.435 — 10 for ’23
In keeping with this site’s tradition of not ranking, these are or more or less in chronological order…
A More “Normal” Set of IFAs
After years of going big, the Nats appear to be going home (or back) to their roots of spreading their IFA outlay over a larger number of picks instead of going all-in on one guy (e.g., Antuna, Soto, Lara, Cruz, Vaquero). This was probably yet another example of penny-wise/pound-foolish management that seems to be legion with the Nats, if not all of baseball. But you can argue with the results (see below).
Cade Cavalli Develops Nats Elbow
Last summer, the Nats shut down Cavalli twice in-season and then permanently after his one (and so far, only) MLB start. This despite being limited to five innings or less 15 times in 21 appearances. Then in the spring, Cavalli did the all-too-familiar elbow shake and circle behind the mound in his third (and final) spring training appearance. A week later, he had TJ surgery.
Brady House Has The Quietest Three-Level Season Ever
Well, maybe not, but with all eyes on James Wood and Dylan Crews, who also technically had a three-level season but received far more fanfare, Brady House flew under the radar with 88 games across three different levels with his lowest BA (.297) coming at Low-A while batting .318 at High-A and .324 at AA. And it wasn’t like he wasn’t hitting for power, either, with SLG% of .500, .540, and .475. We never did quite learn what ended his 2022 season but as noted in the comments, his workload was carefully managed with only one stretch of four games in a row (the last four).
James Wood: HR Threat
Sure, the Nats have had HR hitters in the minors… but they’ve usually been 30-somethings like Yadiel Hernández or BrAAAAndon Snyder. Woods hit 26, which is the most in the franchise by a 20-y.o. since Cliff Floyd, who hit 28 in 1993. Of course, thanks to ↓this guy↓ missing six weeks, he also led the Nats minors in whiffs with 173 – the most since Jason Martinson in 2016 (179).
Elijah Green: Keeping Opposing IFs Cool
As you might’ve already guessed: Green led the Nats minors with a stunning 41.6% K rate… and yet was also 5th in BB rate at 14.4% and tied for 4th in SBs (31) despite playing just 83 games at Low-A and the FCL. Yes, he’s only 20 years old [insert Billy Rowell joke here] but it will take a phenomenal improvement to make that many whiffs acceptable, especially with such little power (.327 SLG%) to go along with it.
A Modest Sell-off in July
After two straight Julys in which the Nats dealt away a generational talent, a stud starting pitcher, and a franchise SS, the modest two-player return (DJ Herz, Kevin Made) from flipping a one-year rental (Jeimar Candelario) is a bit of a letdown. It may still be a while before the Nats are buyers instead of sellers, though one can certainly hope that the coming wave of OFs might enable the Nats to deal away anyone who might be blocking them.
The Comically Bad DSL Team
At first it was funny. Then it was sad. Then it became sublime. The 2023 D-Nats finished 11-39 and 28½ games off the pace in the DSL South, “thanks” to a team that could only manage to scrape 3.19 R/G. That was more than two full runs below the Lg. Avg. of 5.45 R/G. Only a handful of players were retained from 2022 and though this team was very young, it’s hard not to envision the Nats doing the same again in 2024.
Unlikely MLB Debuts
Or the three Jakes. OK, maybe you can ascribe Alu to the Nats’ fetish for utility guys, but Irvin? The guy who didn’t pitch in 2020 or 2021? Quite unexpected, a serviceable 24 starts even more so. Or Jacob Young? Granted, he had the good fortune of being the next man up when injuries depleted both the outfields of both the big club and AAA, but like the OJ’s (other Jakes), he acquitted himself with a .658 OPS with 13 stolen bases in 33 games. Unlike Irvin and Alu, he didn’t exhaust his rookie status, so he’ll get one more Watchlist appearance. That, along with $3, gets him a coffee.
Jackson Rutledge
As a #1 pick, Rutledge was given every possible chance to succeed. But for all of 2021 and most of 2022, it looked like he and Mason Denaburg would be fighting over beerholding, iykwim. Some @sshole even He began 2023 in AA, skipping past High-A despite spending all of ’22 at Low-A. After six quality starts out of 12, and (*gasp*) five or more innings pitched in 11 straight appearances, he was bumped up to AAA. The 24-y.o. was less steady but only got knocked out early once. That was good enough to pitch in D.C. for his last four starts, two of which were good and two of which were not. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go wash some egg off my face.
