I don’t expect to do that much more on the draft aside from giving you guys (and gals) a forum to discuss the picks and fret about the Nats’ track record of developing talent outside of the first round.
To be honest—no, lie to us!—I’m more interested as to what will happen to the 20 guys displaced by the new picks. The deadline to sign is pretty tight (August 1), with only a subset (HS and JuCo) able to exercise any semblance of leverage, assuming any team is willing to bet on someone not signing between the 11th and 20th rounds.
Now, have at it in the comments… I’m just here to keep the lights on.
So, all the teams we follow here are off for a few days? I didn’t know that.
Hellava debut for Pablo Adonis.
As for the draft, no surprise that Rizzo takes the riskiest pick, someone with a lot of swing and miss already. Brooks Lee would have been able to plug in to AA right away but Rizzo is chasing ‘ceiling’ yet again.
Been Baylor talent has been taken . Hmmm.
Interesting
Chance Huff started @ Vandy then transferred to GA Tech
Look who played Georgia Tech with Parada and Huff!
Marquis Grissom , Jr
Meanwhile on draft week
Aaron Fletcher is drifting around the AAA circuit .
I chatted with Saturday’s 3 b umpire Mark Carlson on a delayed flight out of Reagan to Ohare .
The Miami Hurricane catcher swings left handed . How many years ago was it when Charles Johnson drafted by the expos …
Would be amazing if Nats drafted Marquis G , Jr someday
Historical correction
Charles Johnson catcher drafted out of HS by Expos never signed
Drafted by Marlins out of UN Canes
Correction about Texas s out for Nats : Cory Staab Rice alum who toiled for Mariners before retirement.
No surprise
I had a feeling that the course of the franchise shifted the day Christian V was signed
The org rebuild with V and whoever rises along with him out of that signing bunch .
Not to over analyze BUT with so many lefties hauled from intl signings and last summers draft .. this draft with one lefty drafted in Bennett so far not surprising .
The TCU kid remindful of Dyson where the secondary pitches need to develop or .. else …
Aldonis showed pretty good command, mostly threw 91-93 fastballs according to the play by play guy (no on screen radar display). didn’t appear over-matched though there was some loud contact. looking forward to seeing him the second half.
Todd Boss made the comment that the drafting of Green means we’re in this for a few (several?) more years. the Soto situation may have pushed them in that direction. I’m still hopeful they sign him.
Even if we drafted Parada or Brooks Lee, and they skyrocket up the system (which, of course, they wouldn’t because of the FO’s averseness to promoting hitters), and become a 3-5 WAR hitter. The Nationals go from like a 53-109 team (as they’re currently on pace for) to, like, a 58-104 team. We need like 5 Parada/Lees to turn this team around. And I don’t think most fans are willing to accept that the only way we get the chance of getting there is by trading Soto.
The downside is that this path also depends on Rizzo and his team to develop or at least not undo the development of these 5 Parada/Lee-like prospects. And I have no faith in that. So we’re pretty much screwed either way for the next 3-5 years.
So, the Nats are slow to promote offensive players, but they also poor at developing players? If the players aren’t developing, then it doesn’t make sense to promote them. FWIW, agree that the Nats have an abysmal record at developing players of late. That is problem.
If player demonstrates that he has mastered a level, he will be promoted. The sad thing is that not many players in the Nats’ system merit a promotion.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts. Keeping a player too long at a level can also stunt a player’s development.
It took Jeremy de la Rosa and Jake Alu, for example, a heck of a long time to get a promotion after very consistently performing extremely well, while repeating this season at the same level. Alu had to play 130 games in Harrisburg before he got a promotion. De la Rosa went 156 games in Fredericksburg. I think you will find that that’s an exceptionally long time to “merit a promotion”.
Meanwhile, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Omar Meregildo is hitting .255/.348/.473 in his third season in A+. What exactly does he need to do to merit a promotion? Hit .371 like Soto did in A ball? His .473 SLG is the 10th best in the league right now among hitters with 150 or more PA. Over the whole season, it’d be the 19th best, but 9 batters ahead of him have been already been promoted to AA, further demonstrating the Nats have a much longer leash than most other teams.
This franchise needs to do better at coaching players and working out their weaknesses, which we can all agree they’re pretty awful at. But they also need to not stunt players’ rise when they’re playing well (an increasingly uncommon occurrence) – especially when they’re old for their level, like Alu and Meregildo, just to name a few recent examples.
Brooks Lee might have been destined for an AL club with his left side of infield makeup
Ex- po fans have been used to big names walking away … lol…
My pre-draft position was anybody but Green. He just seems too risky. If he is a “special” talent, he’ll be fun for us to follow here . . . but I fear we’ll be following him here more years than we’d wish as he figures things out.
Not to curse 2d-rounder Jake Bennett, but my first thought when I read his profile was Brett Mooneyham, another very tall lefty who doesn’t throw particularly hard but fills out a uniform well.
The MLB draft is littered with failed toolsy high schoolers. While Green is appealing, his weakest tool (hit tool) is the one the organization is least capable of developing. Too many of the (admittedly painfully few) HS bats we’ve drafted over the past decades have never developed an ability to hit above average, and keep their strikeouts down. This is a list of every single HS bat we’ve taken in the past decade, along with their minor league batting average (because only one made it to the majors) and their strikeout rate:
Hayden Jennings (2012) – .218, 36%
Drew Ward (2013) – .254, 28%
Jakson Reetz (2014) – .236, 24%
Blake Perkins (2015) – .233, 22%
Carter Kieboom (2016) – .281 (!), 20% (albeit 31% in MLB)
Justin Connell (2017) – .264, 18% (!)
