Nats Junk Randy St. Claire, Entire Rotation

So in the annals of "shit only I care about", the Nats fired pitching coach Randy St. Claire today. I'm not terribly surprised - the rotation has been god-awful, so someone was going to be the fall guy - I'd be lying if I said this makes any sense to me. I'm pretty sure Lookout Landing nailed it with their post - what the hell was he going to do with a shit sandwich. (I say "pretty sure" because for some reason I can't figure out if he's being sarcastic or not.)

Seriously, what the hell do you want your pitching coach to do when the GM basically decides in 2007 "screw it, we're going all replacement-level pitchers and it's open season for anyone to try out in Spring Training"? How does he react when the two most talented starters he's coached - John Patterson and Shawn Hill - can't throw their best pitch without getting injured? How about when both guys are just released at the end of Spring Training? How does he prevent injuries to a bullpen where most guys are getting 60+ appearances a season? How does the pitching coach have anything to do with a .321 BABIP and the outfielders resemble a Vaudeville act every other night? What about a 65% strand rate?

I mean, maybe St. Claire sucked. But canning him during this season from hell is a bit of a waste of time. There are far more problems with this team than their ability to throw a decent changeup. Rob Dibble apparently wasted no time ensuring that he ran the truck over St. Claire while he still had shit in the office. On the other hand, I think St. Claire might've quit anyway:

"The pitching isn't performing up to where it needs to be to win, and I think a lot of factors go into it, but I guess I'm easier to replace than 12 guys," [Randy St. Claire] said. "Easier to replace and cheaper to replace. But that's the game. When the team doesn't perform, they're bound to make changes."

At least everyone ended up pissed off. Bet it won't matter, though.

I Need to Start Writing About the Nats Again

Let's be honest; this place has been pretty dead lately. Writing about the inglorious trainwreck that is the Washington Nati(o)nals would at least pass the time. To some extent, I could just start writing about the Nats again on here and I don't think anyone would really notice. (Well, at least not until August. Or whenever James and I finally get around to unveiling the multiple ideas we have for blog - yes, we have IDEAS. We'll see if anything actually comes of them.) Still, I don't think that would really do them justice.

Here's what it comes down to - I'm a bit arrogant about my writing. I have the ability to be a pretty decent writer when I put my mind to it. Admittedly, that doesn't happen as much as I'd like it to, and lord knows that I've been prone to mail it in on some occasions. (Check the weekly ACC posts from last year for that, although I'm not going to lie - the profanity-riddled awesomeness of writing those posts was fun, even if the post's readability resembled that of a Fanhouse commentator) In a vacuum, this doesn't mean anything, but I feel the background's needed for a couple of reasons. The first reason is writing about the Nats gives me a relevant topic during the college football offseason. The second - and this is the big one - is that there are some terrible writers out there writing about the Nats.

I'd say that the two most prominent writers associated with the Nats' blogosphere (the wilted flower that it is) both have this problem. At this point, I'm convinced that one of them has a broken caps lock key; it's the only explanation for his random capitalization of words that either don't deserve capitalization or don't deserve emphasis. The other ...well, the other found these two magic formatting functions called bold and italic, but he has no idea how they work, so he just kind of uses them on their own. It's jarring, and quite frankly that site is unreadable (he also does the random ellipses thing, which I find more annoying than most - we're not all 15 anymore, guys. You're writing on the 'net, you don't have to make it sound like you're trailing off). Also, it looks like he's picked up random quotation marks, making him have something in common with Finger Quotin' Margo. Obviously those aren't the only two guys; there are more than a few out there, but since Needham folded up shop and is now freelancing for NBC Washington on the side and MissC went into her current role there's been a dearth of decent content. (NFA Brian is still out there doing his thing, which is quality but I'm not sure I'd classify it as following the Nats in the sense I mean.)

What this means to me is there's a void of quality writers covering the Nats. In theory it wouldn't be hard to ascend the ranks of Nats bloggers, although there's still the sticky issue of generating content and getting people here. (Obviously those are both issues I haven't figured out how to get around yet, although this site has directly and indirectly led to a couple of writing gigs for the staff here, so that's a plus.)