Dylan Crews
Rather than close out this list with a story of epic failure (*cough* Yasel Antuna *cough*), I’ll write about the latest “coming thing,” that has been the hallmark of covering this system for the past 14 years. Strasburg, Harper, Rendon, Giolito, etc. Crews was also a three-level player, though just barely with one (1) game in the FCL before a 14-game tour with the FredNats and closing out the summer with 20 games for the Senators. Crews feasted on Low-A pitching (1.068 OPS) and was carved up by AA pitchers (.595 OPS, 19K in 20G), neither of which was a surprise to scouts, who have long noted that Crews has swing-and-miss tendency that he offsets well with good plate discipline (i.e., when he swings and missed it’s usually within the strike zone anyway). Fatigue could also be a factor, given that the 21-y.o. surpassed 100 games in a season for the first time in his career.
Well done!
Diving into the rabbit hole of The baseball career of Billy Gardner Senior after his passing I find some fascinating nuggets .
What a talent to help build youth in an organization whether in Montreal or KC
He skippered that monster 1980 DEnver Bear club which makes the Nats crop @ AA seem a different age and PD mind set .
Gardner must have crossed paths with Dick Williams in Boston days with Red Sox since they were together on Expo coaching staff
Nats have had numerous TJ injuries
The Expos had many arm injuries
Effecting the Sanderson Gullickson Palmer Lea era not to mention injuries curtailing the likes in the 90s of BJ Wallace Stan Spencer Justin Wayne and Josh Karp
Granted the career path of Billy Gardner Sr probably wound through Montreal due to Dick Williams and their familiarity from Boston Red Sox days
And Casey McKeons Dad skippered in Denver linked with Expos prior to Gardner I believe
a good compilation of events and developments, thank you for this and all your efforts. I’m excited about watching a number of prospects in ’24 as well as the discussions of them on this site.
a Happy and Healthy New Year to all!
I remember when the Nats were praised for their “spread the money around” approach as a smarter strategy than putting all their IFA money into one or two players. Given the volatility of performance in such prospects, there is a logic to it. My primary interest in such a strategy is that it work. We’ll see. In the meantime, thanks for keeping the prospect light on.
I watched James Wood hit a home run that hit the scoreboard in Harrisburg and it bounced all the way back to 2nd base, he does have some power but does need to cut down on strikeouts
All these other orgs snagging upper affiliate starters for depth even ole Poteet by the Yanx once drafted by Nats 2012
Despite all the uncertainty of developing fully
The Big Board has holes filled upper levels .
Still expecting some other former Bird farmhands to migrate to Nats .
Much like the old Styx song : Crystal Ball.. there has to be a significant free agent in Rizzos future path or better yet : a turnip which falls off the Orioles turnip truck with all their major abundance and the ex Birdland PD guys .
Orioles or even better Braves .
I’m pretty sure that spreading around the IFA allocation wasn’t a strategy. As I recall, our top guy reclassified to go a year earlier to some other team, and we had no choice but to reallocate the money across several mid-tier prospects. And we probably had to overpay for those guys too, given we had to buy them away from their earlier commitments.
All in all, I think that explains a pretty bad year for our IFAs, and we probably should have seen the DSL results coming, but it wasn’t an intentional decision by the team. They were trying to make the best of a bad situation, and good for them for not just sitting on the money or something.
it’s hard to say what lead to the DSL team releasing all their position players and starting over with a new coaching staff as well. I guess a regression was to be expected and IMO it shows how important a certain level of organizational guys is needed on a roster. I hope the new MiLB team is ready to hit the ground running.
Happy New Year to all!
Biggest positive surprise to me in 2023: Jacob Young. Time will tell whether he can carve out an extended MLB role (having three options left to ride the shuttle will help), but he earned his promotion last summer. If you had told me at this time last year that he’d be the guy to make such a run, I wouldn’t have bought it at all.
Biggest negative surprise: Green’s extreme inability to make contact. I suspected that he might struggle, but not that much. Here’s hoping he’s putting in the work this winter to make some changes.
Big non-surprise: the injury struggles of so many of the top pitchers in the organization, most notably Cavalli, Henry, and Bennett. This isn’t a condemnation of the Nats’ organization, as a lot of teams have struggled with widespread pitching injuries, including the almighty Dodgers and Braves. With the Nats, these injuries certainly have put a crimp in the rebuild. If healthy, Cavalli and Henry both likely would have been getting MLB experience in 2023.
Biggest unanswered question of 2023: why did House require so much “load management”? Yes, I’m excited about his rise, but what has been keeping a strapping 20-year-old from playing every day?
