2011 Organizational Rankings: #24 – Washington
Washington might just have the best hypothetical core in the league – combine Ryan Zimmerman and Jayson Werth with Stephen Strasburg, Bryce Harper, and Jordan Zimmermann and you have five legitimate stars. The question, of course, is whether or not the stars can align at any one point in the franchise’s future. R. Zimmerman will soon become expensive, Werth is in his 30s, Strasburg and J. Zimmermann must return from injuries, and Harper is likely a few years away. Beyond the core, the franchise has work to do to surround the stars with supporting talent. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but much work is yet to be done in the nation’s capital.
Major League Talent: 70.45 (24th)
Minor League Talent: 80.00 (T-15th)
Financial Resources: 75.00 (T-20th)
Baseball Operations: 75.00 (T-24th)
Overall Rating: 74.39 (24th)
Mike Rizzo has brought some tremendous talent into the Nationals system, largely with the help of the number one draft pick both years he’s been in charge. He deserves credit for signing both players, but what’s more interesting is how Rizzo has handled the free agent market. Despite the size of the DC market, the Nationals have operated on a limited budget in recent years. Prior to this year, the Nationals’ payroll only topped $60 million in 2006 and 2010, meaning they have operated as a small market team.
That is until the massive seven year, $126 million contract handed out to Jayson Werth this winter. Forget what I have to say about it, just ask Sandy Alderson: “I thought they were trying to reduce the deficit in Washington.” Rizzo claimed that the signing was part of “Phase 2″ of the Nationals’ rebuilding process, “compet[ing] for division titles and championships.” Part of the idea is just that Werth is a star quality player, but also that the presence of a player like Werth could entice more high-quality players to come to Washington. We’ll see how this idea plays out in the upcoming seasons. Chances are the team’s ability to draw high level players will trend more with team record and team willingness to spend than anything else.
Moves like the Werth deal seem to signal an unwillingness to commit to a real rebuilding effort. As much as Rizzo doesn’t want to admit it, the team in its current state is nowhere near the level of the Phillies or the Braves. In order to reach that point, the Nationals should be prudent with their expenditures until the elite talent in the organization is ready.
The other high-profile recent move which opposed a true rebuilding effort was less a move and more the lack of one. Last summer, the Nationals refused to trade Adam Dunn. This decision did earn them the 23rd overall pick and a sandwich pick due to free agent compensation, although one has to imagine that a bat as coveted as Dunn’s could have brought in more value at the trade deadline.
So, there appear to be some flaws with the process at this point. But for all the flaws, the Nationals have still managed to accrue a good deal of talent. The Nats will have three top-35 picks coming into the system as well, and given his dealings with the incredibly expensive first overall picks he’s had to sign the last two years, the team is willing to spend, spend, spend on the draft for now.
That willingness to spend in the draft will be important, as it’s likely the most effective way for the Nationals to build toward contending. Beyond the generational talents the team has added recently, the Nationals’ farm system is comparatively bare. It’s no Houston or Milwaukee system, but after guys like Strasburg (technically graduated, but still a future asset), Harper, and Derek Norris, the Nationals don’t have a ton of elite talent waiting in the wings. The ability to develop the role players and merely good starters will be key in the march toward contention, and that will require spending in the draft and overseas (which the club has been willing to do as the Yunesky Maya signing indicates).
The Nationals have some incredible players within their organization, and that gives them as much potential as many teams which top them on the list. The team has an as-of-yet unproven front office attempting to steer this group towards the promised land of the playoffs and beyond. But it will take patience and efficient usage of the club’s financial resources. If Mike Rizzo is able to exhibit both of those things and the team catches some breaks with its young talent, the Nationals could see success in a few years. A few wrong moves, though, and the team could remained mired in the mediocrity of its first years in Washington. Because of that, it is impossible for us to rank the Nationals any higher than 24th of the 30 teams. There is a light, however, no matter how dim or distant it may seem now.
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“Moves like the Werth deal seem to signal an unwillingness to commit to a real rebuilding effort. As much as Rizzo doesn’t want to admit it, the team in its current state is nowhere near the level of the Phillies or the Braves. In order to reach that point, the Nationals should be prudent with their expenditures until the elite talent in the organization is ready.”
You lost me here. The Nationals don’t have a farm system to speak of, they have a training center for Harper. To develop more elite talent past him would require something like 4 years and the Nationals don’t need to be that patient given their payroll, cost controlled talent, and large yet untapped market. The next few years will be all about energizing that market by showing off a high powered offense with solid pitching. They’re following the best and most logical path available to them.
I agree with your idea – I think this is what Baltimore is doing now. There comes a time where you just need to decided to win as many games as you can with your current young core before they get overly expensive. However, I think the Nats are spending money a year or even two too early. Strasburgh won’t be Strasburgh until 2013 and Harper won’t be ready until then. So, I think they should have waited a bit.
I understand your point, but what bat next year is better than Werth?
All I can count is Albert Pujols and (arguably) Prince Fielder, and Pujols is a longshot to sign with the Nats anyway.
