Not Quite Good to the Last Drop

Look, when the Nationals DFA Justin Maxwell to make room for Todd Coffey you're going to get puns. Deal with it.

There was a time when I thought Justin could be another homegrown draw for a franchise that desperately needs to forge connections to its community. A Maryland native and University of Maryland grad, Maxwell would have formed a great 1-2 punch with Ryan Zimmerman. Both were 2005 draft picks. Justin would have been UMD to Zimm's UVA, cannon-armed outfielder and slick-gloved infielder, Stevie Wonder to Ryan's Frank Sinatra. Alas it was not meant to be.

A series of Nick Johnson-esque injuries prolonged Maxwell's road to the majors, and walk-off dramatics aside, he never showed enough with the bat to earn regular playing time. He never hit for contact, struck out more than you'd like to see in a guy who had just okay minor league power numbers, and didn't hit either lefties or righties well enough to distinguish himself as a platoon candidate. Justin peaked as a 5th OF/defensive replacement/pinch hitter, and his fate was more or less sealed when the Nats signed Rick Ankiel earlier this offseason.

This may not be the end of the road for J-Max in DC, but it is a sizeable pothole. The team has 10 days to trade Justin, release him, or attempt to clear him through waivers back to the minors. A 27 year-old outfielder with a 201/319/379 career line isn't likely to be enticing trade or waiver wire bait, so there's a fair chance Maxwell will be back at AAA Syracuse in 2011.

Down on the Farm

The acquisition of Tom Gorzelanny does not make me tingle in my special places. (In case you were curious, my special places are Charlottesville, Edinburgh, and Montego Bay.) He's youngish and left-handed, which can be accounted pluses, but also wildly inconsistent both in terms of results and underlying stats. He strikes me as another version of Lannan/Marquis/Livo/Maya, but not necessarily a better one. However, I come neither to bury Gorzelanny nor to praise him.

I'm more interested in what the trade that brought him to DC says about the Nats farm system. As has been noted, Washington sent OF Michael Burgess and pitchers AJ Morris and Graham Hicks to Chicago in exchange for Tom Ter...adequate. None of the three was a consensus Top Ten prospect, though Burgess did sneak onto the bottom of a few lists courtesy of big power and a cannon arm in right field. Coupled with those tools was pitch recognition and strike zone discipline that was postively Pena-esque, and that's Wily Mo, not Carlos. Still, Burgess was rightly recognized as the centerpiece of the return for the Cubs.

Morris and Graham are both good not great young arms who, barring unexpected improvement, will probably max out as big league middle relievers. Burgess has the raw tools to succeed, but will never progress if he can't learn to identify and lay off a curve ball in the dirt. You can argue over whether these three players represent a fair return for Gorzelanny. What you can't dispute is that Burgess, Morris and Hicks, a quad-A slugger and two back-end starter/middle reliever-types are mid-level Nationals prospects.

The cream of the farm system basically begins and ends with proto-phenom Bryce Harper. Catcher Derek Norris has great plate discipline, but needs to reestablish his power and demonstrate the tools to stay behind the plate because his ceiling at 1B is basically Nick Johnson with less pop. Beyond Harper and Norris it's tough to identify any premier offensive prospects.

On the mound, starting pitchers Sammy Solis and A.J. Cole are highly regarded, but so were Ross Detwiler and Jack McGeary not so long ago. More established youngsters like Tom Milone and Brad Meyers have back-of-the-rotation skill sets. Way too much is riding on Stephen Strasburg's rehab and Jordan Zimmermann's continued development.

To be sure, the farm system would be much more impressive if youngsters like Strasburg, Danny Espinosa, Drew Storen and Wilson Ramos hadn't already graduated to significant roles in DC, but great teams have a prospect pipeline. The Nationals have a prospect sprinkler.

The Digging and Filling of Holes

Zack Greinke wasn't coming to Washington, D.C. unless Boston's lineup and Philly's rotation agreed to come with him. That simple, seemingly indisputable fact renders all the digital ink spilled on the subject moot. And yet...

