The NL East, position by position: center field

Posted by Mike Henderson on Mar. 19, 2010 at 8:40 AM
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This series continues its position comparisons of the National League East by rating the division's teams according to whom they'll be deploying at center field in the 2010 season. The rankings below, from highest to lowest, account for both defense and offense.

• The injury bell continues to toll at Citi Field, where the Mets will find themselves without the services of All-Star Carlos Beltran as he recovers from knee surgery. Beltran's absence will force the New Yorkers to split the duty between Angel Pagan and Gary Matthews Jr., transforming their center field from the best in the NL East to the worst.
• Until Beltran comes back, Philadelphia's center field rates to be the first among rough equals provided there's nothing seriously the matter with the shoulder of voluble speed demon Shane Victorino. Utility outfielder Ben Francisco will be Victorino's understudy.
• Onetime Pittsburgh fan favorite Nate McLouth should be the front-line starter in Atlanta, to be backed up by either Gregor Blanco or once-hailed (now surgically repaired) up-and-comer Jordan Schafer.
• The enthusiasm, speed and personality of Nyjer Morgan will serve Washington well -- or at least entertainingly -- provided his hamstring is healed and he doesn't suffer further injury on the base paths. Utilityman (and possible right fielder pro tempore) Willie Harris will collect some of his 300 or so at-bats on the days he subs for Morgan in center.  That's a role in which Harris should be comfortable, having played over 450 innings at the position in 2009.
• Rounding out the injury roll, Florida's Cameron Maybin has been nursing a sore groin. Fortunately (if not particularly inspiringly) for the Marlins, Maybin and Cody Ross -- who thus far in Spring 2010 has also had a sore groin as well as a thumb injury -- are roughly interchangeable.

     

Natmosphere rumbles in wake of Elijah Dukes' release

Posted by Mike Henderson on Mar. 17, 2010 at 1:24 PM
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As reported earlier here by colleague Jim Kurtzke, the Nationals have made their first startling roster cut of Spring Training, issuing outfielder Elijah Dukes his unconditional release on Wednesday morning.

According to MASN's Ben Goessling, off-the-field issues didn't play a part in the team's decision.  Early Twitter returns indicate that the Natmosphere isn't buying that assertion, which has since been recast as one involving tradability and team chemistry.

The Nationals' current alternatives to replace Dukes in right include -- in no particular order of desirability -- Roger Bernadina, Willie Harris, Justin Maxwell, Nyjer Morgan, Mike Morse, Josh Willingham, or possibly (per MLB.com's Bill Ladson) 36-year-old free agent Jermaine Dye.

While the team admits that Dukes remains a talent of high promise -- if somewhat challenged by breaking pitches -- Nats general manager Mike Rizzo has made no bones about the degree to which he feels individual players' makeup contributes to the success of the team as a whole.  Whether or not, or for whatever reasons, Rizzo itched to get rid of Dukes, scratching Dukes from the roster probably will not cause Rizzo to lose much sleep -- at least for the moment.

Less surprisingly, Goessling reports that relief pitcher Logan Kensing, who last week was sent to the Nats' minor-league camp, was also handed his release Wednesday morning in Viera.

     

Dukes Released

Posted by Jim Kurtzke on Mar. 17, 2010 at 10:24 AM
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It's the big news of the day:  media outlets -- here and here -- are reporting that the Nats have released Elijah Dukes.  Stunning news, to be sure.  Such a development certainly shakes up the starting line-up, and opens up right field for the taking.  We'll track developments throughout the day. 

Update: During Spring Training, Dukes has hit just .150/.261/.250.  Other outfielders have performed dramatically better.  Willie Harris at .333/.462/.714, Kevin Mench at .333/.385/.917, and Roger Bernadina at .298/.409/.278.  Justin Maxwell, however, has disappointed (.115/.294/.269).  

Who is your favorite to take over in right?

