It is always tough to tell how a reliever is doing. Their entire season is a small sample size. The best relievers pitch less than half as many innings as a starting pitcher. So, breaking it down further to one month could be even more foolhardy. One bad outing can ruin a reliever's ERA. Look at Tom Gorzelanny. He had one rough outing in the beginning of the season against the Astros where he gave up six runs, but that one outing is enough to make his 3.64 ERA enough to not fully explain how good and how important Gorzelanny has been to the Nationals bullpen.
Small sample size or not the Nationals bullpen was not good in July. They have the seventh worst bullpen ERA over that time at 4.73. Clippard, H-Rod, and Mattheus all have ERA's over 5.00 while Storen and Stammen both have ERA's in the 4.00. The most innings pitched in July were the 15 1/3 of Stammen, but if the Nats bullpen continues to falter like this things might get even tighter as the Braves are starting to roll.
Hi oh! Susan and Frank set sail on the high sea in search of Trade Routes to the Post-Season! How do MLB Trades work, When is a deadline not really a deadline, and how do waivers work? All that and a Nats update, a fond farewell to a Rick Ankiel, Trivia answers, our new Facebook Page and MORE!
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Download Episode 10
Where was the first stumbling block for the Nats? Was it on Opening Day when Michael Morse and Drew Storen didn't take the field? Was it when Brad Lidge and Henry Rodriguez stumbled so badly the Nats had to turn to Tyler Clippard to close out games? Was it when Ryan Zimmerman hit the DL and then struggled to hit when he came off of it? Was it when Jayson Werth cracked his wrist attempting to make a sliding grab against the Phillies? Was it the showdown series against the Dodgers, Yankees, or Marlins that ended in sweeps? Was it the game where Wilson Ramos hit a homerun, tore his ACL, and the Nats blew a six run lead on a Joey Votto walk-off grand-slam? Or was it the horrific nine run blown lead suffered one weak ago at the hands of the Braves?
There have been a lot of moments in 2012 that could have sent the Nats reeling, but none of them have. Without their clean-up hitter and closer the Nats started the season 14-4 behind a historically impressive start by their pitching staff. They then went into LA for a showdown series against the Dodgers and promptly got swept in three close games. One being a blown save by Henry Rodriguez that led to a walk-off homer by Matt Kemp in the bottom of the 10th inning. After that sweep the Nats went 6-4 in their next ten including a two-run walk-off homer by Ian Desmond that ended the Nats five game slide and gave them a one run victory over the Diamondbacks.
After a week and a half break the gang is back on their regular night to talk the last ten days in Nats news, the not-so end of the world loss to the Braves, goings-on in the NL East, Henry Rodriguez, Twitter questions and MORE!
This past off-season Gio Gonzalez could have easily ended up on the Red Sox. What if the Nationals felt that AJ Cole was too good of a prospect to deal to the A's for Gio and the Red Sox had ended up out bidding the Nationals? Gio Gonzalez has arguably been the best pitcher on the Nats staff with a 3.13 ERA over 118 innings and a 10.14 K/9 rate. Gio has been a masterful pitcher and has amassed 3.4 WAR while doing so, but so where would the Nats be without him.
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Over the weekend the Nats and Braves split a four game series which means that the Braves remain 3.5 games behind the Nationals. The big question is how much did Ryan Dempster improve the Braves. By my calculations that spot in the Braves rotation will be getting 13 more starts to finish out the year and if they were pitched by Jair Jurrjens it would be worth roughly -0.5 WAR and if they are pitched by Dempster roughly 1.9 WAR. The Braves in this trade picked up 2.5 games on the Nats which still has them a game back of the division lead, and any day now the Nats will be getting Jayson Werth back, and that could help the Nats more than any trade they could make.
The Nats still have issues, but they had those issues this morning and the Braves making a trade for Dempster doesn't change the Nats issues or how they should approach those issues. With Ian Desmond now on the shelf the Nats have no one on their bench who can back-up at short stop, and if something were to happen to both Espinosa and Lombardozzi in a game they could end up with DeRosa and second and Zimmerman at short. The Nats lack a viable back-up middle infielder.
Mike Rizzo came out the other day and said flat out that there is no number on Strasburg's innings limit and when it is time to make the call on when to shutdown the Nationals Ace that call will be on him. Everyone took that to mean that the Nats were backing off of the innings limit and were going to use Strasburg as long as possible, but there is another possibility.
