Feeling Bad about Nyjer Morgan? Blame Riggleman

It's the manager's job to manage the players. Things got so out of control with Morgan that Mike Rizzo had to get rid of him. That didn't happen in Pittsburgh and it obviously hasn't happened in Milwaukee.

Is Morgan insane? Sure. But he has ability. The Nationals would have been a better team with him in 2011. Good managers/coaches get the best out of guys like this. If Phil Jackson could get hall of fame performances from Dennis Rodman, then Jim Riggleman should have been able to keep things from completely spinning out of control with Nyjer Morgan.

Top 1B Prospect: Not Chris Marrero

On August 27, Chris Marrero made his major league debut. Marrero's debut got a lot of people excited because he was the 15th overall pick in the 2006 draft and the #1 prospect in the organization going into the 2008 season according to Baseball America.

Fans should have saved their excitement. In 117 plate appearances, Marrero whiffed 27 times and drew just 4 walks. He had 27 hits, but just 5 of them went for extra bases--all doubles.

Marrero's .248 / .274 / .294 line was good for a 53 wRC+--meaning that adjusting for park effects and run environment, Marrero was 53% as good as the average hitter, and that's including pitchers and premium fielders, which Marrero clearly is not.

Now, I don't mean to beat up on a 23-year-old getting his first cup of coffee. It's a small sample size. He's young enough that he still has time to get better.

But because of his pedigree as a heralded high-round pick, fans and media tend to vastly overrate his potential. And for a guy who talks a lot about meritocracy, GM Mike Rizzo gave Marrero a pretty much completely undeserved promotion.

In fact, Marrero might not even be the top first base prospect in the Nationals organization anymore. That's because while Marrero has been doing just barely enough to keep getting promoted, a late-round pick who lots of fans haven't even heard of has been earning every chance he's gotten. That guy is Tyler Moore.

Granted, Moore is about 18 months older than Marrero, and he was a level behind him each of the last two years. But still, Moore clubbed 62 homers in 2010-2011, while Marrero hit just 32. Even accounting for age differences, what Moore did this year in AA is more impressive than what Marrero did with AAA Syracuse. Plus, Moore isn't anyone's idea of a great fielder, but he's got a good arm and he's more agile than Marrero, which isn't saying a lot.

Scouts and stats guys alike doubt that Moore can overcome his lack of plate discipline to continue his success against the highest levels. This year, he struck out 139 times against just 30 walks in 546 plate appearances. If he can't improve his command of the strike zone, he'll have a hard time finding his way into hitters' counts and major league pitching will expose the holes in his swing. And while the homers are sexy, his .314 OBP means he's simply making too many outs.

Then again, a lot of people thought he'd get exposed in AA, and he handled that just fine thank you very much.

I don't think either Moore or Marrero is likely to ever be a productive major league starter. The right-right profile is tough to overcome, and the offensive standards are just so absurdly high at first base. If they want a championship caliber first baseman (Adam LaRoche ain't it), they're probably going to have to go after a free agent like Prince Fielder or Albert Pujols (why not?) or trade for someone like Kevin Youkilis.

But if these guys continue on their current paths in 2012, the next guy I'd like to see get a look in Nationals Park would be Tyler Moore, not Chris Marrero.

A.J. Burnett, John Lackey, C.J. Wilson

After the 2008 season, A.J. Burnett, a good but not great pitcher, was the second best free agent starting pitcher available after CC Sabathia. The Yankees gave him five years and $82 million. After the 2009 season, John Lackey was the best of a lackluster group of free agent starting pitchers. He got five years and $82 million.

We know both the Yankees and especially the Red Sox would love a second chance at those decisions.

Fast forward to today. There again aren't any elite starting pitchers in the free agent class (though Sabathia is likely to opt out of his deal in New York, he surely isn't going anywhere). Available are guys like Mark Buerhle, Edwin Jackson, and, the guy who is showing up at the top of a lot of teams' lists, C.J. Wilson.

Wilson has emerged over the last two seasons as a very good starting pitcher. In 427.1 innings since Texas converted him to the rotation, he's given them 427+ innings in two seasons and a shiny 3.14 ERA while pitching in arguably the AL's worst ballpark for pitchers.

Wilson's peripherals indicate that he's been a bit lucky, with xFIPs of 4.06 and 3.41. But he's got excellent ground ball rates (49%) and this year he improved both his K rate and BB rate and put up a K:BB ratio just a hair under 3. That's fantastic. Plus, he's 30 years old and doesn't have ton of mileage on his arm given his history as a reliever. And he's left-handed.

All this is to say that especially with so few options available, some team will again convince themselves to massively overpay for a good, not great, starting pitcher.

Let's hope it's not the Nationals. They should let the Red Sox or Yankees make this mistake again. Pitchers are incredibly volatile commodities, and it's almost always a bad gamble to commit the kind of money that Burnett and Lackey got, unless you're talking about a truly elite pitcher like Sabathia (or last season's top free agent Cliff Lee).

Fans in Washington suffered through so many years of skinflint ownership that it's almost impossible to imagine worrying about overspending. But it's really easy to end up in a box like the Cubs are in now--old, bad teams, locked into huge contracts that are impossible to move, and a bad farm system undercut by years of lost free agent compensation picks.

Jayson Werth is essentially the Nationals' version of Alfonso Soriano. Wilson could easily become their Carlos Zambrano.

To make the playoffs next year, the Nationals need to add a starting pitcher or two in free agency, but they'd be much better off throwing two-year deals at guys like Buerhle or Jackson or a one-year deal for Hiroki Kuroda or even Jason Marquis.

