Tuesday’s News & Notes
| Team | Yesterday | Today | Pitching Probables |
| Rochester | OFF DAY | @ Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, 6:35 p.m. | Adon (1-2, 4.68) vs. Tully (1-1, 5.40) |
| Harrisburg | OFF DAY | @ New Hampshire, 6:05 p.m. | Rutledge (1-1, 4.57) vs. Tiedemann (0-0, 5.00) |
| Wilmington | OFF DAY | @ Hudson Valley, 6:05 p.m. | Huff (1-1, 5.40) vs. Hampton (0-0, 4.61) |
| Fredericksburg | OFF DAY | vs. Down East, 7:05 p.m. | Bennett (0-2, 2.93) vs. Ramirez (0-1, 3.86) |
Editor’s note: Sunday’s announced starters are listed for Rochester, Harrisburg, and Wilmington. With an extra off day, it’s entirely possible these starters could be skipped in favor keeping the rest of the rotation on schedule.
Rochester Red Wings, 9-16, 10th I.L. East, 9½ GB
Cory “Don’t Call Me Roger” Abbott’s 12K start last Friday was good enough for him to earn the International League Pitcher of the Week award for April 24-30, though methinks his call-up to D.C. is a (much) bigger deal to him. This week the Red Wings travel to Central PA to visit the RailRiders for six, with a late-afternoon start on Saturday and an early-afternoon start on Sunday.
Harrisburg Senators, 9-11, T3rd E.L. Southwest, 4GB
Harrisburg makes its one and only trip to New England—they don’t play Portland at all in 2023, home or away—after losing four of five to Somerset last week. If you happen to be within driving distance of the Manchester not by the sea, tomorrow is your day to sneak out to a matinee.
Wilmington Blue Rocks 10-9, 2nd Sally Lg. North, 3GB
It was another three-of-five week for the Blue Rocks, but they only picked up 1/2 a game in the standings. This week it’s another trip north, this time to Wappinger Falls, NY to visit the first-place Renegades for six.
Fredericksburg Nationals, 7-13, 6th C.L. North, 5½ GB
Fredericksburg split its series against Lynchburg but lost ground in the standings. It’s a stoppable force vs. moveable object as the Wood Ducks offense (#9 in the Carolina League, 4.05 R/G) matches up against the FredNats pitchers (#12, 7.75 R/G) for six games this week in Fredericksburg.
The FNats’ futility continues to surprise me. The line up contains 3 top 100 prospects (House, Hassell and Green) plus several more big pedigree players (Lile and Infante recent 2nd rounders, Cruz one of the biggest IFA bonus getters recently). This team should be mashing, and yet they’re “merely” good, batting .250/.364/.379.
The same could be said of the pitching staff. While they lack the elite prospects of the bats, Susana, like Cruz is a recent IFA bonus baby, and Bennett and Denaburg have pretty high draft pick reputations to live off. And yet their pitching has been atrocious. They’ve allowed well over 1 ER more than any other team (6.65 ERA vs next worst Charleston’s 5.43). Something needs to change, because the pitching staff can’t be THIS bad for the remainder of the season.
while you can expect some reinforcements from FL in the coming weeks, this club is gonna have to out-slug to win. Susana’s recent scratch is worrying and Denaburg appears to be damaged goods.
Aldonis and Atencio will try to hold the fort with Bennett but after that it’s up in the air
For those with an Athletic subscription, here is Keith Law’s scouting report on Crews and Skenes:
https://theathletic.com/4477136/2023/05/02/mlb-draft-scouting-top-pick-lsu-skenes-crews/
A few highlights:
— “The common refrain this year when I ask scouts and execs about the top players is ‘I don’t know how Pittsburgh doesn’t take Crews.'”
— “I think there’s a good argument for Florida’s Wyatt Langford as the actual best prospect, as he’s a better athlete and better runner who is also performing (.382/.528/.725 through Friday’s games) in the SEC, playing around a rather unfortunate injury. Crews offers more safety, and perhaps no less upside because of the potential for a 70 hit tool, and if you pass on him despite the season he’s having, you’ll face questions forever about how you could do so.”
— “There is nobody close to Skenes among pitchers in this class, and the fact that he throws strikes with this kind of stuff, even if you only give him credit for being 96-99 mph, would make him 1-1 in most years. Stephen Strasburg and Gerrit Cole would top out at 100 mph, with better breaking stuff than Skenes, and they went 1-1. Mark Appel had less stuff and he went first overall, as well. I think it’s fair to project a No. 1 starter ceiling for Skenes with some projection to the changeup and the obvious hope that he stays healthy, which some guys have with this kind of stuff (Cole and Justin Verlander come to mind as comparable pitchers).”
He also called Skeen “the hardest-throwing starting pitching prospect I’ve ever seen.”
I really hope we can sleepwalk into getting another generational prospect.