It's one thing to be spurned by Cliff Lee and told that the Phillies, Yankees or Rangers are closer to contention. None but the most over-eggnoged Nats fan would argue that point. It's quite another to lose the respectability derby to the Milwaukee Brewers. Taking nothing away from our beer-besotted brethren, the 2010 Brew Crew finished 77-85, 14 games behind the Reds in the NL Central and equally far removed from the Wild Card. They were one game better than Houston and two up on the Cubs. Milwaukee was a whopping 8 games better than the 2010 Washington Nationals. And yet...

The Nats are losers. This is true both from a purely statistical, technical point-of-view (412-599 since relocating before the 2005 season) and in the more intangible sense of having been a ward of the league with a grating carnival barker of a GM who presided over decisions ranging from questionable to side-show worthy. (Come see "Smiley Gonzalez", The Incredible Aging Boy!) At the same time the front office made the reasonable, but also bottom line-friendly, decision to focus on rebuilding the tattered Expo-Nats farm system at the expense of the big league club. Middling success in that effort has not come without a cost, as Harper notes here.

The side-effects of losing can be subtle. It can be getting Jason Marquis when you'd rather have had Jon Garland, or Adam Kennedy in lieu of Orlando Hudson. Sometimes losing doesn't even seem that bad, like when missing out on 7 years of Mark Teixeira forces you to "settle" for 2 years of Adam Dunn. But losing always has consequences. Every loss digs a hole, and it gets deeper year-by-year.

Filling the hole means paying superstar money to attract a merely very good outfielder, while hoping to replace a very good first baseman with an adequate, more reasonably priced fill-in. It means that even if you wanted to mortgage your farm system to bring in an ace, you can't. Zack Greinke knows as well as anyone in baseball what a rebuilding project looks like, from the inside out. When he looked at Washington, he didn't like what he saw.

Maybe the Nationals dodged a bullet. But it wasn't by choice. Unless Mike Rizzo is actually incompetent, or secretly in the employ of another NL East club, he wasn't actively trying to make the team worse by trading 4 or 5 young players to Kansas City. Clearly he thought Greinke would make the Nats better, perhaps even competitive. Clearly Zack disagreed, as had Cliff Lee, Mark Teixeira and who knows who else before him. As a Nats fan that's disappointing but not unexpected.

The fact that it's not unexpected is the problem, and it's one that the team doesn't seem to have an answer for. The Phillies get Cliff Lee, the Brewers get Zack Greinke, the Nats get Chien-Ming Wang. On the verge of the new year, that's a perfect an encapsulation of the state of the franchise. Happy Holidays, Nats fans!

On Rizzo & Responsibility

Let's get this out of the way first: I firmly believe that Jayson Werth's 7-year, $126M contract is a bad deal for the Washington Nationals. It is an overpay both in dollars and in years, and Werth would need to defy both physics and history to come close to earning his salary.

That said, there is a strain of analysis that says that this is not just a bad contract of the sort that every franchise will, at one time or another give out. Rather this is an epically, unprecedentedly bad contract, a blight on the Nationals' franchise and an affront to baseball itself. ESPN analyst Keith Law put it this way:

Giving a 32-year-old position player who has qualified for the batting title exactly twice in his major league career a guaranteed seven-year deal for over $100 million isn't just a bad move.

It's irresponsible.

The full piece is behind ESPN's Insider paywall, (Well worth the investment, just don't let them send you the magazine or you'll never be rid of it.) but it's such a sterling archetype that I'm going to excerpt a bit more in a few paragraphs. First though, I want to tackle that second sentence. Is this contract irresponsible?

Appointing the "least drunk" guy in the car designated driver is irresponsible. Spending your rent money on lotto tickets is irresponsible. Putting the half-term governor of an obscure state a heartbeat away from the presidency is irresponsible. Overpaying a 31-year old right fielder for his age 32-38 seasons may be ill-advised. It may be flat dumb. But is it irresponsible?

To answer that you'll have to decide who Rizzo and the Nationals are responsible to. The Werth contract undeniably blew up the free agent market and reset salaries. Do Rizzo and the Lerners owe it to the other 29 clubs not to make bad deals? Hell, no. Free agency is a free-for-all. So Carl Crawford gets a 7-year, $140M contract. How is that the Nationals' problem? When the Nats embarked on their quixotic bid for Mark Teixeira nobody called the contract he ultimately signed with the Yankees irresponsible. So maybe the Red Sox had to renegotiate Adrian Gonzalez's extension b00-freakin'-hoo. When another GM starts steering reasonably-priced quality players to the Nationals, then we can talk about mutual responsibility. Of course, another word for mutual responsibility is collusion.

