What to Expect from Chris Marrero

Chris Marrero makes his major league debut tonight. It's been a long time coming for the 2006 first round pick, who Jim Bowden at the time comped to Miguel Cabrera.

Moreover, it's been a long time coming for the entire draft class of 2006, which was stacked with high school players who didn't pan out. In fact, as NFA Brian points out on Twitter, Marrero is the first high school player from that entire draft to appear in the majors, and Cole Kimball is the only player of any pedigree from that draft to make the bigs (although they did turn fourth round pick Glenn Gibson into Elijah Dukes).

Brad Peacock, the 41st round pick from 2006, probably won't be far behind, and he's suddenly looking like the guy who could salvage an otherwise miserable draft conducted by a scouting department gutted by MLB ownership of the franchise.

But after that the cupboard is pretty bare. It's possible that a couple relievers like Hassan Pena, Cory Van Allen, or Zech Zinicola will some day throw some mop-up innings in the majors, and "Don't call me Mary" Tyler Moore has followed up his breakout 2010 enough that he'll probably be a bench guy at some point.

But Chris Marrero is the man of the hour, and the question is, what can Nationals fans expect from him?

The short answer is that you should keep your expectations in check. He's a former #1 prospect, and you've been hearing about him for a long time, but he's really not a top prospect anymore.

First, you gotta have a really premium bat to be an even average MLB first baseman, and Marrero has yet to demonstrate that he can be that kind of hitter. First basemen who hit and throw right-handed have an even steeper mountain to climb. He hasn't appeared in the Baseball America top 100 list since 2007, and he fell all the way to #9 among Nationals prospects coming into this season.

He has a long swing, and he's very slow, which means he's going to struggle with batting average at the major league level. And while he has some raw power, his hit tool hasn't allowed the power to materialize in game situations. He's a bad fielder.

This year he's hitting .300 / .375 / .449 at AAA, which sounds ok, but there's a huge gap between AAA and the majors. A decent rule of thumb is to shave 20% off the top of whatever a guy is doing at AAA (though in fairness the International League is a pretty pitcher-friendly place).

Recently Marrero's been slumping, going 8 for his last 39 with 8 Ks, 3 walks, and just one XBP in his last ten games. He gets to debut in Great American Small Park against RHP Mike Leake.

Now I Can Die Happy

I've been paid tribute in a Hitler meme (I think). This may be the pinnacle of my blogging life.

I will admit that I was a little irritated when with no outs and a runner on first with the Sea Dogs up 1-0 in the 8th inning, Derek Norris sac bunted. Yeah, that's what we came to see. But I didn't go execute any generals.

And there were lots of good things about game one at Hadlock Field. Yes, Bryce Harper signed autographs before and after the game (I didn't get one--hands were full with a fourth-month-old and three-year-old). Tanner Roark, a pitcher who came to the Nationals with Ryan Tatusko from Texas for Cristian Guzman, took a no-hitter into the seventh. Cory Van Allen and Rafael Martin looked good in relief. I got to see possible future MLB bench guys Tyler Moore and Erik Komatsu. They have Baxter's on tap. And yes, I got my Ryan Kalish bobblehead.

Tonight it's Danny Rosenbaum and his 1.40 ERA. I'll be the one in the general admission section plotting revenge.

The Mike Morse Post

Let's get this out of the way first: Mike Rizzo deserves mad props for uncovering the beast that has become Mike Morse in 2011.

I had no idea that Morse had this kind of season in him--though in my defense, I don't know anyone else who did either. Baseball Reference has Jason Michaels as the most comparable player in league history to Morse through age 28, and PECOTA's 90th percentile projection for Morse this season (i.e. the outcome with a 10% likelihood of occurring) was .312 / .374 / .505--a peg below what he's actually done.

I considered the Morse for Ryan Langerhans deal a junk-for-junk non-move, the kind of deal where two teams trade players they've both gotten tired of, only to later learn why the other organization wasn't interested in holding onto their guy in the first place. If anything I figured Langerhans had a better chance at giving the Nationals at least some value in the future because of his glove.

