- Jayson Werth told reporters (including Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post) that he and the Nationals had yet to discuss continuing their relationship beyond this season, though “there’s always a possibility.” The 38-year-old Werth, perhaps half-jokingly, said he was hoping to play for five more seasons, though such a scenario would be easier playing for an American League team that could offer him DH at-bats. Werth has hit .267/.358/.437 with 99 homers over 3138 plate appearances in his six years in Washington, a tenure marked by several injuries but also some outstanding play when healthy, particularly excellent seasons in 2013-14. Rather than worry about his next contract, Werth is only focused on getting the Nats deep into the postseason. “I feel like I’ve got a lot to prove, and I still feel like I’ve got a lot in the tank,” he said.
- Werth’s decision to leave the Phillies for a seven-year, $126MM free agent deal from the Nationals after the 2010 season generated a lot of controversy at the time, directed at both the Nats for seemingly overpaying and at Werth for leaving a contender to join a perennial also-ran. In hindsight, however, Bob Brookover of the Philadelphia Inquirer observes that Werth made the right choice in leaving the Phils just before their decline began, and just before the Nationals grew into an NL East power. “My focus was on winning, but at the time that’s not really what it looked like. Everybody was like, ’The Nats were crazy, Werth is money hungry’ and whatever else was said,” Werth said. “Honestly, I was in a position to pick and choose what I wanted to do. What I thought was cool about the Nats was that it was a total underdog situation, but they had good owners…and a core group of players with a high ceiling. It was a situation where I thought we could build something.”
Nationals Rumors
Dusty Baker "Confident" Nationals Will Extend Him
- As of early January, the Nationals were prepared to begin extension talks with contract-year manager Dusty Baker. While it’s unclear if discussions have since begun, Baker indicated Sunday that he expects to hammer out an agreement with the club in the near future. “I’m very confident that we’ll get things worked out,” Baker told Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post (Twitter link). “You’d like to do it sooner rather than later because I don’t want to be a distraction.” In 2016, Baker’s first season at the helm in D.C., the Nats improved from 83-79 to 95-67 en route to an NL East title, though they weren’t able to get past the Dodgers in the NLDS.
Latest On Max Scherzer
- After telling reporters yesterday that he was still experiencing symptoms from his broken right ring finger, Nationals righty Max Scherzer took part in a seemingly productive long toss session today, as Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post was among those to tweet. While it still seems likely that he’ll be delayed, and may not quite be ready to take the ball on Opening Day, it’s encouraging that Scherzer is not being held back entirely from throwing. The reigning National League Cy Young winner had been expected to participate in the World Baseball Classic, but those plans were already iced when the news emerged that he had been diagnosed with the fractured digit.
Nationals Sign Adam Lind
FEBRUARY 16: The mutual option is valued at $5MM, SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo tweets. Lind can also earn up to $1.125M in incentives, Jon Heyman of Fan Rag adds on Twitter. That includes $150K if he plays in 80 games, $200K each upon reaching 90 and 100 games; $250K for hitting 110 and then 120 appearances; and another $200K if he logs his 130th contest.
FEBRUARY 13: The Nationals have struck a one-year deal with first baseman Adam Lind that includes a mutual option for a second season, the team announced on Wednesday, confirming previous reports.
Lind, a client of ISE Baseball, will reportedly be guaranteed $1.5MM. That comes in the form of a $1MM salary for the 2017 season and a $500K buyout on the 2018 option.
Entering the winter, Washington faced questions regarding the composition of its bench, and the quality of the reserve unit has remained in question as the offseason draws to a close. Lind himself is hardly a sure thing after a down season, though he surely wouldn’t otherwise have been available at such an affordable rate. As Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post notes (on Twitter), the organization’s trio of bench additions — Lind, Stephen Drew, and Chris Heisey (the latter two re-signed) — will cost just a shade more than what would have been owed to the traded-away Danny Espinosa, who no longer had a path to regular at-bats in D.C.
Lind still showed plenty of pop last year with the Mariners, driving twenty home runs in 430 plate appearances and posting a .192 isolated slugging mark. But the 33-year-old slashed just .239/.286/.431 as he swung more often and made less contact than he had in recent years. Lind’s 6.0% walk rate was his lowest since 2011, and his 20.7% strikeout mark was his worst since 2010. There was likely some misfortune in his .259 batting average on balls in play, though Lind also made more soft contact (19.7%) than ever before.
Clearly, the Nats will be hoping for a bounceback, though the club isn’t staking much on the possibility. If things break right, Lind could well represent a bargain. Over the three preceding campaigns, he slashed a robust .291/.364/.478 while contributing 49 long balls over 1,411 plate appearances. Even at his best, there are limitations. Lind is dreadful historically against left-handed pitching, though he has tuned up opposing righties with a lifetime .287/.347/.502 batting line.
