A year ago, I wrote a piece called “Quality Should Be Job 1” but quality also comes via employees you hire. The high risk / high reward model usually fails if you do that as a standard. That is a gambler’s mentality. Risk management needs to be measured and controlled. Signing Matt Barnes, Joey Gallo, Eddie Rosario, Nick Senzel combined for about $15.5 million of wasted total payroll last year. Do you know that Gallo and Senzel actually got paid incentive bonuses on top of their salaries? While you could say the signing of Jesse Winker worked out, that isn’t a good ratio.
This year, general manager Mike Rizzo had even more money to spend — and besides the Nathaniel Lowe acquisition and re-acquiring Trevor Williams and low risk moves for Paul DeJong and Jorge Lopez, it was the same type of high risk / high reward moves for the rest of the $50 million spent. There was enough budget to go “Quality is Job 1” and not risk a lot of money on bounceback players like Michael Soroka as a starter for $9 million, Josh Bell for DH at $6 million, Lucas Sims for $3 million, and Amed Rosario for $2 million. Even the nearly $6 million for Kyle Finnegan after his late season struggles made him a bounceback candidate. That’s $26 million of high risk signings. Sure, you could throw in Shinnosuke Ogasawara and Colin Poche too for another $3.3 million combined. Will you find a Winker or two in there? Wasn’t Sims just a more expensive version of Tanner Rainey? Rosario had a great game yesterday so maybe that works. Soroka might pitch like a star. Bell might figure out how to hit like he did in his prime. Might, maybe, if.
Maybe I can close my eyes, click my heels together three times, and repeat the sentence, “There’s no place like home” to get to the magic formula of winning. Or go the quality route and just build a better roster. Shortcuts and throwing #### against the wall rarely works. Again, let’s not panic two games in. There are a lot of positives that we have seen so far.
The early results are that the defense is as good as we had hoped. The starting pitching so far with MacKenzie Gore and Jake Irvin looks promising. The bats are a mixed bag beyond Keibert Ruiz and Lowe in their two-game sample. But the bullpen has imploded twice with Sims and Poche, and add in one game poor pitching by Jose A. Ferrer and Orlando Ribalta and what you got is a bullpen that has allowed 8-runs per game so far.
Some would say you can only get quality if you spend big. That’s obviously not true. It’s how you spend it. Rizzo had $50 million to spend. We modeled how to spend $50 million in WAR/$ charts. The Lowe move at $10.3 million filled the biggest offseason need and left $40 million for the other needs. The team didn’t necessarily need a DH with Juan Yepez, Jose Tena, and Andres Chaparro in the system. The team did need another legit bat and didn’t get it. They got a steal on DeJong in a weak third base market beyond Alex Bregman who was out of the reach of the Nationals. The team needed starter depth, and you hope that Soroka is the answer. His fallback is the bullpen where he found success last year with the White Sox after failing as a starting pitcher. And yes, the bullpen needs help.
“You can’t walk eight, nine guys in a game and expect to win. We’ve got to throw strikes, pound the zone like we normally do. You walk guys, give free passes with a team like that? You’re going to get beat. They’re going to score a lot of runs.”
— manager Dave Martinez said
You can make up excuses and place some blame on the umpires, but at the end of the day, you have to execute when it matters most. And the Nats’ bullpen has not done that. Some of the Nats hitters have failed to make productive outs in key spots. Again, two games of sample size is almost worthless, but you have to say what you see.
If you think the schedule will get easier, think again. We warned you that the schedule makers screwed the Nats with a tough schedule to begin the season. The Nats first three National League opponents happen to be the last three NL World Series teams in order, going from Philadelphia (2022) to Arizona (2023) to the Los Angeles Dodgers (2024). The Nats do get to travel to the Toronto Blue Jays for their first American League series for three games starting on Monday then return to Nats Park to face the Diamondbacks and Dodgers.
Also, even in the good years, Dave Martinez‘s Nats have never had a winning record on April 30. Yes, never is a long time. In 2018, with a stacked roster, the team was 13-16, and you all remember 2019’s 12-16 record on April 30 en route to 19-31 in mid-May. Of course there was no April baseball in 2020. In 2021, the team was 10-12 at the end of April, and in 2022 Martinez’s team was a poor 7-16. Obviously you know that 2023 was 10-17. What might surprise many is Martinez’s best record at April 30 was last year at 14-15. That team was actually over .500 on May 7th. All combined, the Martinez record on April 30 is 56-80.
“I still believe our young players are the key to our success. We did add some veteran guys. We added some guys in the middle of our lineup we think could help drive in some runs. But I think our core young players, the kids, are really going to get us to where we need to be.”
— Martinez said
Starter Mitchell Parker gets this start seeding him after MacKenzie Gore and Jake Irvin in the rotation. The Phillies go with Aaron Nola for this series finale.
Philadelphia Phillies vs. Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 1:35 pm EDT
TV: MASN
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app; In Spanish on DC 87.7 FM and La Pantera 100.7 FM/1220 AM. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 175 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
Line-up subject to change (without notice):