The Nationals are undeniably responsible to their fans. (Note: responsible, not responsive, otherwise this week's big free agent signing would have been Adam Dunn.) Is the Werth contract irresponsible on that front? On behalf of the fanbase, I'm going to say no. Jayson Werth is a good player. I want good players on my team. As for the length and the amount? Heck, it ain't my money. Well, it is in some sense, but it's not like the Lerners' were going to roll back ticket prices and start handing out half smokes but for this deal. I want the Nationals to be better. Werth makes the Nationals better. As a fan, I'm sold.

Mike Rizzo does have a responsibility to the franchise. He is obligated to use the resources he is given wisely and to put his team in the best position to win. Is signing Werth for 7 years and $126M irresponsible? Ah, now here's your argument. Let's go back to Keith Law:

[I]f you as a GM or owner feel the market is forcing you to "overpay" for a free agent because your team isn't good, maybe you should improve your team first through the draft (where, I should point out, the Nationals spent money and added a lot of talent in 2010) and wait for that supposed free-agent premium to disappear. That is, if free agents don't want to come to your team because your team stinks, the first solution is to make your team better.

In this view, the Werth contract was irresponsible because that $18M a year could be better used to draft and sign young, cost-controlled players. Splashy free agent signings should be back-burnered until they are the "last piece of the puzzle", when presumably you won't have to over-pay to get them. This is a pretty standard sabermetric trope. Expensive free agents are only for teams at the top of the competitive curve. Otherwise they are a waste of resources.

However, even here the Werth signing is only irresponsible if it negatively impacts the Nationals' ability to acquire and retain good young talent. Will it? It's impossible for anyone, including Keith Law, to say. $18M certainly is a sizeable chunk of change, but in a $90-100M payroll, where key pieces like Zimmerman, Strasburg, Harper, Ramos, and Zimmermann are locked into reasonably affordable deals for the next few years, it's hardly crippling.

If the alternative is to consign Ryan Zimmerman to wasting his prime years while the team loads up on prospects that may or may not pan out, to have Ramos and Espinosa develop in a culture of intentional mediocrity, to put the full weight of the franchise of Stephen Strasburg's surgically-repaired elbow, then a splashy free agent signing or two may just be the responsible move.

There will come a day when the Washington Nationals regret Jayson Werth's contract, but today is not that day.

This is a Job for WikiLeaks

As soon as Julian Assange is done wasting his time with the military, the diplomatic corps and the financial sector, he's got serious work to do. I want to know what the hell goes on in the front offices of the Washington Nationals. I want a raft of emails from Mike Rizzo, Mark Lerner, Stan Kasten, and Uncle Teddy explaining exactly how subtracting Adam Dunn from the roster improves the team.

I want to know the thought process that leads to this statement:

The Washington Nationals wish Adam Dunn and his family the best of luck and good will in Chicago. Adam contributed much to the Nationals and to the Washington, D.C. community. He will be missed, but will remain an important figure in the early history of this franchise and will always be a part of the Nationals baseball family.

This is the perfect sentiment to mark the departure of Brad Wilkerson: great guy, commercial spokesman, important figure in the early history of the franchise. As a response to the loss of one of the top sluggers in baseball, it is sorely lacking. Mark Zuckerman does a much better job.

Mike Rizzo is under no obligation to explain himself. When he does get around to addressing the media, you can count on a rehash of the above sentiments and some old classics about the value of team defense and improving through the draft. That's where the boys from WikiLeaks come in.

Does Mike Rizzo honestly believe that improved defense at first base outweighs the decreased offensive production (and there will be a deficit) generated by Dunn's replacement? Did the Nationals offer Adam a market value 3-year contract and just balk at the 4th year, or did they low-ball him? (If it really was 3/$36M, they low-balled him.) When did Mike Rizzo decide that Carlos Pena was Albert Pujols-lite? Seeing as how Dunn ended up with the White Sox anyway, what did Kenny Williams offer at the trade deadline, and was it better than a pair of draft picks?