Even if they have to overpay on a per-year basis to get one of those guys, they'd be better off than getting into a bidding war for the best pitcher available who isn't really that good.

Terry Francona: Why Bother?

When Terry Francona resigned as manager of the Boston Red Sox, some folks started talking about whether he'd be a good fit for the Nationals. I say why bother? Unless Davey Johnson if flat-out refusing to take the job long-term, he's clearly the guy for the job.

First, I don't really understand people saying that it's ridiculous for Francona to lose his job in Boston. He missed the playoffs two years in a row with massive payrolls. Last season, you could blame injuries. Although personally I think that was a bit overdone--I hear the world's smallest violin playing for a guy who gets to roll out a line-up with Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, Victor Martinez, Kevin Youkilis, and Adrian Betre for most of the season.

But this year Boston was loaded. MVP candidates all over the line-up. They had a massive lead going into September. Yes, the injuries in the rotation hurt, but the guy had a month to figure out how to muddle through a few competent starts, and he couldn't do it. He didn't need to find 5 outstanding starters. He just needed to make sure they didn't have a total meltdown in all five spots in the rotation, and he couldn't do it. And as long as Afredo Aceves was sitting in the bullpen, you can't say he tried everything.

And all that wouldn't have mattered if it wasn't for the horrible start to the season. That happened on his watch. Add to that the public criticism by players like Lackey and David Ortiz--I think it's fair to say Francona wasn't commanding respect in the clubhouse.

Hey, Francona won two World Series. He buried the Curse of the Bambino. He's probably one of the better managers in the game. But is he a guy the Nationals should want so badly that they'd be willing to toss aside Davey Johnson? No way.

When Jim Riggleman left, the Nationals either lucked out or had done a brilliant job of contingency planning by having one of the best managers in baseball waiting in the wings. The Lerners should put a boatload of money on the table, lock up Davey, and move on to more difficult decisions, like filling the gaping holes in the lineup and starting rotation.

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

Nothing new under the sun. Nationals fan optimism remains sky-high, and it's pretty hard to argue otherwise. Be sure to vote on this month's poll in the upper right corner of the blog.

The Next Step Is A Lot Harder

Watching these final weeks of the season tick down, I've been digesting the meaning of the 2011 season. Certainly, this year marked the end of the cellar-dwelling, laughingstock "Natinals" era in Washington. Thank gawd.

I took a Murphy's Law approach to my own Nationals predictions before the 2011 season, guessing for instance that Jordan Zimmermann would struggle with command in his first season back from Tommy John. I (and plenty of others) saw Michael Morse as the second coming of Wily Mo Pena, a career part-time player with massive holes in his swing who would be exposed in full-time duty. Relief pitcher performance tends to fluctuate wildly from year to year, and I guessed that the Nationals might be due for a run of bad outings. I figured Wilson Ramos and Danny Espinosa would struggle more in their first years of full-time duty. I didn't see Davey Johnson coming.

(I also guessed that Ryan Zimmerman would miss time, Jim Riggleman would be gone, and Jayson Werth wouldn't adjust well to playing with a huge contract for a non-contender. So I got a few things right.)

Those were all reasonable concerns, but to guess that everything that could go wrong would go wrong--that was pretty unlikely. But hey! It's the Nationals!

Not anymore. They spend like a normal team now (if not more). They've been picking at the top of the draft for a decade. Jim Bowden is gone. So is Stan Kasten and his multiple, conflicting lines of authority.

But the even bigger factor is the simple fact that it's really hard to be--and stay--as bad as the Nationals were. And in the reduced run-scoring environment of the last two seasons, plus the overall mediocrity of the National League, it's even harder.

Not to take anything away from the progress the Nationals have made upgrading the talent in the franchise, but Philadelphia is probably the only really good team the Nationals played all season--and even they're not a great team because of their problems scoring runs. The Brewers and D'Backs are solid, but no one is going to mistake them for juggernauts. The Braves and Cardinals are both deeply flawed. And everyone else in the National League really truly stinks.

In interleague, the Nationals got 6 games against Baltimore (pretty soon people are going to notice that it's really unfair that the Nationals get two series against the Orioles while the Mets have to play the Yankees.) And then they got 9 games against the White Sox, Mariners, and Angels. That's 12 interleague games against truly rotten teams, plus 6 more against the just-OK Angels and White Sox. Not many NL teams got off so easy.

Again, I'm not dissing the Nationals because of who they played. They can't control that--and all you can do is beat the teams you're scheduled to play. But it's pretty hard to lose more than 90 games in the NL right now. Look at the lengths Houston had to go to.

Now, Mike Rizzo says the Nationals are a frontline starting pitcher and an top-of-the-order centerfielder away from contending in the NL. Is he right?

Maybe, although remember that those are two of the hardest things to find in all of baseball. It's a little like saying all the economy needs is an increase in consumer demand and a solution to the European debt crisis.

And even then, if Michael Morse regresses, or Zimmermann and/or Stephen Strasburg don't do what we expect, or this, that, and the other... There are plenty of ways the Nationals could upgrade at a couple key spots and remain stuck right around .500.

The league is shaped like a bell curve. Not a ton of teams finish with 90 or more losses, while not very many teams finish with 90 or more wins. Lots of teams finish clustered around 81-81. It took a lot of work to get from consecutive 59-win seasons to this year's quasi-.500, 80-81 team. But getting from 80 wins to 90 wins is way, way harder. The low-hanging fruit has been plucked. Now the hard part--and the fun part--begins.