The Washington Nationals have been making headlines lately with big such as trading for Gio Gonzalez and getting a one-year deal with Edwin Jackson. They were even rumored to be in on the Prince Fielder sweepstakes. Some of the Nationals’ other moves understandably have garnered less attention, such as minor-league deals for veteran outfielders Mike Cameron and (more recently) Rick Ankiel. While these are low-risk deals that may turn out to be bench insurance, given some ambiguities about the Nationals’ outfield situation, Cameron and Ankiel could form a nice stopgap platoon in center field that would allow Washington to protect other, more significant investments.

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Toward the end of his weekly Sunday notes column for the Boston Globe, Nick Cafardo included the following write-up on John Lannan:

Lannan, 27, is a terrific option as an end-of-the rotation starter now that Washington has signed Edwin Jackson. There is a lot of speculation that the Nationals will deal him to the Angels for center fielder Peter Bourjos, with Mike Trout on the way to play that position in Anaheim. But the Nationals could also move Jayson Werth to center and sign a right fielder. It now appears that Yoenis Cespedes is not in their plans and they have cooled on B.J. Upton. Lannan, who went 10-13 last year with a 3.70 ERA and a (high) 1.462 WHIP, would be a good option for a team like Boston, but the Red Sox don’t seem to have the center fielder to give back, especially with Ryan Kalish unable to play until June. “It doesn’t have to be a center fielder,’’ said one major league source. “They don’t have to get a center fielder in that deal as long as they get a center fielder some other way. The Red Sox make a lot of sense.’’

Again, with emphasis added:

There is a lot of speculation that the Nationals will deal him to the Angels for center fielder Peter Bourjos…

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As Dave discussed yesterday, Nationals manager Davey Johnson is in favor of having Bryce Harper begin the season as his starting right fielder. This would undoubtedly affect Jayson Werth, since he is the incumbent right fielder.

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Per Jon Heyman of CBS Sports, 28-year-old right-hander Edwin Jackson and the Washington Nationals have reached an agreement on a one-year deal worth somewhere in the $8-12 million range. Pending a physical, Jackson joins a rotation that includes Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann, and recent acquisition (in a trade with Oakland) Gio Gonzalez.

What is there to say about Jackson, specifically, that FanGraphs hasn’t said already? The market for him has been — and continued this offseason to be — underwhelming relative to his production (link). It’s likely to continue to be underwhelming (link). He (Jackson) has become a journeymen despite possessing youth, physical tools, and an increasingly robust resume (link).

For three consecutive years now, Jackson has been worth between 3.5 and 4.0 WAR — which suggests that, provided he’s healthy, another season in the 3.5-4.0 WAR range wouldn’t be shocking. It also suggests that, even were a team to have given him $15 million, that would still probably have been on the low-end of fair market value.

The question that’s more interesting for the time being is this one: what, precisely, are the Nats hoping to accomplish with the Jackson deal?

Let’s start first of all by establishing this: the addition of Jackson — and subtraction, presumably, of either John Lannan or Chien-Ming Wang — doesn’t make the Nats insta-contenders. Per a too-early standings projection conducted last week by the Replacement Level Yankees blog (using Marcels as an input), the Nats finished with 83 wins; the Phillies and Braves, with 90 and 89, respectively. The most recent iteration of OLIVER standings projects the Nats to finish with 81 wins — a full 10 games behind the would-be first-place Braves.

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Well, it looks like we finally have an aggressive suitor for Edwin Jackson. Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Nationals are trying to trade John Lannan – who just lost his arbitration case and will earn $5 million in 2012 – in order to clear salary to make a run at signing Jackson.

If the Nationals can pull this off, it’d be a pretty neat trick. When you look at Lannan and Jackson side by side, this would be a pretty massive improvement for the team. Over the last three seasons, Jackson has posted an ERA- of 93, supported by quality peripherals, while Lannan has posted an ERA- of 101, a good bit better than his FIP/xFIP would suggest is sustainable. Jackson’s also thrown an additional 100 innings, so he’s provided better performance in a larger sample.

Even if you think Lannan possesses an ability to regularly beat his FIP, Jackson is roughly a +1 win upgrade. If you think that Lannan is about to run out of pixie dust and his run prevention is due for a regression, the upgrade is more like +2 wins. Given that the Nationals are on the contender-or-not bubble, those wins could have a lot of value to the team, and swapping out Lannan for Jackson would be a no-brainer.

The tough part might be finding someone who wants to take Lannan off their hands at this point in the off-season. Most teams are shopping in the bargain bin now, and there aren’t many clubs left with much in the way of budget room. They probably could have moved him a few months ago, but salary dumps in February aren’t easy. It’s an idea worth trying, but they might have to eat a little bit of money in order to convince someone to take him.

On Tuesday, Jon Heyman reported that Davey Johnson really wants Bryce Harper to begin the season as his everyday right fielder. While we don’t have a direct quote from Johnson confirming the story, given the fact that the alternative is some combination of Roger Bernadina, Mike Cameron, and Xavier Paul, it’s understandable that Johnson would prefer the uber-talented Harper in his quest to win games.