Make no mistake, whether you agree with the move or not, the Nationals let Adam Dunn walk away over something like one year and $14M dollars, money that probably could have been deferred. Odds are they aren't spending that money on Cliff Lee, so they better get something good for irritating the star third baseman, blowing a hole in the lineup, and pissing off an already shrinking fanbase.

Adam Dunn's Red Flag?

If Adam Dunn never plays another home game in Washington, his career at Nationals Park ended on a particularly ignominious note: 0-4, 4Ks. The golden sombrero. Of course, he didn't get cheated on any of those swings, so it's not hard to believe than Adam was pressing to give the home fans a memorable show. Dunn's 2010 has been marked by his traditional display of power - 38 homers and counting - but marred by a career low walk percentage and a career high percentage of strikeouts.

Dunn is famous for being very nearly the platonic ideal of a 3 True Outcomes hitter. When he comes up to bat you can lay good money on a home run, a walk, or a strikeout. He has seven consecutive seasons of at least 38 HRs, and averages 111 BBs and 183 Ks per season for his career. He's led the league in strikeouts three times and walks once. Yet in 2010 he has just 76 walks and is one whiff away from a career high of 196 strikeouts.

Over his career Adam has a K/BB ratio of 1.65. This season he's averaging 2.57 strikeouts per walk. His previous season high was 1.95 K/BB through 66 games in his 2001 rookie season. That was also his career low for walk percentage, when 13.3% of all his plate appearances ended in a base-on-balls. In 2010 he's walking just 11.9% of the time. Dunn is also striking out in more than 30% of his plate appearances, the highest that number has been in his 10 year career. As a result Adam's on-base percentage (.359) is the lowest it's been since 2003 (.354) and 22 points below his career average (.381).

The decline can be traced to a second-half slump. Pre-All Star break Dunn was hitting 288/372/588. He's a career 254/385/547 first-half hitter, so apart from swapping some OBP for increased power and batting average, the numbers are pretty typical. In the second half everything declined. Adam typically wears down over the course of the season, but this year it was particularly noticeable. Dunn's batting average cratered to .227, his on-base percentage dropped thirty points to .342 and he lost power to the tune of a .480 slugging percentage (vs. 247/376/493 in the second half for his career.)

At this point it's important to pause and note that there is nothing wrong with a .359 on-base percentage. Dunn's OBP is the 23rd best in the National League, nothing to sneeze at for a guy who also owns the league's 5th best slugging percentage. However, as the Nationals contemplate re-signing Adam for 3 or 4 more years they should be aware of that his 2010 numbers are moving in the wrong direction. It's impossible to draw definite conclusions from a half season's worth of stats, but that doesn't make them any less concerning.

There are mitigating factors. Josh Willingham, who hit behind Dunn in the first half and was arguably the Nats second best hitter in April and May got hurt and struggled in July and August before going on the DL. Maybe his absence made pitchers less reluctant to pitch to Dunn in the second half. Maybe Adam felt more pressure to swing and try to put the ball in play with a rotating cast of Bernadina, Rodriguez and Morse hitting behind him. Or maybe we're seeing the very early signs of Dunn's decline. Hitters with "old player skills" (i.e. power and batting eye) have a nasty track record of declining hard and fast once they hit the wall.

Adam Dunn will probably never be more than a serviceable but solidly below-average defense first baseman. His value is linked inextricably to his bat. He is without question one of the premier sluggers in baseball. But this year his declining walks and increasing strikeouts have driven him closer to being an "all or nothing" hitter. That could be a one-half season blip, or it could be a sign of things to come. I wish Mike Rizzo all the best of luck in trying to figure out which explanation is closer to the truth.

(If you want to check my math, Adam Dunn's stats are drawn from Baseball Reference - a statistical gold mine.)

Pay to Win

It doesn't get much easier to understand than this, courtesy of the NY Times:

Vertical axis: Wins. Horizontal axis: Payroll. Notice any correlation? Yes, there are exceptions to every rule (sweet, holy giraffe the Mets suck!) but the trend line is unmistakable. More dollars (in general) equals more wins.

Please print, clip and mail the graphic above to:

Nationals Park
Attn: Mr. Theodore N. Lerner
1500 South Capitol Street SE
Washington, DC 20003

H/T to Mr. Irrelevant.