Over Strasburg's last five starts he is 1-3 with a 4.10 ERA. There are greater concerns than the stats that indicate Strasburg is not himself. On the season Strasburg has average just over 5 2/3 innings a start while in his last five starts he has average just over 5 innings. It is a small drop off and some of it is caused by only lasting three innings due to heat exhaustion in Atlanta, but the drop off in innings pitched isn't the only trouble.
Much has been ado about the last two outings of current Nationals closer, Tyler Clippard, and his propensity for ladling up the
late inning long ball, lunch lady style. Put into the role during Drew Storen’s extended stay on the DL, the bespectacled wonder has done an admirable job as the fill-in while Storen has rehabbed a bum elbow for nearly all of 2012. The return of the ‘other’ 1st round draft pick of the Nats in 2009 has Twitter a-twitter over who will man the 9th for the first place Nats. Will the overall success of Clippard in the closer role be enough to convince manager Davey Johnson to stay put with Clip, or will having Storen back on the roster mark the return of Clip to 8th inning set up duties, where his dominance of that inning was worthy of a 2011 All-Star selection?
This is a foreign situation to Nats fans so let it first be said that being a buyer is difficult. It could very well hurt. A GM of a buying team is trying his best to make it not hurt by trading from positions of strengths to fill a weakness, but selling teams are not going to accept short term pieces back in a deal. In other words the Nationals can't trade Michael Morse to a seller who views themselves being more than a year away since Morse is only signed for one more season after this. Selling teams are going to want long term, controllable pieces. In other words they want prospects or young major leaguers.
Players like Danny Espinosa or Tyler Moore could have great value to a seller even though they are no longer prospects because they are both young and controllable major league players. Trading Moore would hurt worse than trading Espinosa as the Nationals lack a first base prospect for the 2014 season unless Anthony Rendon or Matt Skole hury up the development ladder faster than projected, but this is part of the trick of trading. If Rizzo values one of those two higher than he does Moore and believes he can fill the gap at first base with at least a league average player until Rendon or Skole arrives then Moore can be traded without it hurting the future of the Nationals. The same goes for Espinosa and how the Nationals value Lombardozzi or Kobernus.
It's an episode about... PINE TAR! No really, it's more interesting than it sounds. A quick Nats Update about the All Star Game and signing Lucas Giolito, followed by some of the history of pine tar, why ball players use it and how it keeps coming up this year in Nats ball. All that and a trivia question update.
Download Episode 9
On a special Monday night edition of the show, the guys talk the past few days in Nats news, the crazy bastard that is Ozzie Guillen, why you give anything Arizona asks for in a Justin Upton trade, Michael Morse's future with the organization, upcoming games, answer questions from twitter and more!
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After four days without meaningful baseball and two liveblogs, the guys are back talking pitching to contact, booing at an All Star Game, best and final offers for trades, the farm system, first half MVP/Cy Young/Top Reliever, and we have an interview with Grantland's Jonah Keri.
Episode 8
Susan and Frank retell a trip to St. John, losing power, talk about the first half of the Nationals Season, and give a look at what is coming up for the second half. Then, they talk about the mid-summer classic, the Home Run Derby and plenty of other miscellany.
Davey Johnson deserves a lot of credit for the Nationals success in the first half of the season. Any one of the injuries to Morse, Zimmerman, Ramos, or Werth could have de-railed the Nationals season and sent them into a tailspin. Any one of the number of tough losses they suffered could have done the same, but Davey Johnson kept his team level and focused, and it didn't hurt that guys like Adam LaRoche, Bryce Harper, and Ian Desmond stepped up to carry this team while they dealt with injuries. It also doesn't hurt that the Nationals have allowed the fewest runs in baseball and therefore didn't need that much offense to carry them. With Storen reportedly coming back tomorrow and Jayson Werth following close behind the Washington Nationals are getting healthy just as the second half begins.
At the time of his wrist injury Werth was having a much better season than he had in 2011 hitting .276/.372/.439 and being his typical nuisance at the plate fouling off pitches and when on the base paths jumping around to distract the pitcher. His presence back in the line-up will help the Nats and his defense in right field will be an improvement over Michael Morse. Drew Storen is also returning and while he isn't being handed back the closers role he will add one more shutdown reliever to a bullpen that has only blwon nine saves all season.