     

Nats' latest cuts underscore shift in 'pen philosophy

Posted by Mike Henderson on Mar. 16, 2010 at 7:00 PM
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On Monday the Washington Nationals announced the third round of cuts to their 2010 major-league roster:

• Starting pitcher Collin Balester was optioned to triple-A Syracuse. The formidably mustached 24-year-old right-hander from California had made a pair of appearances this spring -- a hopeful one on March 4 and a ghastly one four days later -- for a total of 4 1/3 innings, striking out three batters, walking four and giving up seven hits and four earned runs.
• The team also optioned left-handed Dominican reliever Atahualpa Severino, 25, to Syracuse. In two Spring 2010 outings, Severino walked a pair, struck out none and gave up two hits and one earned run over two innings.
• Left-hander Aaron Thompson was optioned to double-A Harrisburg, where he had made six 2009 starts after being acquired by the Nats in the trade that sent Nick Johnson to Florida. The 23-year-old from New Mexico has posted impressive numbers since his arrival in the system: he accrued a 3.31 ERA for the double-A Senators last season, while in two 2010 Spring Training appearances he struck out two batters, issued one base on balls and one hit and allowed no runs over four innings.
• Right-hander Ryan Mattheus, 26, was also optioned to Harrisburg, where he will log few if any innings as he continues to rehabilitate from the Tommy John surgery he underwent at midseason 2009.
• Juan Jaime, 22, was optioned to high-single-A Potomac, where the Dominican right-hander will hope to confound batters as he did at short-season Vermont and low-A Hagerstown last season. In twelve starts and two relief appearances in 2009, Jaime struck out 76, walked just 31 and allowed 37 hits and 13 earned runs over 55 2/3 innings.
• Reliever Ron Villone was released by the team. In three Spring 2010 appearances, the 40-year-old left-handed journeyman struck out one batter, walked six and gave up two hits and three earned runs over a total of an inning and two-thirds.

All told, it was a day of few surprises (again) but also two rays of hope.

First, there's nothing to indicate that Thompson shouldn't be in the mix to start in 2011 at Nationals Park, or that Jaime shouldn't be in 2012. That's good news to a system that hopes to solidify the rotation in 2011 and beyond behind a hopefully-dominant starting tandem of Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann.  (And since the Nats' 2010 staff is still unsettled, the possibility that either Thompson or Jaime might even get a shot at the bigs in 2010 can't be written off.)

Second, the cult of the left-handed specialist is getting short shrift on South Capitol Street. Having shed Villone and Eddie Guardado and outrighted Doug Slaten to Syracuse, the team appears to be content with the chances of right-handers like Tyler Clippard to record outs against left-handed batters (and portsiders like Sean Burnett to dispatch righties).

Barring extreme platoon splits like Ryan Howard's, this would seem to be an approach worth trying, and it'll be interesting at season's end -- provided long-suffering fans' patience can hold out that long -- to try to judge how effectively the Nats have been able to swing the pendulum back from bullpen micro-specialization.

     

The NL East, position by position: left field

Posted by Mike Henderson on Mar. 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM
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If there'll be anything striking about the National League East's left fielders in 2010, it'll be a remarkable degree of parity and few areas of abject weakness.  (At least defensively, especially since Adam Dunn has decided to concentrate on becoming a first baseman.)

The rankings below, from highest to lowest, account for both defense and offense.

• Chris Coghlan has impressed the Marlins enough to convince that penurious outfit to part with a salary some $50,000 over the league minimum.  He's certainly worth it, as he's apt to outperform his predecessor, current Washington National Josh Willingham, at the position.  Brett Carroll will be Coghlan's backup.
• Not that Washington will suffer.  Although Willingham's better known for his offense, you could do far worse than to deploy him in left field every day.  (Or almost every day, with supersub Willie Harris as the number-two guy in left.)
• The man Harris spelled in Atlanta, Matt Diaz, will most likely be a backup himself this year for former Pinstripe Melky Cabrera.
• Philadelphia fans will be hoping for another great year from Raul Ibanez instead of the more likely regression to the mean.  Ben Francisco, whom the Phillies picked up in the deal with Cleveland that also brought them two-plus months of Cliff Lee, will be the team's fourth outfielder and bench bat.
• Jason Bay was a smart and perhaps somewhat lucky pickup for the Mets, whose fascination with Bay's venerable backup Gary Matthews Jr. cannot be characterized so easily or hopefully.  (That fascination may linger for a while; Matthews is having a good Spring Training so far.)

