Did the Nats just help us (and the rest of the division)?

Hawk said:
Buster Olney: Winners and losers of the Scherzer deal

http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/bus...id=InsiderTwitter_Olney_ScherzerWinnersLosers

Winners: The Braves

Their decision to swap assets with short-term value -- Jason Heyward, Justin Upton and Evan Gattis -- in order to load up for 2017 looks better today, in light of how strong the Nationals appear to be. Over the next two years, Zimmermann, Fister and Stephen Strasburg are all headed for free agency, and by the start of the 2017 season, when the Braves are scheduled to open their new park, Atlanta should be positioned for a counterpunch.
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First thing I posted when Max to the Nats became the hot rumor. Timing has worked out perfectly for the Braves.
 
thethe said:
First thing I posted when Max to the Nats became the hot rumor. Timing has worked out perfectly for the Braves.
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I don't get this train of thought. The Nats were clearly better than us going into this year and honestly last year too especially when we lost Medlen and Beachy. Granted we added Santana which helped, and Harang came from nowhere but we were fighting an uphill battle with a more talented team.

Our role was to get in via the Wild Card. THere our competition hasn't gotten better. Giants lost Panda, Morse, and Vogelsong, Traded for Casey McGehee sign Aoki, overall they're moving down, but how much who knows. They overperformed last year as well getting way more wins than WAR. Pirates have made lots of short term risk moves like getting Hart and Burnett, but they lost Martin and Volquez. Milwaukee has had a terrible offseason and are going into rebuild mode. If we made the right moves, we could have easily been in the hunt for the WC. Heck we could have made the rebuilding trade of trading Justin and Gattis and moving some BP arms and still been in the hunt for the WC if we kept Jason used Justin's money to get Aoki, Burnett and Drew. Still Sign Markakis too.

We could have a 2015 team with some options then.

Start the year out with Bossman fighting with Aoki and let the best man win CF. Markakis would be a fantastic defender in LF once he makes the adjustment between the ball flight differences.

Lineup is a little to lefty heavy, but you cope.

Markakis - LF
Drew - 2B (not ideal but we do need someone to split up the lefties)
Jason - RF
Freddie - 1B
Johnson - 3B
Aoki- CF
Simmons - SS
Bethancourt - C

Obviously not an amazing offensive juggernaut, we still take a massive hit losing Gattis and Justin, but it's a competitive offense. But cutting out Bossman and Justin for Markakis and Aoki our Ks go down a ton. That lineup features 5 hitters who'll walk 8+% of the time and K around or under 20% of the time. Last year we had 2 guys who were there (TLS was too, but he only had like 360) Of course Drew could go over 20% on Ks but I think he stays at or under. Which is a dynamic change. BTW I'm open to switching Aoki and Markakis in that lineup. Or batting Aoki at 9 as second leadoff too. Peterson can replace Johnson if Johnson doesn't find his mojo. Or Drew if he blows a big one like he did last year. Peraza is waiting for Drew to blow too. If Drew plays like 2013 Sox version, then we got an amazing value signing who we can deal at the deadline if we want ot go with Peraza.

Rotation
Julio
Wood
Minor
Burnett
Plethora of options, ManBan, Folty, Hale, etc.

Pen
Kimbrel
Viz
Simmons
Johnson
Grilli
Outman/Avilan
Hale/long man fodder

That's a team that's in the mix for the WC, and has long term prospects too.
 
That pitching staff doesn't come close to getting it done IMO. The lineup is not bad but I sill think we were too far away from making it worth while.
 
Um, the Nats are going to be just fine. They can easily trade one of Fister or Zimmerman for prospects, and replace them in the rotation with Roark. They would have had to pay an Ace huge dollars for 7 years at some point, so it doesn't really matter if that guy is Scherzer now, Zimmerman next year, or Strasburg 2 years from now.

They have Yunel and Turner to replace Desmond. They have another elite level arm in Giolito to replace Strasburg in a couple years. AJ Cole can be a mid rotation guy that replaces Fister next year. Taylor can replace Span in CF as early as this year or next. They don't really have a single albatross contract on the books.

The Braves will be chasing the Nats for quite a while.
 
Patching is what we've been doing since 2010, and it yielded us what....2 playoff wins???

No thanks, time to move on, build and develop within, and put a legit contender on the team with few holes on the field, in the new stadium.

The Nats may have endless resources, but that isn't the cure all, and it always doesn't work out the way one expects it to, and eventually no matter how much money you got at your disposal and may be able to erase bad decesions, it will come to an end. Just ask Red Sox, Philly, Dodger, and Yanks fans.

Although the Nat's are probably the closest thing that I have seen from an organization perspective to the 1990's Braves. They develop a lot of good young talent that has an impact at the MLB level or is used to acquire needs, and have been agressive acquiring some big needs to compliment that talent. The Scherzer move today is reminiscent of Maddux 1993.
 
