I Shall Pitch No More, For the Nats

It appears as if the Chief, Chad Cordero, is gone for good. He is a free agent, and he probably won’t be re-signed by the Nats. If he is, it may be under a minor league contract. Giving him another contract, if its cheap enough, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but it’s not necessary. As Joel Hanrahan shows us once again, closers are usually made, not born.

I am fired up about this. The unfortunate story for the Nats is that Cordero had real value, not just as a pitcher, but as a trade piece.  He was racking up saves from 2004-2007 (110 of them) with an incredible ERA in 2005, and a very good ERA in ’04 and ’06. 2007 wasn’t as great, but he still got 37 saves. His peak value was probably as a midseason trade in 2007, but even trading him in the 2008 offseason would have been nice. Who could they have gotten for Cordero 18 months ago?

The World Series and What it Means for the Nats

Well thankfully the Rays pulled out the win last night, otherwise it would have totally ruined this column. Anyway, I realized, or it’s possible that in his incessant nasally non-stop mostly incoherent rambling Buck Martinez mentioned it, that both of these teams are built, for the most part, on players they brought up from the minor leagues. Not too many big trades or signings, mostly guys that each team drafted. I wanted to look at each team and see how old each guy is, how many years he has played in the majors, and how long ago they were drafted.

The season ends, questions remain

The general mood I am getting from television and the newspaper is that people are really down on the team. Obviously, losing 102 games would bring anyone down, but people are starting to think this team has no future, either. Most like to place the blame on the Lerner’s tight leash, a credit crunch within the organization, if you will. People are saying that the best thing to do is to sign a big name free agent, a top flight pitcher, to show that they are willing to spend. While it isn’t a horrible idea (they’d lose their #1 draft pick, but they’d still have the top 10 pick leftover from Aaron Crow not signing), I’m not sure if signing CC Sabathia or someone like that would get this team over any hump. Their farm system is still recovering from years under MLB management, and it will take more years to build a real contender. Of course, you don’t want to start losing good young players like Milledge, Dukes, or Zimmerman before the new prospects get up. So it is a tightrope walk.