Jacob Young is a great story and by all accounts it couldn’t have happened to a better kid. but his walk rate has decreased at each level and I really feel he needs to play every day in upstate NY to see if he can improve on this as well as see if he can develop more power.
For whatever it’s worth, Green’s strikeout rate in 2023 (41.5%) was almost identical to his rate in 2022 (40.4%). I’d put his performance under “biggest non-surprise” or just “biggest disappointment” as you and several other posters here (myself included) were worried about his contact ability before the Nats even selected him in the draft.
Building on your theme, and as a counter to your “big non-surprise” category, I’d add another positive surprise as the development of the Nats’ non-elite starting pitching draft picks in recent years. A whole host of arms, like Alvarez, Saenz, Luckham, Lord, Cornelio (add Herz to this list too, even if he wasn’t a Nats draft pick, his game definitely seems to have upped itself upon joining the Nats system), all put in solid/very good seasons together. It should also be noted that most of the Nat’s ’23 draft picks also performed very well in their very short cameos.
This builds on a similar trend from 2022 but which was almost exclusively unique to relievers (Willingham, Ferrer, Brzykcy, Ribalta, Yankosky, Sinclair, Cronin, Collins, Glavine). Unfortunately, a bunch of these guys’ ’23s were devastated by injury, which could be my “negative surprise” category. But at least Ferrer was able to positively contribute to the major league team.
My New Year’s Wish for the org for 2024 is that with yet another overhaul of of the org’s player development personnel, that we bring in coaches that can teach players the fundamentals of making contact. From the DSL all the way up to the uber prospects like Crews, Wood and House, strikeout rates among Nats prospects is a systematic problem, and something I fear that is somehow a product of the Nats’ approach to player development rather than an unintended consequence. I’m always struck by how Robert Hassell’s strikeout rate immediately jumped about 10% upon joining the Nats org, and has remained that way since. If the Nats could get a better handle on this, I think it would go a massive way in facilitating this rebuild.
Yeah, Jacob Young is a great story but I suspect that he’s going to have a hard time upping the BB% at the MLB level. Because as FredMD noted he doesn’t have a lot of power, and he DOES have a lot of speed. He’s one of the fastest people in MLB. Pitchers aren’t dumb, and most of them will realize that making him earn his way on is the way to go.
Oh, I agree with skepticism about Young having much of an MLB ceiling. I just found his rise to be the most truly surprising thing in the system.
One curious thing about Young is that for all his speed, he didn’t run much in college. He only stole 26 bases in 131 collegiate games at Florida. He has stolen 52 each of the last two seasons as a Nat.
As for how the big club bench will be constituted at the beginning of the season, there are some interesting discussions to be had about Young vs. Alex Call for 4th/5th OF and Young vs. Nasim Nuñez for designated speed guy. Young is a better hitter than Nuñez, although Nuñez takes more walks. The eye test seemed to show Young as a better hitter than Call, although Call had truly terrible luck in 2023 (.230 BABIP) and has a higher minor-league OPS than Young. Both still have multiple minor-league options. The Nats would figure to bring a minor-league free agent or two to camp as well, although none likely with Young’s speed.
Baseball in general is in an interesting evolutionary time as teams try to weigh the benefits of speed in the pitch-clock/bigger-base era vs. overall deficiencies in players’ games. For now, Young and Nuñez have the right special talent at the right time to get an extended look at the possibilities.
since nobody has ever hit .478 we can’t have eleven so let’s make it an honorable mention for Drew Millas ascending to Nats Park and more than holding his own. with his defense never taking a day off I expect to see him on the OD roster.
And kudos 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’ve always thought BA awaits you gather all the minor league signings as they stream in after the holidays and New Years retreats away from NC offices .
The death of Billy Gardner Senior yesterday caused me to look up his stellar coaching and managing. Career in both the bigs and on the farm .
One sees his monster 1980 Expo AAA roster in Denver with first place inter old American Association lead by the Golden Spikes winner in 79 in Wallach , Rock Raines Gullickson Sanderson etc etc . The crop at AAlead by Dylan Crews should hopefully achieve some success as much as that 1980 Denver Bears talent glut .
Hopefully less arm injuries .
Nats have had plenty of TJ woes as those Expo staffs endured elbow and shoulder injuries in the scroll of names Gullickson Sanderson Lea Palmer Schatzader.
Plus that was also the same time frame that present Orioles announcer Ross Grimsley had his 20 game win season as the Expos attempted to find lightning in the bottle with the likes of Spaceman Lee and woodie Fryman .
May Cole Henry find health and progression in 2024