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The Washington Nationals Thread: The Future is Near!


Riggo#44

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1 hour ago, Ball Security said:

So here’s where I quibble with your argument.  You state that although the future results show a guy who played a key role in the WS (could have been MVP) you can throw that out because they could have found someone to replace him.  That’s fair, I guess.  Though I  think it’s not as easy as you portray.  But at the same time, we look at Eaton’s actual performance and say he was a 1-2 win player.  Not as fair because of his 2017 injury.  There were no signs he was going to get hurt.  You could expect him to be a 3-4 win player at the time of the trade.

Hindsight would be different if Eaton put up, say 10 WAR over his time here and we had someone like Fedde and Romero develop into quality starters.  That’s why I said (though you laughed) that the process was good.

 

This all started from my premise that if Rizzo was given additional budget to work with over the years, he may have been able to avoid depleting the farm system to patch up holes.   OF position is where you can find solid good players at relatively affordable contracts.

 

There's no questioning Eaton's contribution to the WS.  But a solid bat turning hot in a series is far more likely than say a average to slightly above average pitcher suddenly pitching lights out in a series.  A hot bat from your middle of the roster type of player takes a lot of luck on top of careful roster planning.  I don't know how one can try to replicate that in the future other than to ensure that you have solid bats from top to bottom of the order.  

 

Then how to fill out that roster becomes the question for resource management.  If given a choice between your owner giving you 10-15 or even 20 million additional budget to spend on a OF vs trading away a top 25 prospect and your best arm in the system for a guy who probably tops out at 3ish WAR at best (due to defensive position change alone), I don't know how many GMs choose the second scenario over the first.  My guess would be very little, if any at all.

 

Was Rizzo able to work his magic?  He most certainly was.  Will he be able to do it again in the future?  I certainly hope so and believe he has that in him to create a second championship roster.  But his job will be made that much easier if he has a greater budget in the next 10 years than he did in the last 10.  It doesn't have to be LA or NY budget.  But Nats should consistently be right at or above lux tax, sometimes far above if lot of cap salary has been deferred or if the team is a legitimate contender like they were during the window leading up to 2019.  Nats have the hard part done with having Rizzo in place as the GM.  Compared to that Lerners greenlighting more budget on salary is the easy part.

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3 minutes ago, Riggo#44 said:

Ross has another year, per Baseball Reference. Maybe Cavalli in September, but he hasn't pitched much the last 2 year, may not want to stretch him out.

Keep him on a pitch count & add more ML arms to get work, too. This is early Spring Training. Guys can work & learn for 2 months. 

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5 minutes ago, Riggo#44 said:

Ross has another year, per Baseball Reference. Maybe Cavalli in September, but he hasn't pitched much the last 2 year, may not want to stretch him out.

Didn’t realize he barely played at all in 2018.  Thought this was his sixth season. Thanks.

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