That platoon split likely won’t trouble the Nationals, who will surely plan to utilize Lind as a late-inning bench bat and complement to right-handed-hitting first baseman Ryan Zimmerman. He’ll also function as an emergency plan if Zimmerman’s frequent injury issues arise. It seems that Lind will more or less step into the role that Clint Robinson has occupied over the past two seasons. Robinson struggled quite a bit in 2017, slashing just .235/.305/.332 in part-time play, and seems likely to lose his roster spot at some point (if not when this signing is announced) as he’s out of options.
While Washington likely would have preferred to sign a lefty bat that was also a viable option in the outfield, it seems the organization wasn’t quite willing to spend what was needed to do so. The club reportedly checked in on Brandon Moss before he landed with the Royals, though he signed for $12MM over two years. Lind does have some experience on the grass, but it’s been six full seasons since he roamed left field with the Blue Jays, and he never graded out as a quality defender there. Now 33 years of age, Lind seems like a stretch to spell the right-handed-hitting Jayson Werth in left for any significant amount of time, though he could theoretically draw an occasional start in place of Werth against right-handed pitching or in the event of an injury.
The Nats figure to have alternative alignments available when they elect to rest Zimmerman and/or Werth. Michael Taylor and Brian Goodwin will both compete for reserve outfield roles, and either could bump Adam Eaton to left field on occasion. Likewise, the righty hitting Heisey could give Werth some off days. But if the Nats really want to load up on power, left-handed bats, they’ll also at least have the option of fielding Lind in the corner, playing Drew at second, and bumping Daniel Murphy to first in place of Zimmerman.
Jim Bowden of ESPN and MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM first reported a deal was close (via Twitter). FanRag’s Jon Heyman tweeted that a deal was in place, pending a physical. FOX’s Ken Rosenthal tweeted the years, while Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post reported the money and option-year detail (Twitter links).
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Baker: No Decision On Nationals' Closer Yet
Nationals manager Dusty Baker doesn’t yet know who his closer will be in 2017, but he won’t be using a committee approach to the ninth inning, writes Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post. The second-year Nats skipper flatly said that he doesn’t like the committee approach, “because when the phone rings I want guys to know, mentally, when they might be in the game.” Baker, though, expressed concerns over various internal candidates. Shawn Kelley has had two Tommy John surgeries under his belt, and Baker suggested that he was wary of damaging hard-throwing Blake Treinen’s confidence. “I’ve seen guys’ confidence get destroyed, too, and I’m going to call upon my past and what I’ve seen,” said the manager. More vaguely, he suggested that young righty Koda Glover, who is far less experienced than Treinen, could be “too bold” for the role, though he didn’t elaborate on. Baker is also intrigued by non-roster invite Joe Nathan, whom he managed 15 years ago with the Giants, though the Nationals need to see what they have in camp with the former All-Star, who has two TJ operations in his past as well (one quite recent).
- Kelley is more than up for the challenge of closing games for the Nationals, the reliever tells Yahoo’s Tim Brown, though he’s willing to pitch in any role he’s asked. ““If we came into spring training and they said there’s this kid from A-ball who throws 115 miles an hour, he’s gonna be the closer, I’ll embrace him,” Kelley tells Brown. “If Dusty needs me, then I’ll be the guy right there to answer for it.” Kelley is very arguably the best in-house option for the Nats, having posted a 2.55 ERA with a 143-to-26 K/BB ratio (which includes six intentional walks) in 109 1/3 innings across the past two seasons. But, Kelley does have the previously mentioned pair of Tommy John surgeries in his rear-view mirror, and he only pitched on three consecutive days once in 2016.
Rays Have Made Offer To Matt Wieters
The Rays’ interest in free-agent catcher Matt Wieters is serious enough that they’ve made a formal offer, reports Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. However, the team’s offer is “likely for one year” and would be less lucrative than whatever figure Wieters and agent Scott Boras are still hoping to find in free agency. FanRag’s Jon Heyman first tweeted word of Tampa Bay’s offer to Wieters, though he cautioned that they may not be the front-runner to land his services.
Even a $10MM guarantee would be a fairly surprising sum for the Rays to offer, Topkin opines, though he notes that perhaps “creativity and incentives” could push the potential value of an offer beyond that threshold. Tampa Bay’s hope is that the switch-hitting Wieters will be enticed by the opportunity to work with a superior pitching staff and receive regular at-bats between catcher and, later in the year (when Wilson Ramos is healthy enough to take some of the time at catcher), designated hitter.
