So, you’re the Washington Nationals, you’ve hired a new manager and a new pitching coach, and you’re probably saying farewell to free-agent starters Jordan Zimmermann and Doug Fister.
Next question: What’s the expiration date for Stephen Strasburg?
One year from now, Strasburg is a free agent, and the chances of his returning to the District in 2017 are roughly the equivalent of Abraham Lincoln’s.
Strasburg’s agent, Scott Boras, always leads his clients into the open market. His teammate, Max Scherzer, is soaking up $200 million worth of Natitude payroll through 2021.
So you’re the Nationals—do you play out next summer with Strasburg, take your chances and then let him walk as a free agent and collect a draft pick?
Do you shop him at the July 31 trade deadline?
Or do you make a preemptive strike and deal him this winter?
“I think they are willing to listen [to offers] this time,” one source close to the Nationals says. “He did well in the second half, so they’re thinking of him as a top-of-the-rotation guy. He’s not a No. 3 anymore.
“It would have to be a pretty good price for him. But he is one year from free agency, and he’s not going to re-sign.
“They’ll listen more this year than last year.”
Two months after their train wreck of a season ended with newly acquired closer Jonathan Papelbon’s hands wrapped around presumptive NL MVP Bryce Harper’s throat, the Nationals are still working on unclutching the fists of pressure from their own necks.
They will tell you that injuries to Fister, Strasburg, Jayson Werth, Anthony Rendon, Ryan Zimmerman and others sabotaged their 2015 season, and to an extent that is correct.
But the game accepts no excuses. And a team that entered ’15 as the overwhelming favorite to win the NL pennant and bring a World Series back to D.C. for the first time since 1933 didn’t get it done despite spending mega-millions.
Consequently, no matter how cool they play it on the outside, things are at a boil internally for the Nationals, according to several industry sources. Already, they are losing key pieces from their ’15 team. Their proverbial window to win with Werth, Strasburg, Harper and others suddenly is not nearly as wide open as it once was.
And the walls clearly are closing in on general manager Mike Rizzo.
“Rizzo cannot do a rebuild right now,” says one American League executive. “The heat is turned up there.
“If he deals Strasburg, they have to make sure there’s depth in the rotation. He has to win right now. It’s not like he can win 80 this year and promise to win 100 in two years. He won’t be there.”
One indication that Rizzo’s leash has shortened came during the fiasco of a search to replace manager Matt Williams. The Nationals settled on Bud Black and produced an opening offer of one year and $1.6 million, according to multiple sources, and as any self-respecting, veteran manager would do, Black told the Nats to take their job and shove it.
They quickly turned to Dusty Baker and sprinted straight into damage-control mode, claiming all along that they were negotiating with Black and Baker at the same time. They weren’t. But, as multiple industry sources told Bleacher Report, Rizzo was caught as the middle man while the club owner, the Lerner family, drove the negotiations with Black, thus his belated (and lame) explanation of a “unique situation.”
Another indication of increased pressure on the GM is that the club fired a handful of scouts at season’s end, including one of Rizzo’s key right-hand men, special assistant Bill Singer.
“That was somebody’s pound of flesh to say, ‘We’re doing something,'” the executive continues. “Usually it’s coaches, players, the manager, and once it passes the manager’s chair, there’s only one more chair to get to.”
So these next 12 months are as important as any the Nationals have faced since their move from Montreal in 2005, and they very well may make or break Rizzo’s career.
One year after leading the majors with 242 strikeouts over 215 innings, Strasburg in 2015 went 11-7 with a 3.46 ERA and 155 strikeouts in 127.1 innings pitched.
A strained left trapezius muscle and a left oblique strain knocked him onto the disabled list twice, reducing his number of starts to 23 from 34 in 2014.
“He was really good in the second half,” says another major league executive. “He had a lot of injury issues in the first half, but he finished on a high note.”
Indeed, Strasburg, after going 5-5 with a 5.16 ERA in 13 starts in the season’s first half, went 6-2 with a 1.90 ERA in the second half.
He struck out 63 hitters in 61 innings in those 13 first-half starts, then whiffed 92 in 66.1 innings pitched in the 10 second-half starts.
With Zimmermann and Fister gone, the Nationals could depend on Strasburg to form a one-two punch with Scherzer in a rotation that also includes Gio Gonzalez, Tanner Roark and Joe Ross.
Or, they could remake their rotation now.
It isn’t often that a 27-year-old ace is dangled via trade, and in speaking with a handful of executives and scouts over the past few days—all were promised anonymity in exchange for their thoughts—nobody expects the Nationals to deal Strasburg for anything less than an enormous package.
“Starting with a major league pitcher and a prospect,” one scout says. “A rotation guy and a prospect.”
“It probably would be a mixture of a good prospect who’s close, another one further down and someone to help your big league team now,” an executive says.
“There would have to be a bullpen guy coming back for sure,” says another scout who knows the Nationals well. “They feel pretty good about their rotation next year—Joe Ross fits in nicely, Tanner Roark. A.J. Cole? He’s not ready yet.”
Rizzo’s Papelbon ploy failed miserably last summer, and the Nats absolutely need bullpen upgrades. New pitching coach Mike Maddux isn’t going to fix things alone.
Where future starting pitching is concerned, the Nationals are highest on young right-hander Lucas Giolito (21), who split last summer between Class A and Double-A. The Nationals’ first-round pick (16th overall) in 2012 out of Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, California, Giolito could arrive in the bigs in 2017.
In other words, the first post-Strasburg season in Washington if the Nats opt not to deal him this winter or in July.
“You’d think you’d get more for him now because the team you deal him to will have him for a whole year,” one executive says. “On the other hand, if you wait until the trade deadline, you might do well, too, because you’ve paid down the money and teams might be looking for a rental.
“But they’re a win-now team. I wouldn’t think they’d be looking to trade him now. But if they’re not in the hunt….”
If they’re not in the hunt come July, then Rizzo is going to have many other problems. Namely, networking to ensure himself a landing spot when the Lerners pull the plug on him.
The Nationals did have conversations regarding Strasburg last winter, including, according to FoxSports.com’s Ken Rosenthal, with the Texas Rangers. Names bandied about then included right-hander Steven Souza, then of the Nationals, and shortstop Jurickson Profar, who still is with the Rangers.
Subsequently, the Nats dealt Souza to Tampa Bay last winter in the exotic three-team, 10-player deal that included San Diego and netted the Nationals both Joe Ross and the player they view ready to replace Desmond at shortstop this year, Trea Turner.
For now, the GM who wrote the blueprint on dealing an ace roughly the age of Strasburg is Kansas City’s Dayton Moore, who, in December 2010, shipped right-hander Zack Greinke to Milwaukee for a package that included two prospects who starred on this fall’s World Series title team: center fielder Lorenzo Cain and shortstop Alcides Escobar.
That deal, which also sent starter Jake Odorizzi to the Royals (Moore two years later shipped him and Wil Myers to Tampa Bay for James Shields and Wade Davis), came after Greinke’s age-26 season. So he was one year younger than Strasburg, and he also had a Cy Young award (2009) on his resume.
Another difference, of course, is that those Royals weren’t yet ready to win, which is why they accepted a couple of high-end prospects.
The Nationals have been ready to win since 2012, but they haven’t. And eventually, in 2019, 2020 and 2021, Scherzer will vacuum in $35 million per season. What was measured optimism in Washington during the past couple of summers now is eroding, quickly.
“All of a sudden, with all of the depth they had in that rotation, they’re looking at Fister not working out this year, and Strasburg [soon] as a free agent,” an executive says. “And the window is small.”
Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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