     

This Day in D.C. Baseball History

Posted by Mark Hornbaker on Mar. 15, 2010 at 10:39 PM
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March 15, 1945

College Park, MD - Bert Shepard, a one legged veteran of World War II, tries out as a pitcher for the Washington Senators. The Senators owner Clark Griffith was so impressed with Shepard that he hired him as the team’s pitching coach. During the 1945 spring training Shepard with his artificial leg got to pitch in three games. For the rest training camp his main job was to pitch batting practice.

Bert Shepard was a World War II fighter pilot who lost his right leg on May 21, 1944 when his plane was shot down while he was flying a mission over Germany. This heroic man survived his plane crash and a gunshot wound to his chin. Afterward Shepard was taken to a German hospital where they amputated most of his right leg. During the next few months he was in POW camp in Germany.

After the war in February 1945 Shepard was sent to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington D.C. where he was fitted for an artificial leg. As amazing as it is one month later this heroic American was trying out for a major league baseball team.

What is more amazing was that on August 4, 1945 Senators’ manager Ossie Bluege called on Bert Shepard to come in and pitch a few innings of a game that the Senators were trailing by quite a few runs. The left hander ended up pitching five and a third innings and only gave up one run and three base hits. That will be the first and last game for war hero as the Senators released him on September 30, 1945.

     

MLB Network's "30 Clubs in 30 Days" series stops in Viera

Posted by Ian Koski on Mar. 15, 2010 at 4:04 PM
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The Nationals will be the focus of Tuesday night's installment of "30 Clubs in 30 Days" on MLB Network.

According to the network, the hour-long piece features interviews with Jim Riggleman, Stephen Strasburg, Josh Willingham and Jason Marquis. Curiously omitted was the Nationals' lone All-Star last season, Ryan Zimmerman, or anyone affiliated with the club in the 2008 season.

The episode will air Tuesday night at 9 pm on MLB Network.

     

Three Mondays to go: A primer on arbitration, options and service time

Posted by Mike Henderson on Mar. 15, 2010 at 7:45 AM
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By now you have probably started to come to terms with the following ideas:

• Starting pitcher Stephen Strasburg and reliever Drew Storen were wizard acquisitions by the Washington Nationals in the June 2009 draft.
• Fans are apt to see both pitchers at Nationals Park on some date in 2010.
• That date will not be Opening Day.

You may be wondering why these highly promising college-trained arms shouldn't be getting right to work on South Capital Street come April 5, especially since both pitched professionally in 2009 after they were signed and have looked good in 2010 Spring Training thus far.

The cold truth is that any major-league ballclub would like to control its players' contractual statuses as long as possible, however fair or unfair it might be to the players or however sound or unsound it might be as a business practice.  But maintaining such control involves some tiresome concepts -- options, service time, arbitration and the 40-man roster -- that can be confusing for the fan to try to keep track of.  Part of the confusion stems from the fact that some of the applicable provisions appear in the Major League Rules (the business rules, not the playing rules) and some in the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Anyhow, let's take a few moments to look at each of the relevant concepts so we can gauge their effect on Strasburg and Storen.

The 40-Man (MLB) Roster

With regard to career mobility, this is the first major pinnacle a professional baseball player wants to reach. Until a player signs a major-league contract, he can find himself toiling in the minors for up to six years with no say on how much he gets paid or by whom.[1]  This matters a lot, since players at the lowest levels of the minors have to get by on a couple thousand dollars a month or less, and for only half a year at that.  (It does not, however, matter to Strasburg, who -- unlike Storen -- signed a major-league contract as a condition of agreeing to join the Nationals organization.)

When a player gets onto the 40-man major-league roster, life gets a little better in several ways. One is that he'll either get paid at the major-league level -- currently a minimum of $400,000 per season, prorated to the number of days he plays -- or at a similarly prorated minor-league rate of no less than $32,500 per season.[2]  (Strasburg's contract calls for $2 million in 2010 and a $500,000 raise in each of the following two seasons.)