And then at the start of this season I criticized Rizzo for taking a really good bench player and pressing him into full-time duty where I expected him to get exposed.

Now we know that Rizzo absolutely picked Jack Zduriencik's pocket. (Geez, the Mariners could use Mike Morse's bat right now, eh?) If Mike Morse never gets another hit for the Nationals, this will be one of the most lopsided deals we've seen since 2005.

It's really hard to underestimate how good Morse has been. His .319 / .369 / .557 line puts him just shade below the MVP contenders. His .395 wOBA is third best among all first basemen in the NL, and if you wanted to play some arbitrary end-points games and chop off his slump at the start of the season, you could probably pull some numbers that look positively Pujols-like

Put it this way: if the season ended today he'd have the second highest single-season wOBA of any Nationals player since the team came to Washington (trailing only Nick Johnson's massively under-appreciated 2006). That's right--Morse has been a more valuable all-around hitter for the Nationals than Alfonso Soriano, Adam Dunn, or Ryan Zimmerman ever were. And we're talking about an essentially free talent acquisition, the biggest out-of-nowhere season by any player not named Bautista in years.

(Speaking of Jose Bautista, how come people wanna speculate about him being on the juice but we never ever hear that about Morse? I mean, Joey Bats has never been linked to steroids ever, which is more than we can say about Morse. I don't have any evidence, but since I keep waiting for someone to be irresponsible enough to bring it up, why not me?)

Now it's time for me to do what I do and splash some cold water. First, let's remember that Morse is not young. He's 29 years old, which is usually at or just a bit past most players' peak years.

Second, we need to remember why this guy toiled around mostly in the minor leagues in three organizations for basically a decade having the career of Jason Michaels. He's been injury prone for his entire career. He's not a very good defender, even playing on the extreme end of the defensive spectrum (errorless streak and comps to Adam Dunn notwithstanding).

And most of all, he rarely if ever takes a walk, which until this season has prevented his 5 o'clock power from ever actualizing in game situations. And that's a part of his game hasn't improved at all this season--his unintentional walk rate is a Guzman-esque 4.7%. It's just incredibly rare for any player to be able to be as productive as Morse has been this year while drawing so few walks.

How rare? Well, let's see. Morse is at 23 walks so far this season, about 0.2 per game played, and there are 39 games to play. So that would mean he's in line for about 8 more walks for the year if he plays more or less every game.

Let's be a bit generous and say that Morse will finish the season with 35 walks. Here's the list of every player in the expansion era since 1961 who has had a 153 OPS+ (same as Morse's this year) while drawing 35 or fewer walks: Tony Oliva in 1971 and Andre Dawson, Chet Lemon, and Bill Madlock (oddly) all in 1981.

So you're talking about a player who at age 29 is displaying a skill set that not only has he personally never displayed, very few players in the last 50 years of baseball have ever displayed.

Does that mean the Morse's season is just a giant fluke? Well, to an extent, yes, it probably does. But Morse might continue to be a useful, even quite good player for another year or two (beyond that is probably expecting too much).

He's really cut down on his strikeout rate since coming to Washington, and that should continue to help him. And he can be equally below average defensively at a couple different positions, which gives the team some flexibility in finding places for him to play.

But I don't think the team should stop trying to replace him. I'm interested in seeing Derek Norris at first base, and if they want to make a run at Prince Fielder (or I guess Pujols) this off-season, Morse shouldn't stop them.

One good thing is that Morse is still under team control for another year, so there shouldn't be any risk of giving him some big contract, at least not yet.

Bottom line, Nationals fans should really enjoy this season, take it for what it is, but don't start raising your hopes too much. Things that have virtually never happened before are pretty unlikely to ever happen again.

For the Record, the Nationals Overpaid on their Draft Picks

In the last few days, I've started to feel a little guilty about writing this the day after the signing deadline: "the team isn't just spending big--they're spending smart."

