Who Added the Most Wins?

Time for more season recapping… A simple but important question, right? Who, in the course of the season, contributed the most to the Nationals 59 wins? One way to look at this is through the statistic known as WARP. WARP, wins above replacement player, is an interesting stat that shows how many wins the player contributes over a replacement level player. Here is a post on what it all means, if you forgot or never knew.

There are some obvious ones on the list, and a few surprises as well. Here’s the top 10:

1. Ryan Zimmerman: 6.9
2. John Lannan: 4.1
3. Adam Dunn: 4.1
4. Josh Willingham: 3.2
5. Nyjer Morgan: 2.9

So Long Daniel, Is Nick Next?

On Trading Nick

According to everyone everywhere, the Mets are interested in trading for Nick Johnson. They’re not the only team, but with the loss of Delgado and their need to make the playoffs before everyone gets too old and they have to lean on a pretty barren farm system, they may be the frontrunners. According to Yahoo, there are actually some names associated with this trade, other than Johnson and Omar Minaya. These names include Jon Niese, Mike Antonini, Eddie Kunz and Bobby Parnell.

Parnell is the only even slightly established major leaguer. He’s 24 and has pitched great so far. This year he’s had 19 2/3 relief innings, a 2.29 ERA, 22 H, 9 BB and 16 K. He was the Mets #5 prospect according to Baseball America. They like his “heavy” fastball alot, saying he may have 3 plus pitches, and mention that if the Mets didn’t sign K-Rod he’d be a good candidate for closer. Baseball Prospectus ranked him at #9, seeing him as more of a potential set-up man. Also, both mention his fastball tops out at 97 mph, although Yahoo said he hit 100 on the gun in Fenway last weekend.

Kunz, the other guy ranked in both, falls in at #10 for both BA and BP.

Back to the Future (of the Nats Pitching)

This gets revisted often, probably too often. But when you’re the worst pitching staff in the NL, it’s hard not to look down at the farm system to see how people are doing. Also, my assertion that with Zimmermann and Strasburg, you’ve gotta finding a third top flight pitcher would mean they could suddenly get very good pretty quick. Regardless, it’s also nice to see who might come up and pitch effectively, even if it’s not at the level of an ace. There’s news that the management has had a conversation with Cabrera, who knows what that means, but for now he’s still in the rotation. And, news flash, the bullpen continues to suck. So even though I’ve looked at this recently, let’s look at the latest numbers from some of these youngsters.

Ross Detwiler (AA)

Detwiler is potentially the top flight guy. At least he was drafted as such – the 23 year old was drafted 6th overall in the 2007 draft – and he’s a power arm lefty. He had a poor 2008 in the minors, although his second half showed promise. His stat this season are starting to look nice, despite not having a single win. In 27 1/3 IP, he’s got a 2.96 ERA, 28 H, 10 BB and 28 K. But he really struggled in one start. Not that you can do this, but take it out and his ERA plummets to 1.45. His periferals suggest he isn’t dominating at AA, he is giving up too many hits and walking too many. But he’s looking like he may be ready for AAA relatively soon, sooner than most thought coming in to 2009.

Not Quite as Bad as they Seem

The Nationals are actually 5-7 since starting out in a terrible 1-10 slide. That could look prettier if it wasn’t for the bullpen explosions, implosions, and whatever else type of ‘plosion you can think of. The regrettable weekend series against the Marlins and a few blown saves here and there have combined to make this team look much worse than it is. They’re not as bad as you may think. Offensively, their rankings among other NL teams are pretty interesting:

Runs Scored per Game – 10th

Ok, that isn’t particularly promising, but when you look at the numbers that go into it :

Hits – 4th
OBP – 4th
SLG – 7th
OPS – 6th
HRs – 8th

What to Do with Daniel

Maybe it would be different, they thought. Maybe in the National League, facing pitchers and #8 hitters that are unimpressive compared to those in the AL, Daniel Cabrera could show his stuff. You remember that stuff? It allowed him to have 150 or more Ks 3 years in a row. The kind of stuff that gave him a CG shutout with 10 Ks against Toronto in 2006, or take a no hitter 8 1/3 innings against the Yankees to finish off that same season. But in 2008 he struck out less than 100, despite a full season, and walked just about the same amount. A change of leagues, they thought, would do him good.