MVN - Most Valuable Network

Boo Bill!

From the recap…

Church is doing things that he never did with the Nationals. He’s hitting in the clutch and displaying power that general manager Jim Bowden was looking for during Church’s three-year tenure in Washington.

Boo, I say to you, Mr. Ladson!   Boo!

Ryan 2008 RISP : .333 / .423 / .429

Ryan 2007 RISP:  .282  / .387 / .492

Ryan 2006 RISP:  .273 / .382 / . 564

Ryan is getting a few more hits, but hit pretty well before don’t you think?

As for power Ryan is slugging .561 right now, which is better than the best he did with the Nats (.526 in 2006).  However his isoSLG is actually lower than that year (.250 in 2006, .237 in 2008, and if you must know .198 in 2007) meaning he’s actually slugging about as well as he did 2 years ago, but that fact is covered up by the one thing he IS doing differently than he did with the Nats.   He’s getting more hits. Period.

Part of that is a high BABIP (.370 right now) , but he’s historically had a high BABIP, so we wouldn’t expect it to go down as much as we might for another player.   Why then is he hitting better?   Let’s let Ryan Zimmerman explain:

“We all know that he is talented. He is a good player,” Zimmerman said. “When he would play four or five games in a row, he would kind of get in a groove. It’s hard knowing you don’t play every day. He has a chance in New York, and he is taking advantage of it.”

Now actually Church played plenty of 4 or 5 games in a row in 2007, he was the starter until after the All-Star break, BUT I will say that if I were him I would have never felt secure in my position.  After how they treated him in 2006 there was an axe over his head and it showed.   Free from that - well you see how he can play.   If he ends up hitting .320 with 30+ HRs I’ll be shocked, but he is a very solid #3 OF. 

GAME

Nats lost. Lannan did what he did - spread out those hits as much as possible, though with 12 out there he couldn’t do much better than the 6 IP and 4 runs that he gave up.   I don’t know how he does it - just that he does.

STOP PITCHING LUIS AYALA!

On May 6th, He came in to pitch at Houston.   1 IP, 3 Hits, 2 runs.  He looked tired.

Two days later on May 8th he came in to pitch against Houston.   1 IP 2 Hits, 1BB, 2 runs.  He looked spent

Three days later on May 11th, Marlins.  1 IP 3 Hits, 2 HRs, 3 runs.   He looked dead.

Two days later, last night, Mets.  He comes in and somehow, magically gives the Nats a perfect 7th.  Somewhere in his youth or childhood, Manny Acta must have done something good.  Then Ayala comes back out to pitch the 8th?  Why tempt fate?  More importantly, why tax an arm that has looked so horrible recently?  I don’t get it.  Is he expecting the worst from Redding today?

Backing Li’l d

Baseball is a funny game. Check that. Balderdash is a funny game… actually that’s not really that funny either. OK. Guess Who? is a funny game. There can be no disagreement about that.

Anyway the point is Odalis Perez had been defying expectations since his second start.  They weren’t great performances by any means, but like a 2005 vintage of Esteban Loaiza, he kept the team in the game while he was out there.  Over those 6 starts he kept the hits down (30 in 35 innings), the walks reasonable (13 - opponents has a .224 BA and a .307 OBP), and the strikeouts high (30).    For all that trouble Odalis had gotten a nice 2.78 ERA in games and a bit fat SQUA-DOOSH in the win column.    Last night Odalis had his worst game in a while, putting 13 men on base and giving up two bombs.  4 runs in 6 1/3 innings and it could have been a lot worse.  And of course, for this mediocre outing, Odalis picks up the W.  Good for him. 

The Nats offense didn’t quite “explode” the 10 runs were helped along by only 4 XBH (all doubles) and 7 walks.  But the Nats luck at the plate is starting to even out. 

April: .229 / .311 / .337 

May: .263 / .336 / .408

They aren’t really doing a better job of getting on base - that’s just the BA evening out after some bad luck in April.  They are hitting for more power though.  A quick look at the splits see no one in particular doing fantastic, Boone and Mackowiak being the hottest but seeing limited duty.  It’s just an overall shift back to average.  In April the Nats had 9, count ‘em 9 guys, hit .233 or below (with 20 ABs or more) .   Zimmerman, Kearns, Johnson Belliard, Wily Mo, Willie Harris, Estrada, LoDuca and Mackowiak.   In May they Nats only have 4 batting below that mark, Milledge, LoDuca, Belliard, and Dukes and only Milledge has seen “starter” time out  of this group.   This water is finding its level. 

Is it me or the Nats surprisingly realistic?  From Odalis about yesterday’s game

 ”It wasn’t the best way to get it,” Perez said. “I have been pitching so many good games. This is the first time that I’ve seen my offense helping me. But I’m happy I received the win. It was a battle.”

And LoDuca

Asked if he thought he would be traded if the Nationals were out of the race, Lo Duca said: “I don’t know. I doubt anybody would want to trade for somebody with 50 at-bats and has been hurt all year. I really couldn’t answer that. Depending how I come back and where we’re at from that point, I don’t see it.

While the Mets are bothered by cheering (well not the Mets as a team, just Figueroa who should be a Met for…oh about 1 or 2 more days)  

Tonight Lannan versus Maine.  Despite the impressive numbers Lannan isn’t a lights out pitcher.  He gets hit and puts men on base and doesn’t strike out all that many…for the most part.  The key is keeping those events strung out over the course of his outing and not giving up the big blast.  Lannan had his best game of the year against the Mets at Shea, 3 hits, 0 walks 11Ks (why I said for the most part.  In his other games he averages about 3 ks for 6 innings of work).   The Mets as a team though are slugging a lot better recently.  (.454 in May).  Let’s see if he can do it again.  