I still believe 100% in the main point I was making, that the draft is an incredible buyer's market, because the price teams pay for talent in the draft is massively suppressed by the collective bargaining agreement. Just look at the $30 million contract that Aroldis Chapman got compared to the $8 million that Garrett Cole got.

But if you look at the Nationals' signings purely in the context of draft dollars, they clearly overpaid. A couple days before the draft, Baseball America's Jim Callis put the "over-under" for the combined cost of signing the Nationals top three picks at $9 million, and the Nationals spent $11 million--and then threw another $4.15 million at Matt Purke. Scoring the negotiations, it was a blowout for Boras on every card.

Let's start with Brian Goodwin. Taken with the 34th overall pick in the supplemental first round, Goodwin got $3 million, the ninth biggest bonus paid to any player in the draft. It tied for the third-highest bonus ever outside of the first round and almost $2 million more than Corey Spangenberg, the only junior college position player taken higher than Goodwin at #10 overall.

I and most other fans I know have (appropriately) focused on the fact that Goodwin was generally considered better than the 34th best talent in the draft, so if you only look at draft order the Nationals got good value. But if you had told anyone in the industry prior to draft that Goodwin would get that kind of money, they would have laughed. Scott Boras scored an incredible deal for his client, probably double what he had any right to expect.

Matt Purke was the real eyebrow-raiser. Everyone knows the story by now. Drafted out of high school, Purke was ready to take a $6 million offer from Texas, but MLB, in control of the Rangers' finances at the time, blocked it. Then, just eight months ago, the TCU lefty was rated alongside Anthony Rendon and Garrett Cole as the potential top pick in a strong draft. But then he had shoulder problems, which some scouts think might be related to his slingy, low-three-quarters arm slot.

If healthy, Purke has potential frontline stuff. But health is a huge factor in how you have to value any pick, especially pitchers. And shoulders aren't like elbows--you don't just give a guy a new ligament and wait 18 monts for him to return to normal.

That's why most folks thought Purke and the Nationals probably wouldn't (shouldn't, even) make a deal. The established market value for a fourth-round pick with at best iffy medicals--even one with Purke's upside--probably isn't much more than a million dollars or so. And Purke, observers figured, could get closer to the $6 million that Texas wanted to pay him if he could just go out next year and show that his shoulder was ok.

But the Nationals made all that moot by simply offering him a contract that basically assumes that his health is not an issue. Which it clearly is.

All this was even more surprising because when the Nationals drafted him, Mike Rizzo (wisely, I thought) said the team would follow his performance in summer leagues and make their decision accordingly. Well, Purke didn't play summer ball. He hasn't pitched a single inning anywhere since the draft. The team says they were convinced by Purke's workouts and bullpen sessions, but scouts will tell you there's a big difference between side sessions and facing live batters.

I'm really nitpicking now, but even the Alex Meyer deal is a bit of an overpay. Now, because Meyer turned down $2 million from the Red Sox out of high school--and Scott Boras doesn't like to give back money--it's long been assumed that Meyer's price tag would begin with a 2. But still, that's still more than the bonuses paid to Tyler Anderson, Matt Barnes, Sonny Gray, or Chris Reed, four college pitchers picked ahead of him.

Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled by what the Nationals did in the draft. I've been arguing for years that the draft is by far the cheapest source of premium talent, and that with a $68 million payroll in a large, wealthy market, the Nationals have plenty of resources to load up the farm system with high-upside gambles. And besides, it's fun.

But the nagging question in my mind is this: Are the Nationals aggressively exploiting market inefficiencies in a way that will lead to long term success? Or are they just throwing money at anyone who will take it?

Flushing $4 million down the toilet on one damaged goods pitcher isn't going to break any MLB team. But it won't take many Jayson Werth-type mistakes to put this franchise an a real financial straight-jacket, as opposed to the self-imposed limits of the Stan Kasten era.

It's just so hard for Nationals fans to worry about profligate spending after years of skinflint ownership. Can you even imagine the Nationals failing the way Jim Hendry failed in Chicago, saddling his team with massive contracts for a roster full of replacement level players or worse?

