Saturday’s News & Notes

16 Commments

1. Lipscomb has now taken a walk in four of his last five games. Fingers crossed that he’s learning some patience. He’s also doubled in four of his last six. Since he’s already been on the MLB shuttle, it’s easy to forget that he just turned 24 last month. Time will tell whether he can become more than a AAAA type player, but the walks are a good sign that he’s trying to continue to develop.

   1. To paraphrase the old Stephen Stills song title : For what it’s worth : Lectoy can look forward to Alu returning to his bench in second half , a re energized bullpen lead by Cate and Adon .
      Delino looks forward to Saenz return and maybe the addition of Shuman sooner than later ?
      Granted no left hand bat ready for Delino from Will unless we consider McKenzie an option . That’s possible . Right , FredMd ?

      1. LeCroy
         Another day
         Another shout out : yea for Trea in July draft

         1. More grey hair sprouted on me seeing on Jersey Shore Carl Crawfords son
            Wow Diamond Dave Dombrowski you have some tooled prospects on Jersey Shore .

      2. would love an injury update on Hassell but otherwise no relief in site. McKenzie is in swing mode from the minute he gets off the bus.

   2. that’s a good observation plus he’s homered twice in that same stretch. swinging at better pitches and making better contact, what’s not to like?

   3. Since his most recent demotion, he’s hitting .395/.452/.763. That’ll play at any position.

      Speaking of which, they’ve been playing him at 1B in the past two games. Let’s see how Yepez fares, but I think Lipscomb might see some time there in the future in DC.

2. Saturday chatter .
   Any other prospects the draft scouting geek squad considering the Nats for ???

3. @KW – Following up on yesterday, I’m not sure I agree with you about House. I mean, everything is always offer dependent and no one is really untouchable, but I think House pretty much the same as Crews in that it’s very unlikely that another team will value him highly enough for a trade to make sense.

   Lipscomb is the only other 3B in the system who has a decent shot at ever reaching arbitration, and he’s much better suited for a bench role. So, trading House creates a new problem, which only really makes sense if you think there’s a serious imbalance in the market or serious daylight between the Nats’ and another team’s valuation of House, and in those situations, anyone is tradeable.

   I’ll also say that, unlike a lot of the public evaluators, I’m not down on House’s year at all. Maybe it hasn’t been a huge step forward, but BABIP luck is masking some meaningful improvements he’s made at the plate. He increased his bb% from awful to below average, improved in k% from concerning to fine, and increased his iso from average to good. His BABIP last year was unsustainably high and his BABIP this year is unsustainably low. As a rough correction, if you add and subtract singles to each season to normalize to a .337 BABIP, last year’s AA OPS would have been just .693 and this year’s would be .817. That’s obviously a pretty coarse way to evaluate it, and it’s possible that he’s changed something that makes some of the BABIP shift real, but it has to be mostly just luck. There just aren’t approach shifts or pitcher adjustments or defender placements that can cause a .170 swing in true talent BABIP. I have him pretty much where I did preseason – as a borderline FV 50/55 with higher than typical error bars, which probably. justifies rounding down.

   Honestly, I don’t want to lose him either, but I’m pretty sure Rizzo would trade Parker before House if he needed to pull off a big move, unless the trade was for a 3B. There is more redundancy in the system at SP (which is such a bonkers change from even a year ago), and I’d expect most teams to value Parker higher anyway.

   1. I’m not at all saying “trade House,” just that I don’t think he’s untouchable. I certainly agree that they don’t have a lot of other future options at 3B, unless Lipscomb can take another step forward. (If they were to draft Lipscomb’s old Tennessee teammate Christian Moore, it likely would be with an eye toward Moore trying 3B.)

      If House clicks, he’s POTENTIALLY a 35-40 homer guy at 3B in the majors, which gives him very high value indeed. If anything, the fact that he’s scuffling makes it less likely that they’d trade him because it would be difficult to get another team to value him at that premium level. (Although he’s not nearly as devalued as Green.)

      It’s easy to forget that House just turned 21 last month and has been one of the youngest players at the AA level. That’s one side of the coin. The other is that he did so well in his short time at AA last summer that there were a lot of expectations that he could be the opening day 3B with the big club in 2025. Without a big finish to 2024, that scenario seems unlikely.

      For now, House just needs to control what he can control, which is taking more walks and being more selective in what he swings at. He truly has had horrendously bad BABIP “luck,” but some of that may be due to not getting solid contact on pitches that he should have taken. We’ll see.

      1. I’m not sure we’re disagreeing about much except how to use the word “untouchable”.

         I don’t think anyone is literally untradeable, so what I think “untouchable” means is just “we’d need a pretty clear premium over fair value to trade them.”

         And one set of prospects that I think are “untouchable” are guys who have a median expectation of at least decent major league regular, have controlled years that overlap with a team’s window and have a clear path to playing time with no internal alternatives. There just isn’t any incentive to trade them and, while Crews is obviously more valuable than House, I’m not sure that Rizzo would demand a higher premium relative to fair value for him.

         But I also agree with your point yesterday that this distinction is a little academic, not least because we are unlikely to buyers at all now that we’ve fallen to the back of the WC scrum.

         1. Next year should be the assets added to surge the rebuild
            Or this off season

4. Lile faced former Nat prospect Eddie Yean in the 9th and drove one to right that was caught by a leaping Curve RFer, a foot or two from giving them the lead. while his early numbers on City Isle have been underwhelming he still looks legit to me.

   1. Let the kids percolate like an old drip coffee machine with Folgers beans .

5. Good to see Dustin Saenz return, he’s been out since April 9.

6. Wow, Senzel DFA’d, Lipscomb promoted.

   Rizzo’s ready for this rebuild to start paying dividends.

   I wonder when we’ll see the first trade.

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