TheGoodBits

3 hours ago, CobraCommander said:

I don't know enough about contracts and player control but shouldn't we wait until next year? I could see us calling him up sooner if we were competing for 1st place but that isn't the case this year. 

A September call up shouldn’t be enough to impact service time especially if you’re assuming he’ll be up next year anyway. 

19 hours ago, The Evil Genius said:

Anyone drive 64W from Richmond to Staunton recently? Been about 30+ years so trying to figure where to stop for a quick bite off of 64. 

 

Zions Crossroads or Charlottesville the best option? 

Cville has a bunch of new food options that are right off 64 if you’re looking for convenience. Take a look at some of the stuff in the Wegmans shopping center. I’m a big fan of Al Carbon. 

The simultaneous promotions to me signal part of the strategy. Both Downs and Rutherford were former high draft pick reclamation projects. Rutherford looks like he’s earned a shot but with Downs I guess the Nats just want to see what they’ve got before they clear space on the 40 man this offseason. 

We’ve obviously got an absolutely stacked future outfield so I view the odds of this happening as fairly unlikely, but I could see the Nats being at least sort of in the market for Juan Soto once he hits FA after next season. Would just have to figure out which OF to move to 1B (where we have a hole anyway). 
 

A lot of that possibility rides on how close we feel we are to contention and also the ownership situation. 

1 hour ago, @DCGoldPants said:

 

Super easy 90min before the game. You'll have your choice and if you need to hit a few, that'll be easy too.

Totally, was more worried that most wouldn’t open until closer to first pitch. 

Bought tickets for next Sunday’s game. First Nats game for my three kids! We’re planning on arriving and entering the park right when gates open. Anybody have an idea what the concession situation is 90min before the game starts? It’ll be around noon so the kiddos will need some grub. 

2 minutes ago, tomwvr said:

Is that landover ? I didnt think ashburn was that large an area 

Looking at the map, it could be. Wondering if they own everything between Broad Run, Loudoun County Parkway, Gloucester, and the W&OD trail… 

Even with some land use issues (broad run and the giant power lines) there’s still a massive chunk of land alongside Loudoun County Parkway that could be put to good use. 

Small word of caution: hitting .400 in college, even being the consensus best hitter in college baseball, is not a guarantee of pro success. This dude was drafted #2 overall behind Strasburg and was a career .245 hitter: 
 

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/ackledu01.shtml

Not that I think Crews or Morales will necessarily end up that way, just that it’s worth remembering that their development is not done yet and they may not be immediate additions to the MLB roster. 

1 hour ago, bcl05 said:

I don't think we can go wrong with either Crews or Skenes.  Both seem to have unlimited ceilings.  The catastrophic injury risk is higher with pitchers, so I'd favor hitters in general, but I'd be excited to watch either guy for the next decade +.  

Also factor in an every day player vs once every five games starter. The hitter is inherently more valuable. That said, we won a World Series off a quality rotation. Can’t argue with the results. 

Darren Baker is hitting .318 at AAA. No particular reason I point that out. 

3 minutes ago, ixcuincle said:

either way we win with skenes or crews

 

just a matter of whether they want to cooperate with the cheap lerners

The Lerners are not cheap with players. 

4 minutes ago, ixcuincle said:

I'm worried Crews may not want to play for the Nats I hope he plays ball

 

Boras client...

We won’t have any issue signing Crews. The issue with the Pirates is small market/budget and cheap owners. If he’s pushing back on them drafting him, it’s because he wants to slip to us. You’ve got to go to *at least* 11th in the draft to find an arguably better situation. 

22 hours ago, JamesMadisonSkins said:

 

Yeah, I don't think they were saying it was replicable by any means. More about whether executives would explore it more now that Ohtani has paved the way.

Even their comment on Skenes was more about how someone like him COULD be developed as a dual-thread in the future should it become more accepted, not so much that he would be asked to do that now. But it just surprised me to learn he was a pretty good college hitter 2 years ago.

It’s always been odd to me that pitchers just stop hitting when they get to college or minor leagues. Like the pitchers that get drafted or recruited to D1 ball are the high school team’s best athletes. A lot of them are great hitters too. Definitely tough to play both ways and they’d have to put in more work to do it, but the value a team could get from having a solid two way player (or hell, two of them) is tremendous.  Provides so much roster flexibility. 

2 minutes ago, CobraCommander said:

You forgot the albatross around our necks. Ownership is still a giant issue with this team. We're not signing big money pitchers until this is resolved.

I was more speaking to Rizzo’s historic preference. Of course we do a decently long list of drafted pitchers so it’s certainly not an all or nothing proposition. 
 

Personally I think I’d prefer Skenes but if we ended up Crews we would be in a great spot with talent. 