Then again, maybe I'm just an extreme pessimist who doesn't know how to respond to good news. After all, I worked my guts out to get Obama elected, and on election night in 2008, when everyone else was partying, all I could think about what what a nightmare the midterms would be in 2010. Here's hoping the Nationals aren't quite as perennially deflating as those other guys in Washington.

Washington Nationals: Large Market Spenders?

No team in baseball spent more on the draft in 2009 ($11.5 mil) and 2010 ($11.9 mil) than the Washington Nationals. This year's draft makes those look cheap by comparison

Remember, in those two drafts the Nationals had the #1 overall pick, and with generational talents Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper available, the Nationals were guaranteed to be the top spenders in the draft if they got their top picks signed.

This year, the Nationals blew away their own records without the benefit of the #1 overall pick, though with the #6 pick in a deep draft they got a #1 type talent in Anthony Rendon.

The big news from last night is that the Nationals not only spent $6 million on Rendon--they spent a total of nearly $12 million on their top four picks combined, including $2.75 million on fourth round pick Matt Purke, a #1 overall talent who slid because of medical and signability issues.

Turn back the clock three years, and this kind of spending is nearly unthinkable. This is a team that walked away from the #9 pick the draft in 2008 over a difference of a couple hundred thousand dollars. They took Ross Detwiler, not a huge reach, but a guy with low bonus demands, with the #6 pick in 2007. They let their second round pick in 2006 walk.

The Nationals of that era never would have drafted Purke, much less signed him. They probably would have walked away from Brian Goodwin and/or Alex Meyer before spending what they did last night.

This year, the Nationals drafted and spent like a large market team looking to leverage their financial clout to maximum advantage. (Of course, one of the curious things about MLB is that in fact it's the small market teams like the Pirates, Rays, and Royals that have been most aggressive in their draft spending, while teams like the Astros and Mets have played it cheap. But that's a whole other post.)

Even more exciting, the team isn't just spending big--they're spending smart. As OMG points out, even teams that spend "big" in the draft don't spend much in the context of MLB economics. That's because the amateurs are screwed by the CBA, and will probably be screwed even worse in the next agreement.

And this draft is one of the deepest, strongest drafts in recent memory, while next year's draft is expected to be one of the weakest. If there was ever a year to draft and spend aggressively, this was it.

That's why, combined with their aggressive moves in free agency over the last two years (Werth, Teixeira, and various other smaller deals) and their willingness to pick up contracts in trades (Willingham, Gomes), I have to wonder--have the Nationals, over the last 2-3 years, evolved into a large market spender?

Other than Yuniesky Maya, they still haven't done a lot internationally, and their MLB payroll is still pretty low. But let's face it there's only so much you can spend on.

The question on my mind is what exactly changed? How did the Lerners go from one of the league's biggest skinflints to one a team that's regularly getting blasted by other teams for "irresponsible" spending?

More and more, the Aaron Crow meltdown feels like the turning point. The front office was split there, with Kasten and Bowden defending the team's decision to walk away, and Mike Rizzo openly disagreeing. Since then, Kasten and Bowden are gone, and it's now Rizzo's team.

But what changed in the owners' box? The conspiracy part of my brain thinks that maybe part of Bud Selig's deal to award the franchise to the Lerners was a gentleman's agreement to hold down spending, with Stan Kasten as the babysitter to make sure that happened.

That would be illegal collusion (which we know the owners aren't above), so no one's going to come out and say it, but I would love it if Mark Lerner would make himself available for an honest in-depth interview in which he admitted his change in thinking and discuss why.

See me (and Bryce Harper) at Hadlock Field!

The Harpersburg Senators will be visiting my new hometown of Portland, Maine next week to take on the Portland Sea Dogs at Hadlock Field, which Keith Law recently cited as his favorite minor league field in the country.

If you're going to be in the area, lemme know. Maybe we can meet up, or at least I can give you food recommendations.

