If baseball teams had 10 man rosters, the Washington Nationals might be the team to beat heading into 2017. With an enviable group of star talent, the top of the Nationals roster compares favorably with just about any other group in MLB. For instance, here are our projections for the just the 10 best players on the Cubs, Dodgers, and Nationals, who we have forecasted as the three best teams in baseball.
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We’re headed down the homestretch of our position-by-position look at hitter contact quality, utilizing granular exit speed and launch angle data. Last week, we examined American League right fielders; today, we turn our focus to their National League counterparts.
It’s no secret that this winter has not been kind to veteran hitters, particularly those with limited defensive ability. Mike Napoli is still a free agent, as are Chris Carter and Pedro Alvarez. Brandon Moss just signed with the Royals yesterday, getting a backloaded $12 million on a two year deal. Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista, and Mark Trumbo all took significant discounts relative to their initial asking prices. As we discussed a few weeks ago, the market for offense-first players was remarkably poor this year, to the point where it could be seen as an overcorrection; perfectly useful players are signing for less than what similarly valuable players with different skills are getting paid.
What is perhaps most interesting about this development, however, is that the teams who could are most in need of a first base upgrade are also teams that should be trying to squeak out every marginal win they can find.
Are you overshadowed by a rock-star colleague? Maybe you’re great at your job, but this person occupies a similar role and is amazing at theirs. This super-you exceeds expectations on every project, perpetually radiates serenity, and never burns popcorn in the office microwave. In actual talent level you’re not far behind this person, but in management’s eyes you don’t measure up. You’re employed, sure, but constantly feeling overlooked.
Shawn Kelley knows how you feel. For years, his managers overlooked him when they called for a closer. After spending four years in Seattle behind David Aardsma, Brandon League, and Tom Wilhelmsen, Kelley landed with the Yankees in 2013. Would he close games? Well, Mariano Rivera was not only the Yankees’ closer, but also their legend riding off into the sunset. And in 2014 it was David Robertson’s turn in the ninth.
After the Yankees traded Kelley to the Padres, Eno Sarris argued that he could close games. But A.J. Preller disagreed. One day before the season started, he acquired Craig Kimbrel. When Kelley signed with the Nationals prior to 2016, Jonathan Papelbon was the closer. When he wore out his welcome, Mark Melancon filled the role.
Kelley has been toiling in obscurity for his whole career, but 2017 may finally represent his first opportunity to shine. He’s the leading candidate to close games in D.C. I’m here to tell these folks and Nationals fans: it’s okay to get excited at the prospect of Shawn Kelley, Nationals closer.
One of the criticisms we get most often is that we sometimes overreact to small sample sizes. It’s true that we do, and it’s true that we probably shouldn’t, given how hard analysts have worked over the years to caution people against that very act. I can tell you this much: Our intentions are always good. And I can also tell you this: Players like Daniel Murphy are why we can’t stop.
Everyone wants to be first to see the breakout, and in the 2015 playoffs, if you’ll remember, Murphy homered seven times in 14 games. We can only identify that as a breakout in hindsight, but that streak sent everyone to the video. There was a search for a reason, a search for understanding, and that’s when the world learned of Murphy’s work with Kevin Long. The Nationals subsequently took the chance on Daniel Murphy, Quality Hitter.
Look, you’ve read about Murphy already. You know what he did. But do you really know what he did? They don’t make many players like this. There don’t exist many seasons like that. It’s really quite extraordinary.
That’s a heck of a title for a FanGraphs article in 2017, isn’t it? Modern sabermetric discourse doesn’t give much credit to the traditional ninth-inning closer’s role. It focuses, rather, on deploying the right man at the right time, about Andrew Miller parachuting into the game at Terry Francona’s leisure to throw multiple innings of comedy. Closers? Who needs a set closer?
Well, most teams do, if for no other reason than a lot of players and managers aren’t quite ready to do away with the closer’s role just yet. One of those teams would be the Washington Nationals, who don’t need a closer as much as they need at least one more good relief pitcher. Mark Melancon did an admirable job finishing out games for the club following a trade-deadline deal that sent him to Washington, but he’s now employed by the Giants. The Nats haven’t replaced him just yet. In fact, they haven’t added any relievers to the big-league roster. Mike Rizzo has acquired some spare arms in Austin Adams and Jimmy Cordero, but they’ll likely be opening the season in Triple-A. One has to imagine that the current incarnation of the bullpen won’t be the one in place on Opening Day, right?
They’ve certainly made an effort to change the relief corps so far. They were in on Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen before the former returned to New York and the latter went back to Los Angeles. Free agency is a fickle thing. So here we are, at the tail end of January, and the Nats have yet to make a significant upgrade to their bullpen. With a team that’s looking to win a World Series before their last two years of Bryce Harper are up, that’s something that needs to be addressed.
