Going Deep with The Nats

There are only 30 GM jobs in MLB, and it makes it one of the most coveted jobs in the world. In the new-age era of moneyball-to-analytics, the GM’s job spills over on many teams to almost make some of the managers into puppets — with the GMs pulling the strings. There are GMs that have overrides on lineup configurations and when to pull a starting pitcher. Mister Geppetto just has to be smart enough to know which strings to pull. Modern day managers don’t even realize how much their jobs have changed since the days when a manager like Davey Johnson was doing his own rudimentary form of analytics in the dugout — a first for a manager.

The World Series could end ended (updated) tonight, and we could are officially be in the offseason tomorrow. Free agency is looming right around the corner — and will really get going at the Winter Meetings in Nashville on December 4. That is just 33 days from now.

Washington Nationals’ owner Mark Lerner said that he will leave the free agent decisions to his general manager Mike Rizzo. With that said, it looks like the onus is on Rizzo to do what he needs to do to improve the team and sign free agents. Yesterday, Jim Bowden of The Athletic put out his predictions on contract values and length for free agents as well as landing spots. He has the Nats as possible landing spots for Jeimer Candelario, Harrison Bader, and Jack Flaherty. The Nats do not need Bader given that the team has Jacob Young as well as top prospects Dylan Crews and James Wood. The Nats priorities are starting pitching and a power bat.

Once upon a time, there were two Washington Senators teams. The original Senators team of Walter Johnson went to Minnesota, while Frank Howard‘s Senators landed in Texas as the Rangers in 1972. Ted Williams was their manager, Howard their first baseman, and Dick Bosman their ace pitcher. They lost 100 games that year. Former owner Bob Short didn’t rip our team from Washington to take them to Texas to win championships — rather just to make more money. He sold control just two years later for a huge profit. Short totally stepped away in 1980, and just two years later and upon his death the Washington Post wrote, “Mr. Short became one of the most reviled sports figures in Washington’s history … [Short] said he had trouble making a profit [in Washington] with his new team and angered fans by trading or selling top players.” WaPo couldn’t even find anything nice to say on the man’s death.

The Washington Nationals knew they were not going to be a contender this year short of a miracle. With a 16-game win improvement over last year, there are reasons for optimism — even in a season where the Nats finished in last place in the NL East — but nowhere close to the bottom in baseball.

Optimism can be found in this year’s two World Series teams: Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers. They lost 110 and 102 games respectively just two seasons ago. Their unique paths to this World Series had different strategies. The Diamondbacks are more of the old-school story of building from the farm system while the Rangers took the more modern method of spending big on up-the-middle talent and starting pitching — but when former Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom was lost for the entire season — they looked like a fail before the season began. Texas had a player payroll at $195,869,490 to begin the season.

When news broke of De Jon Watson getting fired by the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2016, it was Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo who had a spot as an Assistant GM for Watson. A couple of years later, Watson took Mark Scialabba‘s spot as the VP of Player Development. Scialabba moved to another front office spot and Watson moved in. It raised some eyebrows then as a typical Rizzo people shuffle internally or bringing in someone from his past. Probably not a fair portrayal — but that has been an ongoing criticism of Rizzo that he usually hires front office people he personally knows. That really is not true, but labels and narratives are hard to change.

In sweeping changes at the end of September and the beginning of October, the scouting and player development heads are all gone on both the international and US sides, except Kris Kline who was reassigned. Nobody saw that coming with Johnny DiPuglia and Watson gone, and Kline moved to another spot.