Mike Rizzo is interviewed by Jim Bowden to talk #Nats

Posted on February 19, 2016 by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears

Mike Rizzo was interviewed on SXMSports by Jim Bowden and Craig Mish on Thursday. Rizzo says there will be a shortstop and a centerfield competition. Bowden says Werth will be the 4th outfielder on Opening Day, and Bowden made that prediction when Rizzo was not on the phone.

SXM: Tell us about West Palm Beach and the proximity to other teams?

Rizzo: “That’s the key to the whole thing Jim. You have access to other teams. It’s not only for big league spring training which is for 6 weeks but we are constantly playing games with our Minor League guys.  We are using it as our year round rehab facility, there’s instructional ball,  there’s all sorts of things going on and it just makes it so convenient to have 4 teams within 15 minutes of you—it really saves the wear and tear on your players and allows them to play more baseball and to develop better just because they’re getting more repetition as they aren’t sitting on a bus all day.”

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Spring Training starts and the #Nats success in 2016 could hinge on their CPOY candidates!

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears

 

Today is the first official day of Spring Training as Pitchers & Catchers report later today! Yesterday, we talked about the Nats MVP, ROY, & CY & MOY, and today we talk about potential CPOY candidates.  You may ask,  what is CPOY?  That is the acronym for Comeback Player Of the Year, and the Nats have several candidates who will compete for that award. The success of the 2016 Nats could hinge on potential CPOY players stepping up for the Nats!

Last years winners of the CPOY were Matt Harvey (NL) and Prince Fielder (AL) and the only Nat to ever win it was none other than Dmitri Young in 2007.

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The #Nats enter Spring Training with the MVP, ROY, & CY & MOY

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears

Tomorrow is the start of Spring Training, and when these 2016 Nats are fully assembled, they boast a group of major award winners.  Bryce Harper is the reigning NL MVP and was the 2012 Rookie of the Year, Max Scherzer has won a Cy Young, and Dusty Baker has 3 Manager of the Year awards.

When you build around Bryce Harper in the middle of your order, you surround him with players with excellent resumés such as Anthony Rendon who was #5 in the 2014 MVP and Silver Slugger winner, Ryan Zimmerman who was #2 in the ROY and an All-Star as well as Silver Slugger and Gold Glove, Jayson Werth who was an All-Star and owns a World Series ring, Daniel Murphy was also an All-Star and just played in the World Series last year and set a post-season record for the most HRs in consecutive games, Ben Revere has been the NL Hits Leader, Wilson Ramos was a runner-up for the Gold Glove, Stephen Strasburg was an All-Star and Top 10 in the Cy Young, and Gio Gonzalez was an All-Star and Top 3 in Cy Young.

Let us hope that each player spent their off-season working on their goals to accomplish as well as what they needed to improve for 2016.  As Bryce Harper said, “If they’re not laughing at your dreams, you’re not dreaming big enough.”

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‘Thin Ice’ gives way to hope and new beginnings at the start of Spring Training #Nats

Posted on February 15, 2016 by Andrew Lang

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Meet the Nats New Pen

Posted on February 14, 2016 by Power Boater

Last December the Nats acquired four new relievers in rapid succession. I quickly read about each of them but remembered almost nothing as it was in the middle of the “You like that” craze. So with the Nats spring training quickly approaching I did some research to learn about the new guys.

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Lucas Giolito strategies, projections for 2016, and scouting reports

Posted on February 13, 2016 by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears

There are a few certainties we know with Lucas Giolito, and we feel comfortable saying that the 6’6″ righty will be on an innings limit in 2016 and that he will dominate the Minors.  Giolito enters the 2016 season as Baseball America’s #2 prospect overall in the Minors and the #1 pitching prospect .

What we don’t know is how many innings Giolito will be limited to due to his status as a Tommy John alumni and given his age, he will get the kid glove treatment again in 2016. Giolito’s innings workload increased almost exactly 20% from 2014 to 2015; however, after the 2015 season ended, Giolito headed to Florida for Fall Instructs where he continued to pitch.  Rizzo and his braintrust have a plan for the 21 year old Giolito which they won’t make public.  If we assume a 20% innings increase above Giolito’s 2015 Single-A and Double-A innings, Giolito would be capped at approximately 141 innings for 2016.

Lucas Giolito can also find himself as an integral piece of the Washington Nationals 2016 team which would make a delayed start to Giolito’s season, like the Nats did with his 2015 season, a potentially wise move that could make sense. Giolito didn’t make his 1st of the 2015 season until May 8th of 2015 when Giolito pitched at Single-A Potomac .  That allowed Giolito to pitch until the end of the season when he was promoted to the Double-A Harrisburg Senators.

We have graphed Giolito’s 2016 innings and K/9 and while the innings can go higher we projected a much lower K/9 than FanGraphs at 6.66.
Giolito Projected Innings

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NatsLady’s thoughts on Hot Stove II with Mike Rizzo #Nats

Posted on February 12, 2016 by NatsLady

Curiously, the “marketing” portion of Saturday’s Hot Stove meeting with Nats fans was IMG_1050 more fun than the “baseball” segment—in my opinion. We were told we couldn’t video because “proprietary information” was coming out. And maybe it did, if you count the design of bobbleheads and the alignment of vendors on the Gallery Level as proprietary. But go ahead and talk about everything on social media, we were encouraged. Anyway, Valerie stayed on the platform when Mike Rizzo, garbed in a signature checked shirt, sat down and gave us not much that we hadn’t read in the newspaper or on Twitter. He was patient and charming, but no secrets were revealed. Two topics were mildly interesting, Jonathan Papelbon and the Nats’ medical staff.

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Bryce Harper graces the box top of 2016 Topps Baseball Series 1: Named Brand Ambassador

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears

Bryce Harper was named a Topps brand ambassador for the 65th anniversary baseball cards and will grace the Topps Box top for Series 1.  Topps released this Tweet after Bryce completed his MLB Network Radio interview:

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The Dusty Effect: Projecting Dusty Baker’s 2016 Win Totals #Nats

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears

We are now exactly one week from the official start of Spring Training for the Washington Nationals.

Dusty Baker has had a managerial career of taking over teams and improving them over his predecessor’s win totals. The Nats will make the 4th new team that Baker will take over. Because of all of the variables from year to year, there is no true scientific way to use Baker’s past managerial record to project his future managerial record; however, it didn’t stop us from coming up with a formula to do a Dusty projection. Baker has improved every team he took over to a total cumulative improvement of 25.59%. Using that percentage to project from Matt Williams 83 wins in 2015, the Nats should win 104 games based on the Dusty factor and what we will call “The Dusty Effect”.

In 1993, Baker took over Roger Craig’s San Francisco Giant team that won 72 games and Baker won 103 the following year. In 2003, Baker took over Baylor’s/Kimm’s Chicago Cub team that won 67 games and Baker won 88 the following year.  In 2008, Baker took over Narrin’s/Mackanin’s Cincinnati Red team that won 72 games and Baker won 74 the following year.

FanGraphs has their team W/L charts based on their player projections:

You will notice that since January 23rd, Fangraphs has moved the Mets back to 85 wins.

NL East Projection 2 10 16

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The premiere on MLB Network of “Dusty: A Baseball Journey”

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears

Tonight you will get to see “Dusty: A Baseball Journey” which premieres on MLB Network at 9:00 p.m. and tells some key points of the life of Johnnie B. Baker Jr. known affectionately to his friends as “Dusty”.

Sol Tucker for TalkNats

Sol Tucker for TalkNats

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