Taylor's defense never, ever slumps, and while his strikeouts can be really painful to watch, his current strikeout rate is not much higher than Khris Davis, Aguillar, Bour or Hoskins, and is a bit lower than Stanton, Judge, and significantly lower than Sano. Power hitters strike out a lot. While Mikey T isn't going to launch as many as Stanton or Judge do, Stanton and Judge are freaks of nature and should be considered the outliers, not the standard.
Taylor's defense is replicable. He is probably not the best outfield defender in the Nationals organization right now.
The question with Taylor is how many strikouts are you willing to accept. This is the lowest K% he's ever had, and it's still rather high. I simply don't believe that a high average is sustainable, particularly when the offense won't be as good going forward and he will get exposed more.
That still only gives us 40% of a reliable rotation, and while that's twice as much as we have now, it's still a band-aid on a gaping wound that comes at an immense cost.
Except it gets rid of Rodriguez. So we're giving up a bad pitcher a good one. Then you get Strasburg back, and now you've got a rotation composed of 60% Cy Young candidates. There's less pressure on Gio and Helickson. There's less wear and tear on the bullpen.
Also, Bumgarner is relatively inexpensive with two team options over the next two seasons. And we know what MadBum can do in the playoffs.
Look, Rizzo has to do SOMETHING to get Tanner and Rodriguez out of the rotation. They are almost singlehandedly killing this team. You can't keep trotting out guys that can't get out of the 5th inning without giving up 5+ runs. It's too demoralizing to the team. Furthermore, we saw last post season what happens when one of your primo guys gets dinged at the end of the season. You have to start Gio Gonzalez two games in a five game series. And we see how that ends.
