Who would have thunk that yesterday would be the day for Papa John’s Pizza to debut their new commercial starring the normally reticent James Wood? So many commercials of athletes are cringey — but this is cute. And Wood is quickly becoming a superstar on the field. He is a Top-15 player today in all of baseball, and you could debate that he should be ranked higher given his power and speed game. And speaking of power and speed, CJ Abrams has a Top-40 ranking in baseball.
Not to be missed in last night’s game was a breakout performance by Robert Hassell III who smashed his first career homer in a 3-hit effort. Hassell complimented his manager, Dave Martinez, for giving him a mental reset on his approach. “I thank Davey for kind of bringing me back down to earth before the game,” Hassell said after last night’s game. “He brought me in and was talking about me — being me. He was saying, ‘You know why you’re here. You’ve just got to play your game. We don’t need you hitting 450-foot bombs. We just need you getting on-base and being a threat.’ So I have him to credit for that.”
While Hassell is a long way from solidifying himself as an MLB regular, he sure did get himself back on track after four consecutive 0-3 games since his exciting 2-for-5 debut. Hopefully this will relax him since he was pressing and swinging defensively. With both Dylan Crews and Jacob Young on the IL, Young will be due back soon — and you would expect that either Daylen Lile or Hassell would be the player to get sent back to Triple-A. It will be a much longer recovery time for Crews who is dealing with an oblique strain. Crews just had a huge weekend before his injury making the timing, even more painful.
If you had to guess as to the outfield when Young returns, it looks like it would be Wood, Young, and Hassell as your starters until Crews is back, with Alex Call as the fourth outfielder. There was a message that Hassell got before his MLB debut from the team’s general manager, Mike Rizzo, which is a cold hard truth. Rizzo has been giving that message for years to players.
“As hard as it is to get here, it’s harder to stay.”
— Rizzo said to Hassell
Other players have received the same speech, and there are plenty of players in Triple-A who got their chances and couldn’t capitalize on the opportunity. We will see if Hassell has staying power.
While the outfield looks like a future strength of this team, it is the infield and catcher position that has the near-term question marks. Can Brady House come in and be the third base answer for this team? He is crushing the ball in Triple-A, figuratively and literally, as he hit a homer on Monday that traveled further than any home run hit by a Nats’ player this year, including Wood.
If House could become a solid player at third base for the Nationals, the near-term needs would be fewer. The one spot that won’t get fixed internally for a while is the catcher position. Caleb Lomavita is doing well in High-A which is a real accomplishment, given as difficult as it is for right-handed batters there. Keibert Ruiz needs to be a backup catcher. He would be a good one. Getting a No. 1 catcher is very difficult, and might not happen. But Ruiz is a -6.0 OAA and just doesn’t have the defensive skills to make his pitchers perform better.
We also know with Nathaniel Lowe fading in the month of May that even with his team control going into next year, the team needs a longer-term solution regardless. The minor league depth is Yohandy “YoYo” Morales who just got promoted to Triple-A. Morales might be the only farm system option at first base right now.
Remember the great year that Luis Garcia Jr. had last year? Well, he has been inconsistent this year, and his defense is what is really slumping. His range is so bad that Garcia’s value might be as a platooned DH to face right-handed pitching. If you are looking for depth, it might be Abrams as the future second baseman of this team, and last year’s first round pick, Seaver King, as the long-term answer. After a really slow start to his High-A season, he is now picking it up. As mentioned on Lomavita, Wilmington is a tough place for right-handed batters. King on the road this season is slashing .321/.357/.487 with a .844 OPS. Time to get him to Double-A Harrisburg. Behind King is second round pick, Luke Dickerson, who is opening eyes in Single-A Fredericksburg. Keith Law of The Athletic, just had nice words about Dickerson, who is probably a future second baseman — and just got a 48th prospect ranking from Law.
The Nationals’ farm system has its problems, and that is because it is top-heavy with prospects and then a huge drop-off after the first 15-to-20 prospects. A day after Rizzo was smashed publicly by Ken Rosenthal, it was Baseball America dropping a hammer on the Nationals farm system. It really is a depth problem, and yes, there was certainly an issue of drafting hitters with “chase” issues, and pitchers who don’t command the K zone. But overall, the talent in the system with starting pitching is there with Travis Sykora, Jarlin Susana (on the IL), Alex Clemmey, Jake Bennett, and Cade Cavalli.
Whatever you think of Rizzo, his trade for Wood, Abrams, Hassell, Susana, and MacKenzie Gore turned the future of this team. The Nationals might be closer than you think. You could blame Rizzo for building a terrible bullpen which caused his manager to lean too hard on his starting pitchers. In turn, you have to wonder what this team could have been if they just had a league average 3.80 ERA in their bullpen instead of their actual 6.11 ERA.
The difference between the Nats 6.11 bullpen ERA and league average is 2.31 runs per 9-innings. That would mean if the Nats had an average bullpen they would have given up 47 fewer runs this season.
Pythagorean Win Expectancy is an estimate of how many games a team should win based upon runs scored and runs allowed. Pythagorean Win Expectancy equals the runs scored to the 1.83 power divided by the sum of runs scored and runs allowed, each taken to the 1.83 power. If the team had that league average bullpen, they would be exactly a .500 team, but a league average bullpen would not have allowed 46 inherited runners to score with the bulk of those against the starting pitcher. Suffice it to say, this could have been a 28-27 team if the team had at least a league average bullpen.
The other issue is team defense. The team is dead last in fielding run value at -22 runs. The team should have a 4.13 ERA if they had league-average defense to get them to their FIP versus the team ERA of 5.04. The defensive issues aren’t on Rizzo. He actually made defense a priority, but given the injuries to Paul DeJong, Young, and Crews, and the demise of Garcia’s defense — you have a really bad situation when you add Abrams and Ruiz who have been negative defenders — and that was expected. That is 91 points of ERA per game. Even if we use expected FIP of 4.21, that is 83 points per game. That would make the team 30-25 on the season.
The formula we laid out in the offseason was getting ERA to match the FIP by improving the defense because, you know, defense matters. Maintain at least a league-average bullpen, and an offense capable of 4.50 runs per game, and the Nats would be a winning team. Guess what, the Nats are scoring an average of 4.27 runs per game, now. They are almost there on offense — but far away on defense and that ERA goal. The bullpen is trending in the right direction with a 3.79 ERA from the day the team DFA’d Lucas Sims on May 9. There is some notable progress.
Now let’s give Rizzo some more credit, he is really capable on the fly in fixing his bullpens. He did it in 2019 with his World Series team, and has done it again. But why do the Nats have so many years of bottom of the barrel bullpens to start a season? Sure, the damage was done initially for the first 38 games from that Opening Day bullpen this year, but looking forward, improve your defense and use better judgment on pulling starting pitchers, and this team might still surprise.
So if the bullpen was as good as it is now and better defense, you would have a winning team. That is not a stretch. Closer than you think.