The question Wieters and Boras must now weigh is how long they’re willing to wait out the spring market. An injury to a contending club’s starting catcher would immediately create a new potential landing spot and could certainly lead to a larger offer (in terms of total dollars and/or years), but there’s certainly no guarantee of any such fit arising. Wieters’ camp could also look to drum up a bidding war between teams that are willing to sign him for one year; ESPN’s Jayson Stark tweeted yesterday that the Nationals still have interest in Wieters but wouldn’t be likely to offer anything more than a one-year pact. It’s not clear whether Boras and Wieters have dropped their asking price to the one-year range just yet, though I’d imagine that if they did, there’d be more clubs beyond the Rays and Nationals that were willing to try to make something work.
As it stands, the Rays will enter the season with Curt Casali and Luke Maile as their lead catchers on the 40-man roster, with veterans Michael McKenry and Jesus Sucre in camp as non-roster invitees. Ramos is reportedly eyeing a May return to the team, Topkin tweeted yesterday, but that’s an ambitious goal for a catcher who suffered his second career ACL tear late last September.
The 30-year-old Wieters is coming off a season in which he batted .243/.302/.409 with 17 home runs in 464 plate appearances. His at-bats were limited early on as he ramped back up to full durability after missing much of the 2014-15 seasons due to Tommy John surgery, but Wieters was catching a significant workload by September of last season. He routinely draws poor framing marks, however, and his market has seemingly been hampered by that fact this winter as teams place a continually growing emphasis on that ability when evaluating backstops.
Minor MLB Transactions: 2/10/17
Here are the latest minor moves from around the league:
- The Rangers have added backstop Brett Hayes on a minor-league deal, as Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News recently tweeted. Soon to turn 33, Hayes has appeared in seven MLB campaigns, though he has accumulated just 464 big league plate appearances in that span. He compiled a .205/.250/.359 lifetime batting line in the bigs. Last year, Hayes failed to crack the game’s highest level but spent time at Triple-A in the Diamondbacks and White Sox organizations.
- Also joining the Rangers on a non-roster arrangement is righty Anthony Bass, according to SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo (Twitter link). Bass, 29, spent last year pitching in Japan, where he put up 3.65 ERA with 6.2 K/9 and 4.1 BB/9 over 103 2/3 innings split between the rotation and bullpen. He had appeared in each of the five prior MLB seasons — most recently with Texas — pitching to a 4.40 ERA with 6.0 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9 across 278 1/3 frames.
- Lefty Luis Perez is heading to the Indians on a minors pact, the club announced. Like Bass, the 32-year-old Perez will return from a NPB stint. He struggled with his control in a brief run with the Yakult Swallows and hasn’t seen the big leagues since 2013. In his three seasons with the Blue Jays, Perez compiled a 4.50 ERA with 8.0 K/9 and 3.6 BB/9 over 112 frames.
- Outfielder Joey Butler is joining the Nationals on a minor-league deal, Matt Eddy of Baseball America tweets. Butler, who’ll turn 31 in March, scuffled last year at the Triple-A level with the Indians organization and never earned a call-up. But he had provided the Rays with 276 plate appearances of .276/.326/.416 hitting in the season prior.
- The Twins inked a minors pact with outfielder Quintin Berry, Cotillo also tweets. The speedy Berry broke into the league in 2012 with the Tigers as a fourth outfielder, but hasn’t seen much big league time since. He appeared in every postseason round in both 2012 and 2013, receiving little in the way of playing time but nevertheless swiping five bases. Last year, the 32-year-old hit .261/.341/.313 and swiped 35 bags at the Triple-A level with the Angels and Blue Jays organizations.
Nationals Checked In On Brandon Moss Before He Signed With Royals
- The Nationals “checked in on” first baseman/outfielder Brandon Moss before he signed with the Royals, reports Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post. Moss would at least have represented a quality bench piece for the Nationals, whose depth is an issue, as FanGraphs’ Dave Cameron wrote last week. The lefty swinging Moss could theoretically have shared time (and provided insurance) for right-handed-hitting first baseman Ryan Zimmerman and left fielder Jayson Werth — a possibility that led MLBTR to guess that Moss would land in D.C. at the outset of the offseason.
Latest On Matt Wieters
Matt Wieters suffered a laceration that required stitches to his left (non-throwing) arm earlier this offseason but is fully healthy with Spring Training on the horizon, agent Scott Boras tells Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports.
Rosenthal spoke to Boras about the circumstances that have led to Wieters remaining on the open market, and the agent acknowledged that his client’s poor pitch-framing metrics likely have impacted his free-agent stock. However, Boras also noted that framing numbers are impacted by the velocity of the pitcher, seemingly indicating that they might not be as dependable as some make them out to be. Says Boras:
“…Because the hitters have to commit early, because you have big velo, your command comes from actually learning to throw balls — hitters often swing at ’em. That’s why velo pitchers are very, very effective in the ERA category with a catcher, but their framing statistics are going to be well less than the norm.”