There's also a second, bigger issue: this team is terrible. God-awful. Announcers openly speculating about the #1 pick being on the big-league team in July terrible. 3 games up on the race for the #1 overall pick in 2010 already bad. 11.5 back of first place already (and 6 games back of 4th) and the only ML team under .350 bad. They're the worst-fielding team in MLB according to UZR and RZR. If you prefer traditional metrics, they have the worst ERA in the majors as well. The offense hasn't been bad, but half the power bats are in the lineup at the expense of the defense - Adam Dunn, Josh Willingham, Ronnie Belliard, and to a lesser extent Elijah Dukes and Willie Harris (CF versions only) have all been god-awful in the field. Functionally, there's not a lot you can do when you're handcuffed that badly on defense - and if the Nats didn't know that Dunn and Willingham were both butchers they did a worse job scouting than even I can imagine. I haven't even begun to bitch about the relievers, who make the defense seem palpable. No lead is safe puts it mildly.

So we'll see if I'm compelled to write about the Nats; my instinct says no. It's bad enough to see a terrible team blow game after game, but it's another matter entirely to have to write about it day after day (or week after week). I started writing this post a few days ago; since then, they haven't won a game. At this point, it's morbid curiosity to see if they can challenge the elusive 41-win mark. Maybe I'll follow it.

The Price Tag of Prior Actions

I feel like I should apologize for sullying the mass of prior posts that were nothing but college basketball with a post that's unequivocally baseball-related. On the other hand, this is the first activity here in ages, so at least it's some kind of content (even if half the people that read this blog just closed it as soon as I uttered the b-word). It's been way too quiet here; I'd like to do something about it, but quite honestly spring practice isn't worth writing about in most cases, and even though Lane Kiffin has done a fantastic job raising hell, everyone else is already kind of on top of that and I'm already kind of over that.

Anyway. The Nats were bad enough last year to be gifted with the first overall pick in the draft this year, and as it happens, there's also a pretty quality pitching prospect out there named Stephen Strasburg. He's a college kid with the kind of stuff that not only makes scouts drool, it makes them leave wet spots on their bedsheets at night. It helps that his frame is "projectable", which is supposed to mean he'll fill out in a manner that will support his further development. I just think it means the scouts think he has a nice ass. Either way, he's a big deal, the biggest of this draft class.

And then, things got funny. Peter Gammons broke the story first that Strasburg's agent Scott Boras - did I mention he already has an agent? Because he does - is asking for 6 years, $50 million. (I apologize that the link there isn't to the Gammons article; it's behind a paywall but it's there to reflect what I'm saying. If you want to read a summary of the news in random italics and bold, that site will be heaven to you.) If that seems unruly and out of control, it is; most guys get no more than 20% of that, if even that. David Price, the 1st overall pick in 2007, only pulled in $8.8 million, which is kind of Tom Boswell's point. As for me, I'm wondering what the difference is if there's no guarantee the money will be spent.

Now, I've been a fan of the erstwhile Expos for going on 15 years, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with the franchise not willing to spend money. I've gone through that on more than a few occasions, and the only difference this time around is that it's a new owner (the 3rd - technically 4th, if you want to count MLB - that I've seen so far) not willing to spend cash. This time though, it's less being unwilling to spend money and more continuing a trend.

Since the Lerners took over, they've shown a continual unwillingness to spend. Those of you that are smart can figure out that this may devolve into an OMG TEH LERNERS ARE TEH CHEEP rant, but since I haven't had one of those in a while, hear me out. 2007 was home to the Replacement Pitcher Parade (which actually wasn't a bad idea, but that's neither here nor there for the purposes of this conversation); 2008 was the parade minus the NRIs that drove the parade. The one free agent signing you've heard of since they moved was Adam Dunn this offseason; Alfonso Soriano was a trade, and if you knew they signed Daniel Cabrera, you're either already a fan or you're lying. They've signed more than that, but those were all minor signings.

Numerous players have gone through arbitration for matters that would normally be trivial. I can immediately recall taking Felipe Lopez to arbitration over $300K (not a big deal in baseball terms); they took Shawn Hill to arbitration this year, then when he won, they cut him. They've been unwilling to commit to signing Ryan Zimmerman to a long-term deal. There are more than a few examples beyond those, but they'll do for now. Sure, they were involved in the Teixiera deal, but I was always of the suspicion that they were involved in the negotiations precisely so they could say they were willing to spend money without willing to commit to actually spending the money. They were unwilling to sign Aaron Crow out of the draft this past year - admittedly his agent may have been a bit shady, but to put this season's draft in perspective, Crow might be the 2nd best pitcher in the draft.

When the stadium finished construction in 2008, the Lerners refused to pay for some additions (change orders) to the construction above and beyond the original construction. They were late paying their own employees at a couple of points during the season. Now, I offer up that information with a realization they've had issues getting income, too. Ticket sales are abysmal considering the newness of the stadium. The TV ratings are terrible (and they don't own their network, instead leasing time from Peter Angelos' network MASN), and saying the radio ratings are terrible implies enough people listen to the radio to even get a rating. I think I might've been 5% of the listening audience.