Flailing

There’s a question I’ve asked myself about the Nats and their pitching staff “strategies” over the past 3 years. Would I rather see the team do wrong (in my opinion of course) and succeed, or would I rather see them fail and thus learn from their mistakes? Whatever part of me favors the latter is getting what he wants recently.

Three years of piecing together a starting staff with cast-offs and has-beens, has forced the Nats bullpen to pitch a TON of innings. (2nd in the NL in 2006 in IP by relievers, 1st in 2007, currently 5th in 2008). Keep doing this year after a year and it isn’t a question of if it’ll catch up with the bullpen but when. We seem to have the answer. May 11th. The day they trotted out Luis Ayala, who missed the entire previous season  (Ed - note I meant all of 2006 (and part of last season).  Sorry.  It was late)   due to being overworked, for his league leading 23rd appearence, and found out SURPRISE! his stuff isn’t that good when he’s being beaten down like a horse in an animated feature before he’s set free by a precocious youth to roam free in the grasslands. Run Free Ayala! Run Free!

The team has tried to find innings in the bullpen by turning Matt Chico into a reliever. OK, I don’t agree with that but that happens. What doesn’t happen though is immediately breaking him in pitching 2+ innings in back to back games. Can he at least get a feel of pitching from the bullpen? Oh wait, he can’t because the guy brought in to replace him Mike O’Connor pitched so horribly and they needed someone to come in and eat innings. Chico essentially gave the Nats another short start but did it from the middle innings. Mike O’Connor, who did not listen to Eminem and missed his chance to blow in his one shot, has been immediately dropped for bullpen help. Of course who will start in his place next time? Maybe Balester or Bergmann. Or maybe Chico (provided he doesn’t see action in 3 of the next 4 games). Or hell, maybe Jose Rijo.

[It’s strange but all in all this Chico stuff could have made sense. Say you don’t like the way Chico is pitching so you’re giving O’Connor a spot start in his place while the Saint and Chico try to work out some kinks. After that you’re likely to bring in a reliever, and you’ll see if Chico is ready after that. If so great, if not you’ll spot start again. See, a mess sure, but one that feels like a semblance of a plan, not like panicky passengers fleeing a sinking ship.]

We haven’t even talked about the non-existent offense yet.

Yeah the team lost, but more importantly the team’s lost.

Catching a break

If you haven’t heard the cheers, Paul LoDuca went down to injury yesterday.  4-6 weeks.  At the same time though, supposed back-up catcher Johnny Estrada went on the DL as well.   Uh oh.   Even I, with shrew-like shovel hands rather than human fingers, knows that 2-2=0.  Fate has forced the Nats to do what most fans wanted, and that’s play Jesus Flores at catcher.  But wait!  There’s a fly in the ointment, a monkey in the wrench, and his name is Wil Nieves.  

Wil is batting .343 / .410 / .457  currently.  The team has a 5-3 record with him starting behind the plate. While Flores is still designated the “catcher of the future”, could Wil be the “catcher of now”?   Short answer - no.   Long answer - Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

The problem is, despite what you see, Wil can’t hit.  His last three minor league season read like a retelling of Endy Chavez’s career

2005 - 102 games, .289 /.313 /.395

2006 - 88 games,  .259 / .298 /.346

2007 - 27 games, .256 / .306 / .344

That’s in AAA folks.  He’s had a couple of ok years if you look far back enough but some of those can be attributed to being in the PCL a league that made Terrmel Sledge look like Babe Ruth.    In the majors he hasn’t broken the mythical .500 OPS barrier yet, though in admittedly only about 150 total at bats across 4 years. No patience, “eh” power.

Maybe this is just a fluke year, a Brady Anderson type 50HR season?  I can’t rule that out.   We need to check if things are clicking for him or if he is getting lucky.  There are a couple of stats we can use to objectively see if Wil is batting well or just catching some breaks, Line Drive Percentage and Batting Average for Balls in Play.  Intuitively you know that hitting line drives, as opposed to ground balls or fly balls, means you are making good contact so you want that number to be high.   You also can tell (because you are all terribly bright) that it doesn’t matter alot if Albert Pujols or Willie Harris puts a ball in play , it’s going to have roughly the same chance of being fielded and turned into an out. Notice I say “roughly” because there is a lot of room in there since Albert is more likely to hit the ball harder, but is should generally be the same.  You are looking for those dramatically below or way above the league average because these are likely to be players getting some bounces or hitting the ball right at people.

Again: LD% high, BABIP about league average or below = good hitter

Nieves:

LD%  7.4% (league average  20%)

BABIP: .423 (league average .295)  

Uh oh.  If you look a little further you see Wil is hitting a ton of groundballs.  So in reality he’s just finding the holes.  Hitting them where they ain’t.  But that’s a lot more to do with luck than skill.   This guy is due for a rough spell.

[For the curious - no Nat is exceptionally lucky with BABIP.  Among the Healthy Nats, Nick (.229), Austin Kearns (.238) and Belliard (.239) should improve somewhat]

For the Nats Nieves in a platoon or worse as the preferred starter isn’t a smart choice, it should be Flores or bust.  Flores hasn’t been making a strong case in AAA, but what are you going to do? The alternative is not a viable one.