Offseason Update: Jan. 4, 2024
Sorry, yet another post to assure the SEO bots you the site has not gone dark. It’s just slower than Nikki Haley reading up on the Civil War.
I’ve been hoping in vain for Baseball America to do a transaction post for the month of December, but no luck. I’d rather cover the handful of signings in one fell swoop then report on them individually.
It pains me to write this, but it’s been this way for all of this decade – even prior to the MLB coup d’Ă©tat – so perhaps the onus is on me to admit that this is the new normal.
But I don’t like it. And I’m willing to bet, neither do you.
Glad to read the site is still ALIVE!! 🙂
Hope you are well!!!
Don, we made through an entire year without minor league ball, this is kids stuff comparatively.
Slow going on the major league side of things as well… I may be missing someone, but we’ve signed only Nick Senzel and Dylan Floro.
Then on the minor league side, there’s Juan Yepez. It’s been a mighty slow off season so far.
However, in googling Floro’s name, I came across that in late December, the Nats signed the following to minor league deals:
Lewin Diaz, 1B, 27; MLB line: .181/.227/.340; AAA line: .258/.341/.479
Dermis Garcia, 1B, 26; MLB: .207/.264/.388; AAA: .263/.353/.512
Seems the Nats are adding depth for the eventuality that we don’t start the season with a capable 1B in DC…
Spenser Watkins, SP, 31; MLB: 5.97 ERA in 40 G; AAA: somehow 6.70 ERA in 51 G
Luke, I don’t blame you or BA for overlooking these signings. I’m not sure they’re worth the words I’ve already spilled.
DĂ©rmis Garcia: in 2021 at AA Somerset, 31 homers in only 109 games — WOW. But . . . 168 strikeouts in those same 109 games!!! He should fit right in . . .
KW, you should repost what you wrote about Drew Millas the other day; I don’t think a lot of people saw it.
OK Mark, I noted that kudos are due to whatever mystery coach tweaked Millas’s swing in the AFL in 2022. A guy with a .576 OPS at Harrisburg in 2022 jacked it to .825 in AZ that fall and sustained it at .833 across AA/AAA in 2023. I admit that I sort of thought that Millas was having a “false fall” in 2022 because he had nothing in his track record to show that he was that level of a player. But the improvement stuck.
it just goes to show that all the top prospects are considered as such because they are one tweak away. for most that tweak never arrives.
Millas already had MLB level defense locked down, while I expect him to be a number two until Ruiz proves unable to excel that is a valuable commodity.
For whatever it’s worth, it seems like something clicked for Millas in Wilmington in 2022. After starting the season injured, he rehabbed in Fburg, then got promoted to Harrisburg, where he was dreadful, hitting only .200/.273/.287 (and perhaps most worryingly striking out 32% of the time… sound familiar?). He disappeared for a while, in what was chalked up to an injury, before getting demoted to Wilmington. There, something changed, and we saw the first glimpses of power that he’d never shown before. While his average (.237) and HR (only 1 in 98 plate appearance, which isn’t so unlikely in the cavernous Wilmington ballpark) was still low, his power jumped, as he generated a bunch more 2B and 3B, ending with a .197 ISO, which is still to this day the highest ISO he’s posted at any level, 2023 included. He also lowered his k% to a much more manageable 20%, for an overall line of .237/.408/.434/.842 in A+. Interestingly, Tim Doherty was the hitting coach in Wilmington in 2022, who did such a lousy job in Harrisburg in 2023…
What was so notable about his AFL stint was that one of the coaches managed to teach him to hit for average. Before that, his MILB AVG was .245. In the AFL he hit .303, and in 2023 hit .291 in the minors and .286 in MLB.
If Millas can even partly sustain this batting average, he begins to remind me a lot of what Keibert Ruiz was meant to be: a catcher who can hit for average, with good but not elite power, and solid defence. The biggest difference being Millas has well above average plate discipline.
@Will, on your observation that Millas appears to have prospered under a hitting coach that you believe did a “such a lousy job” in Harrisburg last year. Remember that from the outside it’s very hard to determine how well a coach is doing their job.
As for Millas’s HR numbers at Wilmington, the ballpark there has a reputation for being hard on potential HRs. Which is what made James Wood’s 5 3b and 8 HR in 150 ABs so impressive. House also showed well, with 6 2b and 3 HR in 63 ABs. In 42 games Wood finished second on the team in HRs. Wil Frizzell, who led the team with just 9, played 76 games.
Speaking of fixing players, kudos go out to Joel Hanrahan for what he did to D.J. Herr at Harrisburg. Herr’s WHIP went way down after he came over from the Cub’s system. I don’t know what Hanrahan did but Herr now looks destined for the Show after a little more seasoning.
Speaking of Hanrahan, as much as I would hate to take him away from working his magic with our talented farmhands, he’d be a hell of an upgrade on Jim Hickey.
Just a reminder that Ruiz is half a year younger than Millas. He got thrown in the deep end and has been doing his learning at the major-league level. I think he still has a lot of upside potential. They didn’t do him any favors by having him hit in the middle of the lineup.
this is a good reminder on Ruiz and his potential for continued development but he had over 450 MiLB games under his belt when promoted, ironically (or not) virtually the same as Millas.
It would seem his ceiling is higher and concerns on his defense may be overblown. time will tell but I really like this 1-2 combo for the Nats.
Both with Ruiz and Garcia and with the coming youth infusion that we hope is pushing to the majors sooner or later, there is such a need for good continued coaching/development of young players even after they get to the majors. It doesn’t seem that the Nats have been very effective with such things in recent years, although they’re turning over the coaching staff some. Even up to the managerial level, I remember Davey Johnson teaching guys like Desi and Rendon the “Oriole Way” around the middle infield and showing Desi the wrist snap in hitting that he had learned from Hank Aaron. Dusty made Michael Taylor and Brian Goodwin his personal hitting projects.
I see that the Mets have signed our old friend Austin Adams. What a bizarre story it was when the Nats traded him in 2019. He took the red-eye from Fresno to join the team, struggled in one inning of work after almost no sleep, was sent back down, and traded within a couple of weeks.
In looking at Adams’s stats, I see that he did end up leading the majors in something: most hit batters in 2021. LOL.