There may well be merit to Boras’ claims that velocity significantly impacts pitch-framing metrics — he’s not the first to suggest as much — but the parallel that’s being drawn seems out of place. The Orioles, as a staff, tied for 18th in overall fastball velocity last season, so it seems somewhat counter-intuitive to point out that higher-velocity arms can lead to dubious framing grades. If softer-tossing arms generally portend superior framing marks for their catchers, one would expect Wieters to have somewhat of an edge over those that caught harder-throwing staffs. Instead, he’s been consistently below-average in that regard for the past several seasons. The O’s have never been one of the 10 hardest-throwing teams in baseball in that time, with the exception of the 2014 campaign, in which Wieters played just 26 games.
ESPN’s Buster Olney wrote today that Wieters’ best chance at landing a notable contract at this point could be to wait until an injury arises in either Spring Training or the World Baseball Classic that could create an opportunity. Wieters has been tied to the Nationals and the Angels all winter long, it seems, but Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post recently appeared on Olney’s Baseball Tonight Podcast (audio link) and explained that the Nats are largely set on Derek Norris entering the season as the starter behind the dish. Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register, meanwhile, wrote earlier this morning that if Wieters does end up with the Halos, it’d likely have to be on a one-year deal at a discount rate.
Boras tells Rosenthal that Wieters’ market has only truly begun to take shape in the past month, but he unsurprisingly offers no indication of a potential asking price. (Rosenthal notes that “even a $50 million deal is probably a stretch,” though I’d contend that’s been the case all offseason.) Wieters would be far from the first Boras client to secure a surprising multi-year deal late in the offseason, so it’s certainly possible that the market for his services is more robust than most reports indicate at present. However, while the majority of theoretical suitors listed by Rosenthal in his column — the Orioles, Nats, Mets, Rockies, Rays, Angels, D-backs and White Sox — all make sense on paper, it’s also difficult to see any from that group breaking the bank on a multi-year deal barring an injury elsewhere on the staff.
Nationals Acquire Enny Romero From Rays
The Rays and Nationals have announced a trade sending left-handed reliever Enny Romero to Washington for minor league right-hander Jeffrey Rosa The move will open a spot on the 40-man roster for first baseman Logan Morrison, whose one-year deal to return to Tampa Bay is now official. The Nationals, on the other hand, did not need to make a 40-man roster move to accommodate Romero. Even after this trade, their 40-man count is still just at 39 players.
[Related: Updated Washington Nationals Depth Chart and Tampa Bay Rays Depth Chart]
The 26-year-old Romero has had a pair of rough seasons in Tampa Bay, pitching to a 5.59 ERA in 75 2/3 innings at the Major League level from 2015-16. While he’s shown a penchant for missing bats (9.6 K/9), Romero has also averaged 4.9 walks per nine innings pitched and logged a slightly below-average ground-ball rate. However, his strikeout prowess and a power fastball that has averaged 96.1 mph over the past two seasons likely made him appealing to the Nationals.
Romero is out of minor league options, so he’ll have to break camp with the Nationals to open the season or first be exposed to waivers. He’ll head to Spring Training and give the Nats a third left-handed option behind veteran southpaw Oliver Perez and impressive young lefty Sammy Solis. If Romero ultimately proves able to harness his impressive velocity and strikeout potential, he’ll be a nice long-term option in the Nationals’ bullpen, as he’s controllable via arbitration through the 2021 season.
The 21-year-old Rosa has pitched 96 1/3 innings as a pro and pitched to a 3.83 ERA with a 103-to-49 K/BB ratio since signing as an amateur. He’s yet to crack any top prospect ranking within the Nationals organization, and that’s not terribly surprising given his age and the fact that he’s yet to advance beyond Rookie-level ball. But the out-of-options Romero was likely viewed as a potential 40-man casualty in Spring Training, as the Rays have Xavier Cedeno firmly ahead of him on the depth chart in addition to a slew of right-handed options that figure to merit spots.
It’s possible that Tampa Bay could seek further left-handed depth between now and Opening Day, though they could simply look at Cedeno, Alex Colome, Brad Boxberger, Erasmo Ramirez, Danny Farquhar and Shawn Tolleson as a likely front six in their relief corps. That would leave a number of other 40-man arms and non-roster invitees to battle it out for the final bullpen spot. All of those options can be seen on the Rays’ depth chart at Roster Resource.
Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times first reported that Romero was going to the Nats (on Twitter). Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post tweeted that the Nationals were sending a Gulf Coast League pitcher to the Rays in the deal.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