But who? Who’s going to close for the Nationals?
He’s the man who currently has the job. Kelley’s been a fine reliever for years now, and in theory, there’s nothing wrong with him being the guy who closes out games. He’s as good a candidate as anyone left at this stage. However, it also wouldn’t be bad if Kelley and his excellent strikeout tendencies were free to be used in the eighth or earlier. Of course, if Kelley does end up closing, it could behoove Rizzo to sign…
Going into next season, the Nationals are prepared to start a 32-year-old at first base, a 32-year-old who last season recorded a WAR of literally -1.3. That’s very bad! If Ryan Zimmerman had any dwindling chance of building a Hall-of-Fame career record, he effectively kissed it goodbye. It was an extraordinarily frustrating summer.
But is Zimmerman toast now, or what? Spoiler alert: I don’t think so. Story arc: to follow.
It’s worth glancing over this thing I just put up about Tyler Naquin. This small post follows directly from the analysis performed for that bigger post. As the season wore on, there were several articles written about how Zimmerman seemed like he was getting unlucky. I have further evidence to support that. In the linked post, I plotted air slugging against air exit velocity, and I highlighted the Naquin dot. Here’s that again, but with a red highlight for the Zimmerman dot.
According to this, Zimmerman under-performed by 262 points. Only Billy Butler came real close to that, and Butler runs like he doesn’t want to wake up a baby. In the earlier Naquin post, I showed that these differences didn’t appear particularly sustainable between 2015 and 2016. And, say, about that! Zimmerman is highlighted here again.
In 2015, Zimmerman ranked 31st in average air exit velocity, at 94.5 miles per hour. On those batted balls, he slugged 1.016. In 2016, he ranked 32nd in average air exit velocity, at 94.3 miles per hour. On those batted balls, he slugged .760. He followed almost exactly standard performance with extreme under-performance, and if you just bump Zimmerman’s 2016 numbers up to the best-fit line, his overall slugging percentage would move from .370 to .460. Instead of slugging like Jordy Mercer, he would’ve slugged like George Springer. You can accept a first baseman who slugs like George Springer.
Just for the sake of making sure it’s clear, this isn’t conclusive, because we don’t have a lot of Statcast information yet. We don’t know how all of these things work. Maybe Zimmerman is just weird now. It’s also important to recognize he’s had some injury problems, and he’s coming off a career-low walk rate and a career-high strikeout rate. Ryan Zimmerman is by no means in his career prime. One should rightly assume he’s declining, but from the looks of things, one also shouldn’t exaggerate. Zimmerman is better than the results he just posted. He remains an offensive threat, and a player who further deepens the Nationals’ quality lineup.
While you were off doing something else over the weekend, the Angels picked up a new second baseman. Granted, their new second baseman was to be someone else’s bench player, so we’re not talking about a blockbuster, and that same would-be bench player had just expressed frustration over losing his starting job. And so Danny Espinosa was sent to California, with the Nationals picking up Austin Adams and Kyle McGowin.
You want to know another way to know this wasn’t big? The Nationals made a trade for Angels prospects. As we all understand, the Angels don’t have prospects, and here Adams might be the one who’s slightly interesting. He’s been a tough-to-hit Double-A reliever with significant control problems. The Nationals didn’t get a lot for Espinosa’s final year of team control. The Angels, though, should probably be pretty happy. They’ve plugged what had been a gaping hole, and Espinosa suffers from a perception problem.
Last Wednesday, the Nationals solved their center field problem by trading several of their best pitching prospects to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for Adam Eaton. Last Friday, the Cardinals solved their center field problem by giving a bunch of money to free agent Dexter Fowler. Before signing Fowler, the Cardinals tried to trade for Eaton. Had the Nationals not been able to complete a deal for Eaton, they presumably would have been in on Fowler. So, with two teams making different decisions about big investments into how to land a center fielder, let’s compare the two players and the costs it took to acquire them.
Just one day after they dealt away Chris Sale for an impressive crop of young talent, the White Sox continued their tear-down yesterday by flipping Adam Eaton for another nice haul. This time, they landed three young pitchers (roughly in order of consensus future value): Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning.
Here’s how the minor leaguers headed to Chicago grade out by my KATOH system. KATOH denotes WAR forecast for first six years of player’s major-league career. KATOH+ uses similar a methodology with consideration also for Baseball America’s rankings.
*****
Lucas Giolito, RHP (Profile)
KATOH: 5.8 WAR (47th overall)
KATOH+: 10.8 WAR (9th overall)
Giolito is one of those cases where the scouting reports outstrip the on-field performance. Scouts have long raved about Giolito’s fastball-curveball combination, and he parlayed it into dominance at the lower rungs of the minor leagues in 2014 and 2015. He was a consensus top-five prospect at this time last year, but things got a little rough for him in 2016.