And if anyone with the team happens to see this and wants to throw me a press credential, don't be shy. I'll behave, I promise.

What to Watch For: Signing Deadline

Tomorrow is the signing deadline for players drafted in June, an event which gives every hard-core Nationals fan the willies since the Aaron Crow fiasco of 2008.* Here are some things to watch for as the clock ticks towards midnight.

First, the Nationals go into the last 24 hours with their top five picks all still unsigned. Lots of teams are in this situation, and for that, you can thank Bud Selig and his laughably ham-handed efforts to suppress signing bonuses.

I don't want to make this an entire post about why, when it comes to draft bonuses, MLB is (take your pick) incompetent, greedy, insane, maddening, self-defeating... But the upshot is that MLB tells teams and players that picks should be signed for their arbitrary, unilateral bonus recommendations, or "slots." Neither players nor teams think these slot recommendations are realistic, and they've been shown to be completely out of touch with reality over and over again.

The Nationals aren't going to sign any of these top picks for slot, and everyone knows that. But MLB won't allow teams to ink players for over-slot deals until the last minute, based on the illusion that players, agents, and teams don't already know that the slot recommendations are absurd bluffs.

For the Nationals that means there is a lot of work to get done in the final hours, which creates the potential for another Crow-like debacle with everyone wondering, "how did that happen?"

That said, I'd be stunned if the Nationals failed to sign any of their first three picks, Anthony Rendon, Alex Meyer, and Brian Goodwin--though it could cost the team a combined eight figures to get them all done. All three are Boras clients (remember when we didn't like that guy?), and reports that Rizzo spent the weekend talking to third-round pick Matt Purke increases the sense that these deals are done or close to it.

Rendon is the top college pick in the draft, and two years ago that distinction brought Dustin Ackley $7.5 million. Ackley was the #2 overall pick, while Rendon went #6, but it's still unlikely that Rendon goes for less than $6-7 million. Meyer turned down $2 million from the Red Sox out of high school in 2008, so don't count on him taking less than that. And Goodwin is a high-upside guy who could easily go back to school and try to increase his draft standing.

In each of these negotiations, a major factor will be the fact that this year's draft was considered very strong while next year's draft (especially the college class) is considered very weak. So if you're the Nationals, there's no way you can expect to get similar value with compensation picks next year, especially if they fail to sign Rendon or Meyer. And the players know they have a good chance of getting drafted in the same spot or higher if they wait.

The conventional wisdom is that the Nationals will not be able to sign their fourth pick, Matt Purke. If they don't, I wouldn't be too upset. The Rangers wanted to give Purke $6 million when they drafted him in 2009, but MLB blocked them (cuz clearly Selig knows more about scouting than Jon Daniels and his team, and screw the player--according to Bud, he should only get to negotiate with one team and Bud gets to veto the deal he strikes with that team too, but whatever). Purke was considered a potential 1-1 pick going into this season, but he had shoulder troubles that scared away most teams, for good reason.

So especially considering the weak 2012 draft class, Purke has a really good chance of getting his $6 million if he can go out next season and show people that he's ok. The question is how close the Nationals are willing to come to that figure, and how much Purke values security over opportunity. If Rizzo's final offer is around $2 million and Purke walks, it's kind of hard to blame either side.

Here's where you might be thinking, "Screw that kid! Two million in today's economy? Who does he think he is." And you'd be wrong. Remember, the collective bargaining agreement allows teams to pay players the league minimum for three full seasons. And the teams can and do blatantly manipulate players' service time by keeping top prospects in the minor far longer than they need to be. So bottom line, Purke and any other player drafted is at least 4-5 years away from another really big payday, and especially given the injury risk that pitchers face, their draft bonus is likely to be the only really big money they ever see. They'd be crazy not to leverage these negotiations to the max--especially in today's economy.

The fifth unsigned pick is fourth-rounder Kylin Turnbull. He's a 6'5", 21-year-old lefty with a lot of projection and a commitment to Oregon. In other words, he's not signing for slot either.