Worth remembering that the Nats historically have preferred buying pitchers and drafting hitters. Though that’s certainly caught up with them now with being stuck with Strasburg’s contract and deferrals, Scherzer’s deferrals, and Corbin’s contract. 

9 hours ago, Ball Security said:

I want to get Skenes, but damn, watching Abrams, Wood, and Crews racing around the bases would be very fun to watch.

The thing with Skenes that will be interesting is how much better he makes us, like, immediately. Nats got a tough break with Cavalli having TJS this year but Gore-Skenes-Gray seems like a pretty legit 1-3 by September and going into next season. 

ESPN mock draft claims Crews might try to force himself past Pittsburgh. 

Having trouble pasting the link and the text from my phone but a notable sentence: “I’ve been hearing since February that the Pirates have been aggressively looking into the non-Crews options, even after it became clear he was the consensus best prospect.” 

He notes that the Nats have Crews 1 Skenes 2 on their board, but the mock has Skenes going 1 and Nats taking Crews. 
 

1 hour ago, Riggo#44 said:

Is Skenes starting tonight??

Haven’t seen anything about him starting, but he told a reporter yesterday he might be good to pitch today. 

52 minutes ago, Ball Security said:

I think it’s actually #10 as the earliest we can pick. I understand your point about this being only the 2nd year of the lottery and I had the same question. But I see plugged in guys on Twitter stating that the highest we can pick is 10 (because we are not receivers of revenue sharing). 

I really don’t think that’s accurate. But also having a really hard time finding info on it. Anything you can link to me would be appreciated. I’m super out of the loop on everything since I ditched twitter (which I do highly recommend btw). 
 

nvm found this, which seems to say something different than what I saw before: https://www.mlb.com/news/draft-rule-changes-with-new-cba

18 hours ago, Always A Commander Never A Captain said:

If we're going to be this bad, and we can't get better than the 7th pick I don't see how it matters if we roll the dice on some AAAA guys and see if we can't get lucky. Hill, Baker, and Alu? Bring em up! Why not move on from Candelario and Robles early? Spending another month waiting gains us what? Would returns be higher if we waited a month?

 

Maybe the AAAA guys catch fire. Can't hurt our draft pick. Maybe they also suck, can't change our draft pick either.

Is it confirmed we cannot get better than the 7th pick this year? I see rules alluding to teams that pay CBT unable to get a lottery pick one than one year in a row (that’s not us for the last couple years) and teams that receive CBT unable to get a lottery pick for more than two years in a row (that’s also not us). 
 

We had top 6 picks for two straight years now, but only one of those years was under lottery rules and we don’t seem to meet the criteria above for being disqualified for lottery for next year. Unless I’m reading it wrong. 

This is Green’s first season in pro ball out of high school. Yeah he had some K% red flags coming in so it’s easy to focus a lot on them. But agree with the thoughts above, it’s about showing progress at each level. Shows coachability and growth. We didn’t draft him for the player he is, we drafted him for the guy we think he can be in 3-4 years. 

9 minutes ago, Riggo#44 said:

I don't want to get political, but they're not going to put the type of housing they're talking about near the new stadium. And not to sound callous or uncaring, but no one cares about the poor. They're a nice thing to talk about during a campaign, but they won't stand in the way of a revitalization effort that will generate revenue. If a stadium doesn't go in there, some other high-end, revenue generating project will. And that's not to say I don't empathize with them--it sucks getting kicked out of your home, and I don't really wish it on anyone--but it's just the way these things always go. The poor get screwed.

Yeah my point wasn’t so much about housing projects as it was about the city running a cost-benefit analysis of finding a stadium. In order for it to make sense you need a broader revitalization effort like what happened around Nats park. Space limitations around RFK (because so much around there is currently residential) really would make it tough to justify imo. 
 

Now if DoD decided it no longer needed or wanted Fort McNair…

3 hours ago, Riggo#44 said:

I loved this quote. The idea that it's the stadium or housing, not both, is so dumb and makes no sense. 

My only issue with this as it relates to a site in DC is where it would go. We all talk about RFK but look at what is around that area now. It’s almost 100% residential. I can absolutely understand how people who live there wouldn’t want to drop a stadium there. And because of this, there’s also not really a place to develop a mixed use “mini city” so it really limits the possible benefits for the city. 

1 minute ago, Warhead36 said:

There will be an initial surge the first few games, but if we start like 2-5 again then it'll be back to what it has been...

I think it’s a sustained 5k+ more per game than it has been in recent years (controlling for team record/competitiveness). But it will take a full rebuild of the team to rebuild the fan base. 

3 hours ago, Ball Security said:

Fun fact, I made a $5 bet that the Nats make the playoffs. Three games back. If it hits, I’m buying Twitter.

At this rate I might buy twitter with loose change I find between my couch cushions.