Plus, a sort of unintended silver lining to this miserable rebuild is that there’s so many other awful teams right now too. The White Sox, Royals, A’s and Rockies are all worse than us, and the Nats are still very bad. While the new draft lottery prevented us from getting the #1 draft pick (and potentially Crews) we might stand a chance of nabbing it next year (or in 2025).
The highest the Nats can pick in 24 is 10th. I could see them being right there in 25 though. If Lerner sticks to not selling through this season, a new owner might not be able to get in to make enough changes for next year. 25 has some interesting guys at the top.
OK, we’re out of April, so it’s time for the starting pitching to start heating up, right? Of course Adon and Rutledge will still be facing quite chilly starts tonight.
the weather in NH looks brutal for the next couple of days, 50 and rainy at game time. the again it’s not that warm here either. things looking up by the weekend. Willard Scott sends his regards
I saw that former Nats farmhand Blake Perkins is playing for the Brewers now.
I went to Baseball Reference and looked to see if there were other draftees that made the bigs. The Brewers also have relief pitcher Jake Cousins , who was let go by the Nats and made it to the bigs via indy ball.
After the player name is their career WAR and MLB games played. (warning: this is a bit depressing)
2020: C. Cavalli -0.3 (1)
2018: C. Wilson 0.0 (1)
A. Fletcher -0.6 (19)
E. Lee 0.0 (0)
2017: S. Romero -0.2 (3)
W. Crowe -0.6 (94)
J. Tetrault -0.2 (4)
J. Cousins 1.1 (44)
G. Klobosits -0.2 (11)
2016: C. Kieboom -1.7 (106)
D. Dunning 2.5 (71)
S. Neuse -0.8 (147)
J. Luzardo 2.8 (67)
D. Johnson -0.4 (35)
T. Barerra 0.0 (51)
J. Noll -0.2 (15)
B. Braymer 0.4 (3)
S. Sharp -0.3 (4)
2015: A. Stevenson 0.4 (248)
B. Perkins -0.3 (10)
T. Hearn -0.8 (92)
K. Glover 0.2 (63)
T. Guilbeau 0.4 (25)
M. Schrock -0.4 (77)
2014: E. Fedde -0.3 (102)
J. Reetz 0.1 (2)
A. Williams -0.3 (12)
J. Borque -0.1 (7)
It’s no surprise that the three players with career WARs above 1.0 were largely developed by other orgs.
One would think that just due to a sheer numbers game that one of these guys would turn into a decent major leaguer for the Nats, but then again this isn’t purely random at all. Leadership thought they were exploiting some market inefficiency by drafting prospects who were devalued for various reasons (injuries mostly, but also off-the-field behavior issues), when in reality it wasn’t a market inefficiency at all. The market was efficient; we were just the dumb guys who deca-pled (what is the word for triple but 10 times instead of 3?) down on acquiring precisely the players other teams were wise enough to avoid.
But surely the guys who got us in this mess are the best ones to get us out of it!
Will,
Just to be clear, are you calling for the Nats to fire Rizzo and everyone working under him?
If so, who would you like to see the Nats’ hire to build the player development structure?
Anyone else would be better than what we currently have. I’ve been watching baseball in Harrisburg for 25+ seasons and it’s sad to see all the players who’ve come through and never developed into MLB players.
same for me, it’s not much better this year, miss the days of the Expos
Rizzo was a fine GM to build and sustain a team in contention. He is objectively not the right guy to lead the team through a rebuild. If he were the correct guy, he’d have taken corrective action in 2018 or so and not 2021 when the writing was already on the wall.
We find ourselves in this hole precisely for the reasons natteringnabob has listed, which is our woefully inadequate playing scouting and development. Why should we entrust Rizzo and his pals to get us out of this hole that they created?
If I could answer your second question convincingly, then I myself would be a good answer to the question. But I have little insight into who are the brilliant minds below the GM level. But I can see that orgs like Tampa, Milwaukee, St Louis, Cleveland, Atlanta and more recently Baltimore are managing to accomplish far more than the Nats while spending fractions of what we do, and are able to keep their teams consistently competitive and not have to subject the fanbase to 4-5 year bust cycles, as Rizzo is selling us now. Certainly there is an Assistant GM or VP in one of those orgs that is champing at the bit for his/her own chance to prove themselves and able to replicate the success they’ve been a part of in their org.
Great post and totally agree.
Their drafting strategy was horrendous (for the past decade!) – and yet the same scouting director and GM remain in place.
Makes no sense
Rizzo is a terrific MLB-level general manager but not very good at being president of baseball operations. That may sound like splitting hairs, but it’s a way of saying that he kept an above-average MLB team on the field for a decade as GM but kept his bumbling cronies in drafting and development roles WAY too long since he was basically king of everything. He and his guys also have missed significant opportunities to find better minor-league locations and improve facilities, as has often been pointed out here over the years.
Rizzo has finally blown up his development staff and started over, but he’s still got several of the same guys involved in drafting. And their 40-man additions ahead of Rule 5 last winter smelled of the same business-as-usual.
No, I don’t think Rizzo should be fired. But I do hope a new owner comes in and keeps him more accountable.