I paint this picture to give you a feel for what's there. Given that backdrop, I can't see a reason not to draft Strasburg that has anything to do with baseball. I can't believe that the Nats would figure out a way to invest the money they'd save on a better player - because I have no reason to believe they know how to do that. A cheaper signing would be just that - a cheaper signing. Given what I said above, there's no rational way you can spin drafting Crow instead of Strasburg, so you're stuck drafting a hitter. That's not a problem necessarily, but again, if you're going to draft someone, you might want to sign him.

The one thing I'm not talking about at this point is flameout potential. Pitchers, as a general rule, have a higher percentage of flameout compared to hitters. Factoring that in, in most cases you'd want to minimize risk if skill levels are equal, meaning you'd draft the equally skilled hitter. That's not the case in this draft; there is no comparable hitter to Strasburg. That turns the equation into how much you're willing to pay to take on a higher ceiling with an increased risk. With a franchise who - for lack of better wording - you trust, you may be okay with that risk reduction. I think it's clear at this point where I stand on that.

There's a reason not to draft Strasburg - it's pretty much that previous paragraph. However, the Nats have pretty much hamstrung themselves on this particular choice. If they opt not to draft Strasburg because they're worried about his potential for flameout or injury or one of 1,200 other reasons that have to do with baseball, it'll be tough for everyone not to hear "we didn't want to shell out the cash." When you've established a culture of not willing to go the extra dollar, that's going to be the conclusion that everyone comes to when you don't go the extra dollar.

I'm a Bad Fan, Vol. 1,482

So - if you totally revamp your blog to talking about the Nats, and then the first thing you do after doing that is miss the first game, ....well, you'd be me. It's not entirely my fault; I had to stay late at work. By the time work was done, so was the game, and the Braves walked away with a 6-4 win.

This was a hybrid of both the incredibly early-season struggles the Nats had (let's fall behind before we come up to bat!) and the slightly-more-recent ability to generate offense (the winning run was on base as late as the 7th inning). By the time the first was over, the Braves had sent 8 guys to the plate and Jerome Williams had pitched 36 pitches, and I'm left to believe that the McCann walk was of the unintentional intentional variety.

After that, it was more of the Nats' early-season woes; Smoltz sent down the side in order the first two innings before Chris Snelling worked out a walk in the third, coming around to score thanks to a sacrifice and FLop's infield single + throwing error.

Fast-forward to the bottom of the 7th (current score: 5-2). Once again, another rally was started by a Schneider non-hit followed by Snelling coming up big, and FLop contributing another RBI. It's good to see this from FLop, who's had a rough go of it early on. Still, two runs scored, and with Kearns at second, Zimm struck out and Meathook flied out. End of rally, end of game; Rafael Soriano and Bob Wickman closed the door. Another day, another game.

Aside from that, some other minor notes:
- FLop finally seems to be warming up; he's 6 for his last 14 with a stolen base (and a CS).
- Snelling continues his semi-intermittent hitting pace (5 for his last 10 if you ignore Monday's game). As bats in the number 8 hole go, you could do a lot worse.
- Scheider continued his odd pattern of getting critical non-hits, igniting a rally in the 7th. A double-switch going in the top of the 7th turned Schnieder into the de facto leadoff hitter, knocking Robert Fick out of the game.
- Speaking of Fick ... in the 6 spot? I'm a big fan of Acta, but I don't get it. Eh, he'll get a pass on this from me for now.


In other news, the Kory Casto experiement is on hold; he's been sent back down to Columbus. Not too surprising; as I mentioned before, Snelling has done a damn fine job hitting that far down in the order, and I'm personally wondering when he'd move up to hit 7th (or 6th!). Casto needs the everyday PT, which he wasn't going to get with the big club.

On the other hand, this is going to create some interesting debate as to who should start when Logan comes back from the DL with Snelling and Church hitting well.

Washington Nationals 2k7: Hide the Women and Children

First off, I'll be honest here - I'm a huge fan of the Nationals, have been since they were the Expos back in '94. I've been following them for over half my life, and this might be one of the worst teams they've fielded. You know it's bad when you're considering a 95-loss season a success. Still, I can't help but follow them. The rest of this post will be dedicated to them, mostly as an analysis of the team for 2007 (like last year, I plan on doing this again this season; unlike last year, I'm starting in January) but also as a study for when truly bad teams have little to play for.