Another is that there's a limit to the number of years in which the player's club can send him back to the minors, either by assigning his contract outright to a farm club -- which they cannot do more than once during a player's career without the player's consent[3] -- or via a process called optional assignment.

Options

Once a player's on the 40-man roster, his club, in addition to that one-time prerogative to assign the player outright to the minors, can either keep him on the 25-man major league roster or optionally assign him to a team in their minor-league system.  The "option" actually refers to the year in which the assignment is made:  once a player has been "optioned" during a season, he can be shifted between the major-league and minor-league club any number of times during the season, but only one option is charged.  (No option is charged if the player spends less than a total of 20 days on optional assignment to the minors during a season.[4])

Optional assignment ordinarily can take place in up to three seasons with no right of recourse by the player.  A fourth optional assignment year is available, however, if the player has less than five years' professional experience.

After the final (either third or fourth) option year, unless the club's one-time right to assign the player's contract outright -- which, by the way, expires after the player has accrued three years of major-league service[5] -- remains to be exercised, then he can't be assigned to the minors without clearing waivers.[6]  (Nationals Farm Authority has even more on options, including a list of all current Nationals' option statuses.)

Service Time

What's a "year of service"?  It depends on whether we're talking about the player's eligibility for salary arbitration, or about the ability of a club to option a player to the minors.

For the purpose of determining when a player is eligible for salary arbitration, every day he is under contract from Opening Day to the end of the regular season counts toward his service time. In the major leagues, 172 days of service equals one year of service.[7]

This is different from the number of years of professional experience used to determine option status:  in that context, any season in which the player occupies an active roster slot for at least 90 days at any professional level counts as a year of professional experience.[8]

Salary Arbitration and the "Super Two" Rule

Once a player has three years of major-league service under his belt, he gains a say in how much he'll be paid: either he and his club will come to some agreement, or each will file a salary figure to an arbitration panel that will choose one figure or the other.[9]

You can imagine that this is why clubs might prefer not to give their top prospects an Opening Day debut.  If they could manage to have the player on the roster for only 171 days, that'd be one day less than a full year of service.

Such potential gaming of the system is foreseen by the CBA, which includes the following provision (aka the "Super Two" rule):

. . . [A] Player with at least two but less than three years of Major League service shall be eligible for salary arbitration if: (a) he has accumulated at least 86 days of service during the immediately preceding season; and (b) he ranks in the top seventeen percent (17%) (rounded to the nearest whole number) in total service in the class of Players who have at least two but less than three years of Major League service, however accumulated . . .[10]

Implications for 2010

So how does this all relate to Strasburg and Storen? The bottom line is that the Nats have three alternatives with respect to each player, listed below in increasing order of likelihood as estimated by this columnist.

• They can bring him up on Opening Day 2010 and resign themselves to having the arbitration clock start at the end of the 2012 season.
• They can wait till (approximately) after the All-Star break and be assured of not having to go to arbitration until the close of the 2013 season.  (But if they do this with Strasburg, they'll have to start burning his options right away, since he already has a major-league contract whose outright assignment may not be a realistic possibility.)
• They can bring him up before the All-Star break, but at a time when they calculate that he won't fall into that top 17%.

What's your guess as to when we'll see Strasburg and Storen called up to the big club?

Sources

Note: This columnist has thus far been unable to locate an official copy of the Major League Rules either online or in hardcopy, but helpful citations and explanations are provided by Mike Andrews at soxprospects.com. The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) is available as a PDF from the MLB Players Association.

Also, nothing in this article should be construed either as legal advice or as the final word. Comments pointing out errors and omissions will be gratefully received.

[1] Major League Rule 55.

[2] CBA Article VI(B).

[3] CBA Article XX(D).

[4] CBA Article XIX(E).

[5] Major League Rule 11 (options); Rule 10 (waivers).

[6] CBA Article XX(D)(1).

[7] CBA Article XXI(A)(1).

[8] Major League Rule 11.

[9] CBA Article VI(F)(5).

[10] CBA Article VI(F)(1).