If the Nationals fail to sign any of these players (or even if they do), keep an eye on rounds 19 and 20 picks Hawtin Buchanan and Josh Laxer. These are two elite high school pitchers out of Mississippi who are both committed to Ole Miss. You assume these guys won't get signed, but teams sometimes throw first round money at guys like this as a Plan B when their top picks fail to sign.

*No, just because Drew Storen seems to be turning out to be a roughly similar player to Crow doesn't justify what the Nationals did. Good luck does not justify bad process, and this was probably the worst meltdown in the five-year history of the August 15 signing deadline. If you want you relive my many rants on the topic, you can search the blog for past articles on Aaron Crow. But one thing I'll add now is that the further we get from that era the more it seems that Stan Kasten was acting during that negotiation in particular and perhaps during his entire tenure in DC as a mole from the commissioner's office, keeping payroll and draft bonuses artificially suppressed in the (misguided) perceived interests of MLB and against the interests of the Nationals.

OMG! He Threw His Helmet!!

Bryce Harper was ejected from a game this week for throwing his helmet. Based on the media response, someone who dropped in from another planet knowing nothing about baseball would probably think this was quite an unusual event.

Here are a few other famously bad make-up players and managers. Boy, I hope Bryce doesn't turn out like any of these bums:

Ryan Howard

Mike Piazza

Josh Willingham

Ryne Sandberg

Ichiro Suzuki

Ian Kinsler

Just another stupid non-story from a sports media unwilling to let a little thing like journalistic integrity stand in the way of attracting cheap clicks and eyeballs. Maybe next we'll find out that Harper plays poker! GASPS!!!!

The Trade Never Considered

In a recent post about the Nationals' failure to nab any of the talented young center fielders that have come available in the last few seasons, I tossed off a remark at the end that I wouldn't do a Drew Storen for Denard Span

I was taken to task in the comments and realized pretty quickly that I was wrong there. As NTP Nate asked, "You don't trade a right-handed reliever for a 27-year old with a .366 career OBP and plus defense in CF who's on a reasonable (5 yr/$16.5M) contract through 2014? Where are these type of guys growing on trees?"

In part, my error was that I hadn't really paid that much attention to Span this year. I remembered his down year in 2010 and assumed he wasn't doing much better this year given how the Twins are doing as a team. But he's actually having a nice bounce-back year, and it's looking like his down 2010 is the aberration.

After that, the argument for the deal is simple: every day players--especially up-the-middle players--are harder to find and worth more than relievers. If the reporting is accurate and the Twins were asking for Storen and a so-so prospect like Steve Lombardozzi, then I would have made that deal. (Of course, we don't really know whether it was Mike Rizzo or the Twins GM Bill Bill Smith who walked away, so I'm not going to get too worked up about this one rumor.)

But here's the real reason my knee-jerk reaction was to say no to Storen for Span: I was reacting as a fan. I like Drew Storen, and it's been exciting to see him come up and perform right away. It's really hard to say goodbye to your team's home grown players, and my heart said no before my head got a vote.

Which brings me to the real topic of this post: Setting aside my feelings as a fan, it's becoming increasingly clear to me that the player the Nationals should have traded last week was Ryan Zimmerman.

First, even despite losing a bunch of time (again) with an injury, Zimmerman's trade value is sky-high. Dave Cameron argued on Fangraphs that Zimmerman has the 10th highest trade value of any player in baseball, which may be a little high but is close. We all know he's one of the game's elite all-around players, and he's signed to a really team-friendly contract through next season.

But let's look at where the Nationals are at as a franchise. This year, they have met or exceeded any fan's highest expectations, and they are sitting in last place at 53-57 on pace for 78 wins. And while a few key things have gone wrong for the team this year (Zimmerman, Adam LaRoche, Jayson Werth), look at the things that have gone right.

