Nationals manager Dusty Baker said today that righty Blake Treinen will take the team’s closer role to open the season, as Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post was among those to report on Twitter. He won a camp battle with young righty Koda Glover, who’ll instead slide into a setup role for the time being.
There was quite a bit of intrigue all winter long surrounding the ninth inning for the Nats. The team pushed to re-sign Mark Melancon and made a run at Kenley Jansen in free agency, but came up just short on both players. That led to speculation that the organization might pursue a trade for a veteran such as David Robertson, but nothing ended up coming to fruition.
Treinen, 28, was dominant this spring and impressed last year with a 2.28 ERA over 67 innings. He did continue to exhibit his long-standing control problems in 2016, with 4.2 BB/9, and recorded only an 8.5 K/9 strikeout rate that falls in range of league average. But Treinen is also among the game’s best groundball pitchers; aided by a power sinker that sits in the 95 to 96 mph range, he induced worm burners on 65.9% of the balls put in play against him.
Whether that will translate into success in the ninth remains to be seen, but the opportunity to rack up saves for an anticipated contender portends good things for Treinen’s future earning capacity. He is on track to qualify for arbitration for the first time next winter.
The Nats do have other internal options if Treinen falters, including Glover, Shawn Kelley, and perhaps even pitchers such as Sammy Solis and Joe Blanton. (Though Kelley has seemed a natural fit for the role, the team has long insisted it prefers to handle him differently given his injury history; Baker affirmed that again today, as Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com tweets.) But it wouldn’t be all that surprising if D.C. ends up looking into the trade market again this summer after dealing for Melancon and Jonathan Papelbon at successive deadlines.
Whoa
Great choice
Kelley?
I don’t think Dusty Baker has ever made one decision that I liked. Kelley is the superior pitcher, with more experience.
Not defending Dusty here. But do you really think it was his decision?
I doubt. Possibly a joint decision but not his alone
Right. Difficult to believe the Nats, or any team, would hand Dusty a >$100M 25 man roster and tell him to use them as he sees fit. Doubt the Yankees do that with Girardi or the Tribe with Francona. Maybe a Showalter or LaRussa type but not a tour leader like Dusty.
Yea…. it’s impossible to believe that a team would a guy with 1700 wins be in total control of roster moves.
Justanotherfan: if Dusty’s NEVER made a decision that you like, I’m pretty sure that says more about you than anything
Treinen is a monster with one of the best pitches in baseball lol
I think a big part of not selecting Kelley is his injury history. Naming him closer might motivate the Nats to use him too much, or too many successive days. Not that that can’t be managed, they just probably see it as easier to pitch him when they are comfortable that he’s rested and ready rather than feeling the pressure and questioning of why they didn’t use their closer in a save situation
Valid point with Shawn Kelley, but closers don’t typically amass the most appearances in the bullpen each year. That usually falls on the setup relievers.
its not really about # as much as not wanting to be in the position to use him back to back or even back to back to back.
What injury history? 4 straight seasons of 50 plus appearances. Closers rarely have the heaviest workload out of the pen. Usually set up men have more IP.
Oh I don’t know, maybe the two prior Tommy John surgeries and the fact that he has only pitched on back to back days 35 times in those 4 years.
Well played sir
Dusty being Dusty
Ha worm burners, I like your style. Part of me thinks the Nat’s closer position is going to be a revolving door throughout the season. Maybe Treinen has what it takes, idk.
I am split. I think if you are looking on paper then Treinen is the best guy by far. However, I also think he is so valuable when there is a 7 or 8th inning jam and you need that ground ball. In the end, I think Koda Glover will be a closer at some point but he is not there yet, However, I still feel more confident with Treinen than I would have with Robertson.
First of all, it’s not Dustys call. Second for the people clamoring Kelley, he’s had TJ twice and his innings need to be monitored. He doesn’t have the durability to bring it from the 9th 2-3 days in a row.
What are you talking about? Kelley pitched on successive days 71 times over the past 4 seasons. That is in more than 2/3 of his appearances. He obviously hs the durability to go 2 days in a row. Almost no pitchers go 3 days in a row anymore including top closers and setup men.
Where are you getting 71 times from? He has done it 35 times. In 4 years. I just went through his game logs on baseball reference. So 70 games out of 236. That is roughly 30% of his appearances. Not 2/3.
Mathematically you can’t pitch 2/3 of your games as back to back unless all appearances were back to back to back.
the sound you hear is fantasy baseball players briskly walking to drop glover and Kelley for Blake. lol
This is going to be awesome.
For the Mets?