Infield & Catching
1st Base
Nick Johnson will play first - when he's healthy. Unfortunately, he won't be healthy to start the season thanks to recovery from fractured right femur and subsequent surgery (and surgery to fix the previous surgery), which means the Nats will be forced to turn elsewhere. It's likely 27-year-old-but-still-propect Larry Broadway will snatch up most of the early season at-bats until Johnson is healthy. When healthy, NJ provides great on-base skills, good power, and plus defense at first. Broadway has a passable skill set, but the biggest knock against him is that he's a little old to be getting his first shot at big-league playing time at 27. He'll function as a cheap stopgap until NJ returns to health - unless he performs well. Then he'll function as a cheap stopgap and provoke controversy when NJ gets healthy.

2nd Base
Thanks to the Vidro trade (and I do mean thanks - thanks, Bavasi!), Felipe Lopez will slide over from short to play 2nd on an everyday basis. His offensive skills are certainly much improved from where they were - on some level. If he's allowed to run, he'll certainly do so, but he struggled to show any real semblance of power once he was traded to the Nats. Defensively, he's not much to call home about, but he's better than (past a diving) Vidro, which has to count for something. His backup will be Bernie Castro, whose main attributes are 1) he's young and 2) he's cheap. Sense a trend yet?

Shortstop
The job is Cristian Guzman's. And when I say that it's his job, I mean that it's his - not even his to lose, really. If he was going to lose his job, that would've been back in 2005 back when he was putting up 456 ABs of .219 BA. He was out all of last year with a torn labrum, but looks to be back and healthy - don't celebrate too much. Offensively, there's really not much there - if you're lucky, you'll get a pedestrian offensive shortstop who'd be pretty good as long as we're talking 1985 or so. Defensively? Around average as well, maybe slightly worse. We'll see what it looks like, but still. Yech.

Third Base
It's tough for most Nats fans not to be happy talking about Ryan Zimmerman - and on this hellhole of a team, you can't blame them much. He's still young (22), but he's above-average defensively already and may provoke Scott Rolen comparisons before too long. Unfortunately, he may also be the third-best 3B in the division behind David Wright and Miguel Cabrera, but that's not his fault. He's still - at worst - above average in a league stacked with 3Bs, and at this point the sky's the limit for him.

Catcher
Brian Schneider had what seemed like a rough year at the plate, especially with his power. However, his power's really been decreasing over the last 4-5 years (check out his doubles and HR) and unless that returns he'll basically be a better defensive version of Guzman. That's normally scary enough to begin with, but if you already have the original Guz.... that's when problems start. Jesus Flores - a Rule V pick from the Mets - will back up. Not terrible, I guess. I mean, he's a backup C that will probably start 20-30 games or so. Whatever, he won't make or break the season, and he can't really perform much worse at the plate than Brandon Watson did last year. Whoopee.

Outfielders
Right Field
Austin Kearns will be the everyday RF, and as long as he's healthy he should provide about league-average production offensively. Defensively, he's above average - one of the better defenders in the NL. He hasn't been injured in two years, but I still remember his injury-plagued seasons before then. I'm probably unfairly biased with regard to his health; he'll be at worst adequate protection for Zimmerman and at least a small ray of offensive hope before the lineup plunges into the black abyss.

Center Field
The job's Nook Logan's. Why it's Logan's is anybody's guess, however. He brings a ton of speed and a hideous skill set beyond that - no average, no power, below average fielding. Sounds good enough for me, right? Evidently it's good enough for the Nats. Meanwhile, Ryan Church - who was perfectly fine last year but ran over Bodes' dog coming out of the parking lot on the first day of Spring Training - will get relegated to a backup role here. Alex Escobar is in the mix and will see PT, but probably not at the outset. Will produce when healthy, which is anybody's guess.

Left Field
This is an interesting case, and I think we're going to need to watch this closely (well, as closely as we can get with this team) once Spring Training gets underway. Right now it looks like Kory Casto's job (according to the Nats' official depth chart), but recent arrival Chris Snelling may play there as well. Snelling is like Escobar in one important way; chronically injured. He's also chronically out of options and on the 40-man roster, which would lead me to think he's getting PT. Both Escobar and Church are on the depth chart here too, although I'd say it's more than likely this will shake out over ST. Personal guess? Snelling and Escobar will play until they get injured, then Casto will get the job.