Mike Morse has made it impossible to miss Adam LaRoche. Danny Espinosa and Wilson Ramos have done very well in their first full seasons. The bullpen has been very good. Laynce Nix? And really every single starting pitcher other than maybe Tom Gorzelanny has given the team a best-case-scenario performance.

The reality is that the window of opportunity to win with Ryan Zimmerman could very well be next year and the year after, as his contract expires in 2013. He's going to be a free agent going into his age 29 season and will command a huge contract, assuming nothing goes wrong for him over the next 2 years.

And let's face it, even if you project a healthy Strasburg, continued development from the young players, and a bounce-back year from Werth, the team still doesn't have enough to make the playoffs next season, barring some massive spending spree that starts but doesn't end with Albert Pujols.

Now, I'll admit that there's been a lot of progress for this team. It's damn hard to go from 59 wins to 69 wins to 78 wins in three consecutive seasons. I can see how some fans might feel like the team is getting close. But it's really not. Look at the Nationals rotation. Now look at the Phillies' rotation. Back to the Nationals. Now back to the Phillies. Sadly, they aren't them, though in all fairness they probably smell about the same.

And here's the best news of all for the Nationals: they've had a nice little year on the farm. Brad Peacock is getting a lot of ink as the big breakthrough of 2011, but other guys like Sammy Solis, Robbie Ray, Tom Milone, and A.J. Cole are having very nice developmental seasons as well. That's a lot of arms coming together all at once, and draft picks Alex Meyer and Matt Purke are two more potential impact arms to add if they sign.

They still don't have impact bats in the system, and Derek Norris still hasn't really been able to follow up on his breakthrough in 2009, but Anthony Rendon will change that as soon as he signs (and oh by the way, you know what position he plays).

Bottom line, the Nationals have the best farm system they've had since coming to DC. And a lot of these guys aren't that far off. You can really see the makings of a contending group taking shape around Strasburg and Harper--a rising core of talent that can get good together at the same time from from 2013-2016.

Now, let's imagine the kind of prospect haul the team could get for Zimmerman and add that group to what they already have. If the Nationals had put Zimmerman on the market last week, he easily would have been the most valuable player on the market--far and away more valuable than Hunter Pence, Carlos Beltran, or even Ubaldo Jimenez. And all those guys fetched top-shelf prospects. And with third base so thin around the league, there would be no shortage of suitors.

With the internal development they've had, plus the 2011 draft, plus a blockbuster package of prospects, their under-25 organizational talent would suddenly be right up there with Kansas City and Texas as the best in baseball. And with that you really could be looking at a sustained run of playoff appearances and a World Series.

The first alternative is to resign Zimmerman to another long-term deal, which may or may not even be possible and will likely cost over $170 million, and keep trying to win now with a team built around him, Werth, Strasburg, maybe Harper, and whatever else you're willing to pay for in free agency. In this scenario, I think the Nationals can expect a sustained run of respectability, but it's hard to imagine how a true contender comes together.

Of course the other possibility is that they lose Zimmerman in free agency after 2013 and get a couple draft picks as compensation (and please Nationals fans stop cherry-picking Jordan Zimmermann to overstate the value of a second round draft pick, ok? Good luck does not make good process.)

Add all this together, and it's kind of surprising to me that there hasn't been any discussion of moving Zimmerman. It just makes a lot of sense if you can stop and think about it without getting emotional about The Face. And it's certainly not too late--they should be able to put him out on the market next year at the deadline and get as much or more in return assuming nothing else changes.

Of course, there's one other complicating factor here: Jayson Werth and his $126 million contract. Could the team really sell off a piece like Zimmerman while sitting on a contract like that for a 32-year-old? Most teams wouldn't, but that doesn't mean it's not the right move. It would just make one more way in which the Werth signing will likely be more of a hindrance than a help for this team.

Right Track/Wrong Track Results... And a New Poll!

Nationals fan confidence dipped a bit to 80% as the team followed a .630 June with a .423 July. But that's still a very high degree of optimism and basically where the fan base has been since Strasburg signed back in 2009.

Time to vote on the August poll in the upper right hand corner of the page.