Sammy Infante (2020) – .219, 30%
Brady House (2021) – .289 (!), 27%
Daylen Lile (2021) – .219, 25%
TJ White (2021) – .260, 29%
But who knows, maybe Green is something special. I sure hope so!
Speaking of tall lefties, great start from Alex Troop. He’s really forcing his way into the conversation of potentially having to be protected from Rule 5.
Oh, the horrors! Zach Brzykcy walked a batter. His ERA is now 1.13.
I watched on MLB Network the Nats select Green. Harold Reynolds actually said it was good for Green because of how good the Nationals are at developing players! I just started laughing.
Glad there were two others with the exact same reaction as me!
I always knew Harold Reynolds was a fool, but it was nice to be reminded of it.
Add a fourth to those who wanted to know what Reynolds was smoking! Couldn’t believe that comment.
I almost fell off my chair laughing last evening when Green was picked and Harold Reynolds commented about how great a job the Nats will do developing this player. We all know too well the bad job the Nats do developing the young guys, especially those right out of high school. Hoping the new development director and his staff can turn things around.
A month or two ago I asked people whether Meregildo would get a promotion before or after his 15th HR. Well, he hit it last night. So if anyone replied with after, congrats. You’ve even out-pessimisted me in how conservative the Nationals would be in promoting batters!
Meregildo has now played 255 games in high A. What’s the point of keeping him if there’s no way for him to get promoted? Just release him, if they don’t value him in the slightest. And hey, it might allow Will Frizzell to face some age appropriate pitchers.
I’m not aware of how to check this, but Andrew Lee might have the most flattering stat line this year. It seems like every outing, he allows all his inherited runners, then mops up his earned runners once the damage is done. If anyone knows where the compile inherited runner stats for MILB, I’d love to see it, because Lee, by my count, has probably allowed well over double the runs as he himself has allowed.
I hope the Nats can trade Josh Bell ASAP. His value won’t get any higher, and I’d love to see what Joey Meneses could do at the big league level. The guy is a model of consistency. He followed up his .284/.333/.530 in 2021 with a slash of .292/.347/.501 this year, and somehow never gotten a cup of coffee. He deserves it.
Finally, it’s good to see Cronin has settled down after a bumpy start in Rochester. He’s now thrown 5 straight scoreless outings. But it would be good if they could try to stretch him out a bit more. Those 5 most recent outings are over the past 30 days, and he’s only up to 29 IP for the season so far, and has never exceeded 30 IP in a season yet.
Admire Meneses fortitude, but he is 30 and been released by 3 organizations. Happy for him if he gets to say that he made the Bigs, but it’s sad that Meneses would be the Nats, best and only option, to play first base (unless the Nats received an young MLB ready first baseman in return) if Bell is traded. There is a reason why he has played 12 years and over 1,000 games of minor league ball with an MLB call up.
My friends and I refer to a pitching appearance where the reliever only allows other people’s runs to score as a “Slaten.” This in honor of Doug Slaten, a mediocre-to-bad LHRP. In 2011 he didn’t give up an earned run (charged to him) for weeks into the season. But he allowed nine inherited runners to score in just 6 1/3 innings pitched. I remember listening to an opposing broadcaster talking about how good was because his ERA was 0.00. Slaten wasn’t good. His FIP in 2011 was 5.66 and his WHIP was an unsightly 2.143.
Further Nats lexicon: a blown save/win is a “Clippard” for the year (2010) that he led the staff with 11 wins from the bullpen, several acquired in just such a fashion. Going from 0-2 to a 3-2 count is a “Gio” (although we’re considering changing that to a “Corbin”). And of course an appearance by a pitcher in a game where he fails to record any outs at all is a “Rosenthal.”
And of course when a catcher fails to catch or stop a throw from the outfield, that’s a “Ramos” — similar a 2B diving and missing a ground ball, which is a “Vidro”…
In search of….BATS. Meneses and Merigildo have been mentioned today. Yasel Antuna at 699 OPS is not on this list. Pena and Emiliani have faded at FRE. Was hoping Connell was going to break through at HBG.
OPS (130+ AB).
1. DeLaRosa FRE/WIL 875
2. Meneses ROC 848
3. Palacios Buffalo + ROC 834
4. Alu HBG/ROC 826
5. Meregildo WIL 821
6. Banks ROC + WIL rehab 813
7. Gushue HBG/ROC 809
8. W. Garcia HBG 808
9. Stevenson ROC 803
10. TJ White FRE 789
11. Connell HBG 777
12. Pineda WIL 768
13. J. Sanchez WIL 752
14. VPena FRE 749
15. Emiliani FRE 738
16. Infante FRE 738
17. House FRE 731
18. Noll ROC 719
19. G. Diaz FRE 702
20. Baker WIL 701
Gonzales must have tracked the Texas prep OF/ pitcher
Next thought – Boras client ??
4 of the first 7 players drafted are from Oklahoma or Texas. That follows a trend of previous drafts. Seems like the area scouts for that region carry a lot of weight with the front office. Not sure it is merited.
Not sure much of anyone has earned their way in the Nats scouting department, except whoever was involved in signing Juan Soto. It’s not like our West Coast, or Florida or East Coast scouts have been uncovering any gems themselves…