     

Are These Guys on the Same Page?

Posted by Jim Kurtzke on Mar. 14, 2010 at 1:45 PM
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When Jim Riggleman was named interim manager last summer, Mike Rizzo went out of his way to say that Rigs was a Rizzo guy.  A real pro, all business and no drama.  Unlike a certain ex-GM, one could deduce.  That message became more clear in the off season when Rigs got the permanent job.  For better or worse, the two are now bonded at the hip.  

So how do you explain the apparent disagreement over how to best use Ian Desmond?  During Spring Training, Rigs has placed Desmond in the outfield as well as shortstop, and suggested that Desmond could come north as a super-utlity player.  Well, earlier today, Rizzo shot down that notion, stating that Desmond will be an everyday shortstop; we just don't know whether that will be with the major league or AAA club.

For his part, Desmond is forcing the issue.  During Spring Training, he has picked up the torrid hitting pace (.478/.542/.857) he set after being called up last September.  For a team with so few position player prospects that are ready for the major leagues, Desmond sticks out even more.  And the player he would push out of the line-up, Cristian Guzman, is generally thought to be in his final year as a Nat and still rehabbing an injured shoulder. 

What to do?  Rigs is looking at taking the best players north, and Desmond certainly fits that description.  Moreover, Elijah Dukes (.200/.250/.333) has not exactly dominated during Spring Training, and one wonders whether Desmond might be an interim solution in right field until he takes over at short later on.  Meanwhile, Rizzo is trying to produce the best roster, build depth at key positions, and manage a budget responsibly.  Inserting Desmond as the everyday shortstop complicates the latter two points.  FJB makes a good argument that depth is best achieved by leaving Guzman at short.  And even though Guzman has just one year left on his contract, the Nats would have to swallow hard to pay $8 million for Guzzy to go away.  It might be even more difficult to keep an unhappy player.  

The Desmond situation is one of the few compelling story lines before the season starts in a few weeks.  In the end, Rigs and Rizzo will get on the same page.  If nothing else, both are organizational men.  But how they resolve it will tell us a lot about how much risk the team is willing to take.  Now I'm no GM, but for a team with league-worst records in 2008 and 2009, given a choice between continuity and change, continuity might be the risky move here.   

     

The NL East, position by position: shortstop

Posted by Mike Henderson on Mar. 13, 2010 at 8:50 AM
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This series continues its position comparisons of the NL East by rating the division's teams according to whom they'll be deploying at shortstop in the 2010 season.  The rankings below, from highest to lowest, account for both defense and offense.

• Florida manager Fredi Gonzalez' job is made a little easier by the comforting presence of All-Star Hanley Ramirez.  Should Ramirez need an occasional breather, the Marlins will have to settle for onetime National Emilio Bonifacio.
• The second-best of the NL East's regular shortstops, Yunel Escobar, and best of the division's backups at short, Omar Infante, will occupy the position in Atlanta.
• Uncertainty clouds the shortstop situation in Flushing.  If Jose Reyes' thyroid is brought under control by Opening Day (which sounds improbable), and he doesn't have any other off-field medical distractions, New York's middle infield shouldn't be much worse than average.  Otherwise an unedifying shortstop platoon of (pick two) Ruben Tejada, Alex Cora and/or Anderson Hernandez alongside equally unimpressive Luis Castillo at second will again be a bane to Mets pitchers and a boon to rival hitters.
• Speaking of All-Stars, why -- assuming the Mets don't bottom out -- should the Phillies be ranked no higher than fourth?  Don't blame Jimmy Rollins; but backup Juan Castro, whom the team is trying to convince itself that they acquired for his fielding prowess, will no more impress with his glove than with his weak bat on Rollins' days off.
• Reyes' medical condition notwithstanding, it's Washington whose middle infield rates to be the most porous in the division (and possibly in MLB).  While some of Ian Desmond's more extreme boosters would just as soon see Cristian Guzman take a hike, it wouldn't help; the Nationals would be even more perilously shallow at short without Guzman than with him.  Which of the two gets the Opening Day job will depend largely on the strength of Guzman's shoulder.