Why are we so sure Michael Taylor is going to be good? He hit .313 in AA last year with a .421 BABIP and almost 30% K rate. Hit .227 in AAA with a .310 BABIP. That could translate poorly to the MLB.
 
yeezus said:
Why are we so sure Michael Taylor is going to be good? He hit .313 in AA last year with a .421 BABIP and almost 30% K rate. Hit .227 in AAA with a .310 BABIP. That could translate poorly to the MLB.
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Taylor is a great defensive centerfielder. lol, he played 12 games in AAA.

p.s. I forgot we signed Pierzinski. ugh
 
thethe said:
That pitching staff doesn't come close to getting it done IMO. The lineup is not bad but I sill think we were too far away from making it worth while.
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Julio is a stud, Wood I have injury concerns about but when he pitches is a stud. We all basically agree there's a great chance Minor bounces back. The difference between the "amazing" pitching staff people rave about now and the one I have proposed is Shelby Miller vs AJ Burnett

Obviously Shelby Miller long term is much better than Burnett, no real debating that, but short term is he? Miller has basically 2 years of MLB experience, over the last 2 years he's accumulated a 3.41 ERA, 4.12 FIP and 4.11 xFIP, pitching an average of about 178 innings despite making an average of 31 starts so less than 6 innings per start for him. Burnett over the same time frame has a 3.98 ERA 3.51 FIP and 3.46 xFIP pitchign an average of 202 IP at 32 starts per season averaging about 6.1 IP per start.

Ignoring ERA/FIP in their normal stats lets hit the stuff I really like. Shelby Miller had a K rate of 7.48 BB rate of 3.28 HR rate of 1.06 HR/FB rate of 10.0% 94 ERA- 113 FIP- 111xFIP- Burnett had a K rate of 8.87 BB Rate of 3.63 HR rate of 0.69 10.4% HR/FB109 ERA- 96 FIP- 93 xFIP-

So looking at their performance for pros for Miller you have ERA and BB rate. For pros for Burnett you have more innings, a lot more Ks, less flyballs (and less homers), and overall much better peripherals. Now what happens when we look at Siera which is basically FIP with other batted ball factors attached to it? We see Burnett at 3.54 and Miller at 4.10. Why would there be such a massive discrepancy? Could it be that Burnett played for the stinking Phillies who aside from Rollins, Utley and Ruiz have diddly poo defensively.

Imagine leaving that and getting Drew, Simmons, and that OF defense.

OK leaving performance in the past behind let's look at projections. Steamer basically thinks the Burnett FIP beating ERA continues and he has a 4.03 ERA and 3.63 FIP. Steamer does not think that Shelby Miller will continue massively beating his FIP. Has him at 4.14 ERA and 4.21 FIP. ZIPS is much kinder to Miller puttting him at a 3.56 ERA and 3.93 FIP. While not posted, Szymborski posted an early look at Burnett's ZIPS projections and has him at a 3.91 ERA.

So if you take ZIPS into account the difference between the amazing rotation that will surprise people and maybe make it near the playoffs and my proposed one is about 35 one hundreths from a single pitcher? Ignoring that we'd get more innings from Burnett. Basically you're saying the sneaky could be in the mix brave and the ZIPS projected 1.3 zWAR difference doesn't make up the massive difference between Heyward and Aoki (and almost certainly improved defense from Markakis) vs Bossman and according to the Braves.com depth chart projected LF Ziolo Almonte
 
gilesfan said:
Taylor is a great defensive centerfielder. lol, he played 12 games in AAA.

p.s. I forgot we signed Pierzinski. ugh
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His K rate isn't good. I mean he coul still be a productive major leaguer. But as I said with the Kubitza stuff, guys who K a ton in the majors didn't K that much in th eminors. Taylor consistently Ks around 25% of the time. Now if he develops some pop, he could be a nice bottom of the order all defense player. That's a big if of course.
 
The way for the Nats to make this a win for them and a loss for the Braves is to win enough the next two years to warrant spending a ton of cash to keep it going. By rebuilding in the way the Braves have, they arguably made that task much easier for the Nats.
 
zitothebrave said:
His K rate isn't good. I mean he coul still be a productive major leaguer. But as I said with the Kubitza stuff, guys who K a ton in the majors didn't K that much in th eminors. Taylor consistently Ks around 25% of the time. Now if he develops some pop, he could be a nice bottom of the order all defense player. That's a big if of course.
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I would expect him to be a Drew Stubbs like player. Or maybe what some of the people on here thought BJ Upton would be. Good speed, ok on base skills, good power, great defense, strikeouts out way too much.
 
Stubbs with mroe Ks was kind of what I was thinking ofNot a ton more but I think unless he drastically changes, Taylor will average around 32% K rate.
 
Dalyn said:
The way for the Nats to make this a win for them and a loss for the Braves is to win enough the next two years to warrant spending a ton of cash to keep it going. By rebuilding in the way the Braves have, they arguably made that task much easier for the Nats.
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If we suck really bad, maybe they wont take us serious?
 
As much as I'd like to say the Nats are going to suck in a few years, I just don't see it. Not only do they have money, but they are smart with it, make great trades, and do a great job of developing their farm system. This isn't like the Mets of the late 90's-mid 00's who had tons of money and extremely poor management.
 
bravesnumberone said:
Hopefully it helps the Braves realize it's moronic to trade away almost all of their good hitters without any significant replacements.

Washington may wind up regretting it in 4-5 years, but if they've won a couple of titles by then, isn't it mission accomplished?
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Trading Justin/Jason was still the right move.

No chance in hell we get a WC even if they keep him.
 
They still have plenty of money but as stated, a whole lot of FA's coming soon.

Fister, Span, Zimmerman, and Desmond next year.

Stras, Ramos, Storen and Gio has some options in his deal.

And eventually they'll have to pay Harper 250-300 million.

They'll still have a high payroll but it wont be Yankees/Dodgers level by any means.

Im not a big fan of Turner seeing him play alot in the ACC. Escobar is a decent stop-gap.
 
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