You don’t think Rizzo wouldn’t prefer to be playing with a top 10 payroll versus this bunch?
This team is frustrating and it’ll cool off from this streak, but it’s undoubtedly been better than last season. Rizzo had solid trade deadlines last couple seasons. This year book is out.
When new ownership comes in, it is up to Rizzo to explain how it got so bad so fast after the World Series run. But he has a good case he has started digging the team out of the hole.
To the folks that don’t like this move, is there a compelling reason *not* to resign Martinez and Rizzo?
This team was terrible outside of five months from 2018 until June of this season. And, fundamentally, its for two reasons.
The first is the obvious one. The Lerners didn't want to spend after the WS. We know they didn't. Part of that was probably covid, but it it seems a large part was due to the fact that they wanted to sell the team. Between covid and MASN, they didn't get the price they were looking for, and basically paralyzed the team because of it. Which is a part of why they have sucked. Lets face it, no one is winning anything meaningful with Trevor Williams and Dom Smith on your roster.
But the second issue is the much more relevant one. This team didn't develop nearly enough talent to be competitive. We've talked about this at length, but the drafts after Rendon are basically devoid of meaningful players. Erick Fedde and Carter Kieboom round out a plethora of draft picks that amounted to nothing. And, outside of Soto, the Latin player development was pretty fruitless as well. Yes, Soto is a hell of a pull, but the next best is Robles (good for all of one season) and then ... nothing. For ten years, this system didn't produce enough talent to keep the team competitive once ownership wasn't willing to sink 150+ million. Not only could it not keep it competitive, but the system was amongst the worst in baseball.
Rizzo's soluton was to sell of the team. And he sold some pretty large pieces. Pieces that will likely end up in the HoF. But I don't know if Rizzo has fixed the issues that led to that point. We know this team is well behind the curve in analytics and player development. There have been several stories about it from reputable writers. And even this season, we see it with the choice of hitting coach and the complete lack development of Josiah Gray's fastball.
And actually, we need to delve in to that because its a micro-chasm of the organization that Rizzo has built. Josiah Gray left the 2022 season with a 4 seamer that opponents hit .300 off of and slugged .732. Baseball was Babe Ruth against Josiah Gray's 4 seamer. And the maddening part is that his slider and curveball are both really good in 2022. Straight up nasty. Going in to the offseason, it was pretty clear that his fastball needed significant improvement. Teams that develop pitchers do this one of three ways. The first is bio-mechanics, usually with the goal of getting more extension on the fastball release. Gray is 6 foot and it seems like his offseason bio-mechanical development focused one some sort of foot placement. The second and third ways you improve a fastball are related: Throw it harder, throw it with more spin. Throw it harder is obvious. Harder the fastball, the less time the pitcher has to react. With spin, you're trying to change the induced vertical break (IVB) of the fastball. IVB simply means the pitch is "breaking" upward from the average level a pitch falls from release to home plate. This gives the pitch the perception of more velo than it actually has. So, just because you throw 92-94 doesn't mean it seems like it to the batter. Good extension and IVB make seem like the fastball is far harder than it actually is.
Teams good at player development do this, to one extent or the other. They alter the mechanics, the grip, and develop workouts around re-shaping fastballs. And, I'll guarantee that the Dodgers saw all this and were like, "Oh, just fix the fastball? Easy." But this past offseason, what did the Nationals do to help their budding top of the rotation starter (that cost them a HoF player)? Nothing. They left him to his own devices. To his credit, he clearly worked hard in the offseason. He showed up to ST with a brand new pitch, a cutter, and looks in great shape. And since then, he's added another new pitch, the sweeper.
The problem is his fastball still sucks. Despite an all start appearance and cutting his home run rate in half, he has an xERA of 4.72 and a FIP 4.81. His strikeouts have gone down and his walks have remained the same. For a little while, he was able to cover up his poor fastball with a mash of average offerings, but at the expense of his best pitches (slider and curveball). And where good developmental teams would have worked with him on his fastball, the Nationals haven't. And its finally catching up with him in the second half.
The Nationals seem to still be behind the curve when it comes to the non-scouting/old school thinking in baseball. They just got around to adding Hawk-Eye systems in the their minor league parks last year (the tech is over 5 years old at this point). They also added personnel to billets that many other clubs have had for a while (director of technology, bio mechanic specialists, ect.).
All of this happened under Rizzo's watch as GM. So, the bigger question I have is, how much of this is his fault? Did this happen because the Lerners didn't let Rizzo have enough budget and he chose to spend that limited budget on what he knew best? Or did it get this way because Rizzo has no idea how to utilize modern analytics, nor hire people who can teach him how to leverage it. So, I'm pretty skeptical. Rizzo is the master of the trade, but beyond that, I think he leaves a lot to be desired in a baseball GM. I would have felt a lot better about him staying on if he had hired a James Click-type to be his deputy.
Naturally, we're happy with a world series, but that's basically a crap ton of luck. How happy are we going to be in 5-7 years when Crews, Wood, Gore, and Cavalli all get traded because there's nothing else in the system ready to play, and we know the Lerners aren't going to pay them?