Bench Players
There's some weird NRIs out there - Tony Womack, Travis Lee, etc. It's certainly not surprising if they end up on the big-league team when they break camp. Same for D'Angelo Jimenez. Aside from them, there's the usual fare; we've already talked about Larry Broadway and I mentioned Castro a while ago, and they're very likely to break with the Nats. The outfield bench is going to mostly consist of some combination of whomever isn't playing in the OF among all those CF/RF candidates (Logan, Church, Snelling, Casto, and Escobar, for those of you attempting to score at home). Rule V pick Jesus Flores has been mentioned already. That'll just about cover it - there's some interesting potential here, but it's more than likely it won't really amount to anything. Don't get too excited.

Starting Pitching
Ye gods, this is when the fun begins. I worked this out a while ago, but it still stands. Here's your possibilities.

John Patterson - obviously the ace when healthy. The keyword here: healthy. Averaged about 80 days on the DL over the last 3 years (yes, it's biased because of 2006), so breaking that out over a season.... that's probably about 20 starts.
Tim Redding - should make the club out of ST, and among Nats circles that I'm a part of, he's been one of those "quietly good signings". Of course, he's also been the only signing so far. If healthy, they'll probably toss him out there every 5th day.
Billy Traber - for some reason he's fallen out of favor with Nats management, and I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up in the bullpen for most/all of the season. He may end up in Rauch's role from 2006. (Lord knows they'll need bullpen arms anyway.)
Chris Michilak - is this guy old? I haven't found any mention of him in the rotation anywhere beyond Rotoworld. Even the Nats don't have him on the 40-man roster.
Jason Bergmann - see Traber.
Mike O'Connor - probably a default #3. Unspectacular, but he's ML-serviceable if he keeps his walk rate down and stays healthy. Look for 20-25 starts, as ...really, who else are they going to bring up? (note: will not be ready for Spring Training)
Shawn Hill - better skill set than O'Connor, but will probably end up as #4. See above.
Joel Hanrahan - probably won't open the season in the rotation, and he definitely won't if a couple of other things happen (more on that in a minute). If and when injuries strike, he's ...eh, 2nd or 3rd in line to get starts, I guess. Will flirt with 15 starts.
Ramon Ortiz - the Nats just made an offer to him, and since I'm guessing teams aren't knocking down his door for 200 innings of 6.00 ERA ball, he'll probably sign with the Nats. I'd expect slightly better, but not by much.
Jason Simontacchi - see Hanrahan.

In addition, the Nats have made offers to Ortiz, Armas, Steve Trachsel, Jorge Sosa, and Jerome Williams. Of those, if *any* of them sign they'll be in the rotation. Obviously Armas and Trachsel have injury concerns attached to them; I'd only remotely consider Williams out of that crew. Tomo Ohka is still floating around, too.

A couple of other names I've heard thrown around but haven't seen here yet:

Beltran Perez - will fill the 5th spot?
Matt Chico - one of the prospects (hey, this is the Nats system, he's a prospect) acquired in the Livan deal. Since the Kasten Plan revolves around not spending a lot of ML-level money this season, Chico in the majors wouldn't surprise me a lot. Is he ready? No. But the Nats could easily throw him out there for 20 starts and let him mature on his own - and leave it to Randy St. Claire to make sure his psyche stays intact.

A rough guess on the number of starts everyone will make:
25+:
Ortiz, Sosa, Williams, Ohka (if any of them sign with the Nats)
Redding
20+:
Patterson, Armas, Trachsel (sign / health)
O'Connor, Hill, Redding
15+:
Simontacchi, Hanrahan, Chico, Perez

That really doesn't help a whole lot, but it's at least a rough attempt to work out who they'll be throwing up to pitch.

Bullpen
Chad Cordero and Jon Rauch will do at least a passable job of protecting the 6 leads they get all season. (Sorry, excessive pessimism.) Aside from them, there's enough spare rotation fodder and discarded parts to put together a decent bullpen, I'd guess. Bergmann and Traber will probably end up here, and it remains to be seen if Ryan Wagner can stand a chance of living up to any of his potential. First step: stop allowing baserunners to score way above the league average. Emilio Fruto was the other guy in the Vidro trade, and he did quite well in moving from AA to AAA last year. Nothing special in absolute terms, but he'd be a reliable option here. Luis Ayala and Saul Rivera will probably show up, maybe Micah Bowie.

Bottom Line
Don't expect much. The bullpen shouldn't be horrid, the infield won't be terrible when healthy, and the outfield will at least have 1 1/2 quality players most days. However, there's really only half a lineup there (Lopez, Zimmerman, Johnson, Kearns, maybe Church/Snelling/Escobar when healthy and if you're generous) with the rest of it being either bad or abysmal, and good luck trying to figure out who the hell is going to start. That alone will doom the Nats to 100 losses - if they're lucky, 95.