Treinen is good so it’s awesome for the Nats
Watch your fingers. Window closing. . Thanks. Where were we? Oh yes. The Nats are going to try to get by the Cubs and then beat Cleveland or Boston without a closer? Good grief. Get Robertson already.
but Robertson isn’t that good…. is he really better than what they have? more experienced maybe but not that effective
ah yes, because david robertson would surely be the difference between the nats getting by the cubs, and cle/bos (why you are skipping LA I’m not sure).
Treinen, Kelley and glover will all probably have better seasons than Robertson
As a big Nats fan, this is the right call (assuming you have to anoint one guy as closer in the first place). Glover is raw and Kelley gives up the occasional long ball – Treinen is the best reliever on the team.
i hope he/glover/kelley all perform poorly, but that’s purely because i’m a white sox fan.
interesting move, thought glover would have gotten the nod
Ha! It’s nice to know there’s an expensive option if our cheap ones don’t work out 🙂
the sox are willing to eat money in deals to get the right guys, so for the Nats or anyone else for that matter, he wouldn’t be expensive in terms of dollars
i dont understand. they could have gone with papps
I wouldn’t worry too much about the “league average” K rate. As a setup guy that came in with runners on, and a great ability to induce grounders, it was the obvious thing to try to induce grounders. He’s got ridiculously nasty stuff that’s plenty capable of swing and miss. So that rate should increase now that he’ll get to start the 9th with no runners.
Now, to bring down that walk rate…
Blake is probably the best choice at this point. However the fact that he doesn’t strike many people out is worrisome. BABIP will be interesting.
Heavy B (Joe Blanton) will replace him by June.
Part of the reason that Dusty Baker teams rarely overcome his bad managing is that he does not reward players that got the job done in the past and puts too much emphasis on what they do in camp or he goes by his gut. Kelley did a fantastic job for them and should have been rewarded with the closers spot until one of those other two showed in regular season play that they deserve it. Instead he is demoted to the #3 spot in the pen.
Interesting article on Fangraphs last year about how to evaluate a manager. fangraphs.com/blogs/how-should-we-evaluate-a-manager/
Baker ranked dead last in handling the bullpen in 2016. No surprise there. Most fans could tell you that without the stats.
Robertson has very good stuff. One of the highest K/9 in the history of MLB
That number has trended downward 3 years running and his walks have gone up over those 3 years.
Treinen’s walk rate is inflated by an abnormally high number of intentional walks. He has pitched 134 innings in the last 2 years. He has walked 63 batters. Of those walks 12 (6 each year) are of the intentional variety. That skews his numbers dramatically. If you remove those from his BB total that leaves him around 3.43 BB/9 instead of 4.2 BB/9.
As a Met fan this makes me happy 🙂 Now I know who Cespedes will be teeing off against.
You mean like last year–when Cespedes teed off vs. Treinen for a grand total of 0-5 with 1K? Granted, that’s a small sample size and doesn’t prove anything going forward. But it certainly doesn’t support your ‘happy knowledge.’
You really should do the homework before shooting your mouth off.
Wow, people like you make it sound like being a fan of something is a bad thing.
Being a fan of something is fine. Allowing your fandom to warp your perception of reality isn’t. The comment I replied to was misinformed, most likely due to laziness on the part of the commenter. I pointed out that the premise of his comment was not only without any factual basis but contrary to the admittedly limited facts that are known. You have a problem with that? Too bad. Go mindlessly root for your team at some Yahoo forum.
Also, I’d hope the level of discussion in this forum is above the typical “My team is great and your team sucks” kind of thing that one can find at many other sites. Are we here to display our fandom or discuss news and analysis related to MLB?
Looks Like I may not have been right about specifically about Cespedes vs Treinen. However a quick look shows that Curtis Granderson is 3 for 5 and Wilmer Flores is 4 for 6. Regardless it seems like The Mets have had their way with the National’s closers, whether it be, TJ Rivera off of Mark Melancon, or Kirk Nieuwenhuis off of Jonathan Pabelbon or Yoenis Cespdes ruining the career of your former closer Drew Storen.
Regardless of Treinen and his stats vs Cespedes, I’m just happy they don’t have to face Chapman, or Miller or an elite closer.
Now that is an intelligent response. Not being sarcastic. We could have avoided some drama if you’d gone with something like this to begin with.
On topic, it is worth noting that pretty much every closer was unknown/unproven at some point. For example, your Mets closer was supposed to be Jenrry Meijia until his suspension(s). Who knew Familia would be as good as he has been in that role. By the same logic, who knows whether Treinen will succeed as a closer. Who even knows if he’ll still be in that role in May, June or later. I still expect it will be Glover’s job sooner or later, but that’s why they play the games. Cheers!