All Quiet on the Minor-League Front
Somehow, I managed to get this deep into the offseason without having to do this placeholder. The battle between the billionaire owners of MLB and the millionaire owners of MiLB has certainly helped.
It’s still a little too early to release the finalized 2020 Watchlist. Maybe I’m just being overly cautious, but the Nats do have a history a trades this time year (e.g. Tanner for Tanner, Espinosa for McGowin/Adams, Escobar for Gott, Souza/Ott for Turner/Ross, see below, Four for Gio, etc.)
Mr. Boss – who now maintains the Big Board and the Draft Tracker (direct your kudos and complaints accordingly 😉 – passes along news that Raudy Read and Erick Fedde have become trade bait been saddled with a fourth option year.
Admittedly, the effect on “our guys” is minimal: Read has aged/dropped out, Fedde graduated last season. The slashthrough joke refers to the Colin Balester for Ryan Perry trade, which shook the Natmosphere like the earthquake three and a half months earlier.
Options won’t keep Carter Kieboom in AAA much more than the first 19 days of the season. And while Ben Braymer is lefthanded and the Nats have only three portside relievers, I’d advise against him signing anything but a month-to-month lease (see: Bourque, James; Xavier Cedeño).
That’s about all for now. Keep the conversation going in the comments.
A month to month lease and leave the key fob under the rose bush plant outside , Ben … for the next call – up…
Interesting signing for the Pirates with their outfield always in some type of flux. Socrates Brito ( L/ L).
Not to get political, but didn’t they impeach Otis Nixon for stealing bases? 🙂
Adolis Garcia worth a waiver claim for Fresno ??
Doubtful. We don’t make many waiver claims lately, although we did claim Javy Guerra from Toronto back during the dark times in May.
Love several of the coaching switches on the farm. Gardner to Harrisburg . Rocker should relate to the kids very well @ GCL.
Tejera to F- troop to tinker mentally with the kids @. That PCL elevation.
All I recall about Pat Rice is his pitching in the Mariners chain in the past ….
Otis Nixon definitely spent some time on the naughty list, but I think it was more from having a nose that tingled more than Rudolph’s.
Justin Lord. FSU Seminole Alum. Add another Royal tie to the farm coaching staff
Rizzo loves his old hands … Abad for F-troop.
Wilson Valdez an ole tie to Rizzo with White Sox in 2004 now infield instructor in DSL Nats ??
Look for the Nats to put Fedde in Harrisburg (close by) and keep Ross and Voth because they don’t have options. Fedde could out pitch both of them in spring training and it won’t matter. The same thing happened to Fedde a couple years ago. He outpitched A. J. Cole and the Nats kept Cole and sent Fedde to the minors because he had options and Cole didn’t. Maybe a trade wouldn’t be the worse thing for Fedde.
Spike lives!
Luke. Hop scotching to Harrisburg ( great March camp ??) Drew Mendoza ?? Grissom , could drew be the Nats John VanderWal esque bat climbing ladder fast ?
Potomac infield bunches up with Cluff , Marincaza , Caufeld , Daily, Omar (1b-3b)???
Christmas tree lights hypnotizes one dreaming of March. …
Harrisburg @ the corners April 2020? Lara to KW Williams then Mendoza ??
Leandro Emiliani and Kevin Strohschein should be a Suns storyline for 2020!
LM — Right now, I’m not sure Fedde is even the “better” shuttle option between him and McGowin. McGowin was probably the Grizzles’ best starter in the Wild Wild West of the PCL Pinball league last summer. We’ve been waiting and hoping for a long time for Fedde to turn into that true MLB rotation guy . . . and we’re still waiting . . .
Hey hey, just what we needed as grist for discussion, FanGraphs updated Nats prospects:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/top-21-prospects-washington-nationals/
Too bad it doesn’t still say “A’s Top Prospects” like it did last year!
First impressions:
– Wow, what a grade for Eddy Yean at #7. Reflective of a weak system, but good to see an unsung prospect grabbing evaluators’ attention.
– Steven Fuentes does not seem to have impressed the FG team very much. They tend to look at tools rather than performance, though, so I’m not that surprised.
– Good to know Israel Pineda was playing hurt this past season. Also good to know why Jackson Rutledge slipped down the draft board when he was top-ten talent in that draft class.
– The list of potential “helium” guys pretty closely matches my personal watchlist, although I haven’t heard much about Mirton Blanco and I’m more fascinated with Alex Troop than FG appears to be. I’m also more interested in Jacob Rhinesmith than Justin Connell, although they’re comparable as lottery tickets, I suppose (I like Rhinesmith’s floor as a defender).
Wow: “Rutledge has some of the best stuff on Earth, working 96–100 in most outings and mixing in a 65- or 70-grade slider with a curveball a notch below that.” How long will we be repeating “Rutledge has some of the best stuff on Earth”?
This is probably the most informative Nats prospects write-up I’ve ever read. I don’t completely agree with all the conclusions, but there is a ton of information, stuff to which we would have no access. The piece also offers good insight into what scouts are looking at verses what we see, and what we observe in the stats. I am a little surprised, since this is FanGraphs, how little weight they seem to have given to stats.