Managers always want to put the best players on the field that they can. Their job is to maximize performance in the short term, and given the choice between a raw potential superstar or a mediocre role player with limited upside, they’re going to take the kid nearly every time. However, this is also why managers aren’t allowed to make these calls, and Bryce Harper’s opening day assignment will be decided by the team’s front office.

For the Nationals, this should be a pretty easy call. The 19-year-old Harper looks to be a special talent, but even the very best 19-year-olds are generally not great Major League players. In the history of the sport, 16 guys have gotten 100 or more plate appearances in the Majors at age 19 or younger and been above average Major League hitters – the list includes Ty Cobb (134 wRC+), Mickey Mantle (114 wRC+), and Ken Griffey Jr (106 wRC+). If we assume that Harper is that kind of talent, maybe we could pencil him in for a 110 wRC+ or so this season. If he’s more like previous elite teenage prospects B.J. Upton (93 wRC+), Robin Yount (90 wRC+), or Mike Trout (88 wRC+), he’ll likely face his share of struggles and contribute minimal value to the team.

The Nationals simply should not trade team control of Harper’s age-25 season in exchange for getting a few hundred additional at-bats from him this year. The marginal value of having him on the roster from day one is massively outweighed by keeping him from hitting free agency after the 2017 season. Johnson may want Harper, but he shouldn’t get him until June at the earliest.

With 29.2 Wins Above Replacement in the past six seasons, Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman has the 11th-most WAR during that period. You read that right: 11th.  That’s more than Adrian Gonzalez. More than Jose Reyes. More than Mark Teixeira.  More than Adrian Beltre.

I don’t know about you, but I was surprised by that. And I spend a lot of time on the FanGraphs leader boards. But there are at least three people (actually, I’m sure there are many more) who know exactly how much WAR Zimmerman accumulated in the past six seasons: Zimmerman, his agent and Nationals’ general manager Mike Rizzo.

Zimmerman has played his entire career with the Nationals, and he’s said publicly that he’d like to finish his career with the Nats. His current 5-year, $45 million contract — which covered his last three years of arbitration-eligibility (from 2009 to 2011) and will cover his first two years of free agency (2012-2013) — expires soon.  The deal was heavily back-loaded, so the Nationals will pay Zimmerman $12 million in 2012 and $14 million in 2013. Both sides have expressed interest in getting a new, long-term deal done now and are believed to be close on terms. But Zimmerman will table any extension talks once spring training begins. That leaves a three-week window to negotiate a new agreement, or wait until next winter.

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A few years ago, Michael Morse looked like another marginal major-league guy who once had a brief hot streak. After reportedly having the last two seasons of his arbitration eligibility bought out by the Washington Nationals this weekend, Morse is now a millionaire many times over. (The reported amount is $10.5 million.) It has been a long path to relevance for the 29-year-old. Of more relevance right now is his current true-talent level — and how he fits in with the Nationals’ plans, considering the on-and-off Prince Fielder talk.

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One offseason removed from signing Jayson Werth to a 7 year, $126 million contract, the Washington Nationals are looking poised to make another splash. They are going strong in the bidding for Prince Fielder, and considering that they are reworking their television contract to get at least double the amount of money they are currently receiving ($26 million/year), they certainly seem to have the money to do it.

So to answer the title of this post, if money isn’t an issue, why shouldn’t the Nationals pursue Fielder? He’s the best player left on the free agent market, and the free agent class of 2013 is relatively barren at first base. Fielder is young, powerful, and a star — surely he’d be a good investment?

As we all know, though, teams need to put more thought into their decisions than that. In particular, there are two important questions to answer before we can properly evaluate if pursuing Fielder is in the Nats’ best interests: how close are they to contention, and how would Fielder’s signing impact the rest of their roster?

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Yesterday, the Nationals gave up four prospects, including three of their top 10 guys, for the right to acquire Gio Gonzalez from the Oakland A’s. This follows on the heels of the Mat Latos trade, essentially establishing current market value for a young starting pitcher with four year of team control. However, with Latos, the only nitpicking you can do about his performance to date is that he’s pitched in Petco, because other than that, he’s been pretty fantastic. Gonzalez’s track record is a little more spotty, starting out poorly before turning in two good seasons the last couple of years, but maintaining a walk rate that’s among the very worst in baseball.

Even while succeeding, Gonzalez simply hasn’t shown much of an ability to throw strikes on a regular basis, and those command problems have drawn unfavorable comparisons to the likes of Oliver Perez and even my own analogy to Edinson Volquez. However, rather than just continuing to point out the flaw in Gonzalez’s skillset, I thought it’d be useful to look at this pitcher type in general.

So, using the sweet, sweet custom leaderboards here on FanGraphs, I compiled a list of all starting pitcher seasons over the last 10 years with a minimum of 100 innings pitched and then filtered by walk rate (>=10%), strikeout rate (>=20%), and ground ball rate (>=40%). The resulting list gave me 38 pitcher seasons from 25 different pitchers. We can safely say that these guys have produced results at one time or another in a pretty similar fashion to how Gonzalez has pitched over the last couple of years. Here’s the list of those pitcher seasons, sorted in alphabetic order. Read the rest of this entry »