In fact, there’s a huge drop off after that. You have old, washed up batters like Abreu, Beltran and Ibanez, none of whom compare to Werth right now. So if the Nationals didn’t sign Werth (or Pujols next year), they’d be forced to wait until 2013 to sign additional offensive help. By that time, Zimmerman would be a FA, and likely ready to leave.
Instead, they get a few of Werth’s prime years (while overpaying for his decline years), and build a core group of players to build around in 2012-2013 when Strasburg and Harper are contributing to the team.
However, if the Nats waited this offseason, they’d be two years behind before they could have made any progress.
“The question, of course, is whether or not the stars can align at any one point in the franchise’s recent future.”
It’s impossible to have a recent future.
To whom it may concern–
On your table on the homepage that links to Top 10/Team Preview/Org Rank, the links are messed up for the Braves.
The problem the Nationals face goes beyond just performance on the field. You cannot begin to emphasize the long term damage that this franchise endured during the Loria fleecing/sale, the MLB ownership period and then the Bowden reign. Some quick examples:
- The Bartolo Colon trade; we gave up Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore and Brandon Philips for 2 months of Colon.
- Loria took his entire player development staff to Florida (is there any question why the Expos used to be fantastic in developing players and suddenly Florida was?)
- Bowden absolutely blowing the our drafts. We have zero players with any MLB experience from the 06 draft. We have exactly two players on the 40-man roster from the 2007 draft. He failed to sign our 1st rounder from the 2008 draft and its hard to find high-end prospects (outside of Danny Espinosa) that remain from that draft class.
- Bowden being obsessed with former Reds prospects, reclamation projects and “toolsy” guys who never panned out.
When Bowden was finally canned Rizzo was staring at a roster full of Bowden’s clubhouse lawyers and a non-existent bullpen. That they’ve come this far in just a couple years is amazing.
The Werth signing in my opinion had a lot to do with being a public relations signing. While dumping several popular players we needed to show we were not looking to just save money. The season ticket base has eroded badly and ownership finally has realized the path to regaining the DC baseball fan.
You make some good points, but you need to give the Marlins a little credit. They’ve pretty much always been good at developing talent-certainly did a good job of things even before Loria was there.
The most baffling ranking in here, for me, is the financial resources. The Nationals should easily be top 10, if not higher, as I think the past few offseasons have demonstrated (not just the players that have signed, but the offers that were made to players that didn’t like Teixera, Greinke, etc)
What’s more baffling to me is thinking that, on any level, Washington could “easily” be in the top ten.
on financial resources? i don’t see why not
Well if we’re talking strictly about financial resources, the Nationals without a doubt are in the best situation.
Ted Lerner, the Nationals owner, is the richest majority owner in baseball: http://www.forbes.com/2011/03/23/mariners-braves-tigers-business-sports-baseball-valuations-11-billionaires.html
Furthermore, the Washington, DC market is the 9th largest in the country: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas
Richest owner + Top 10 Market = Superb Financial Resources
Whether the money is spent efficiently is up to the baseball operations. However, there can be little debate as to whether the Nationals can/will/already do have the possibility to spend boatloads of money.
Aren’t the Nationals still under the boot-heel of the Peter Angelos clause about “market sharing”?
The financial resources ranking here is a joke, no offense guys. Forbes has Ted Lerner worth at least $3 Billion, or $1.3 Billion richer than the next richest owner (Tigers’ Illitch). DC itself isn’t a large market, but the surrounding suburbs are some of the largest and most affluent in the country. They should be in the top 10 in that category, at least.
Most teams are owned by multi-millionaires or billionaires or massively rich conglomerates of investors and they don’t spend oodles of money either.
Hell, even the Yankee spending doesn’t come out of the Steinbrenner war chest. They have so much revenue generation in that city that they don’t need it. What we’re seeing in baseball is that owners are not very keen on spending their own savings on building baseball teams. They all work within the revenue generation of the organization itself. In that regard, how rich the owner is doesn’t mean spit.
The reason I brought up Peter Angelos is I recall him bitching a loud bellyache about there being a team moved back into our nation’s capitol, which would take up a market that he used to have sole influence over. I remember the Nationals having to fork over some of their generated revenue to Angelos in order to make him agree to let a club exist in DC again. I don’t know if this is still going on, though.
I’m unclear on their actual financial situation, as they have a solid market but a hazy revenue stream (anybody have info on their revenue sources? TV deals?). With that said, I was surprised that the article treated the Werth signing as if it came out of the blue. They’ve been offering market or above market contracts to big name FA lately: Tex and Cliff Lee were offered huge deals that they declined.
In my opinion, you can knock them for not having the money, if that’s true, but they certainly seem willing to spend the money.
I thought they’d end up a little higher than this, but that’s a good point about their farm system. They’ve drafted a few generational talents with the first pick, but they haven’t really built up their farm system, as they’ve needed to. Their current strategy relies on hitting the lottery and having the stars align with their core talent, but the Werth contract really could set them back in their rebuilding effort.
They still might ended up making some noise in 2013 if they can find some solutions in the outfield and middle infield.
We expect Desmond and Espinosa to be our MI for the near future. Werth is in the OF for the foreseeable future, and a spot is being saved for Harper. Probably one of Morse, Bernadina, and Morgan (probably Morse) can be a serviceable 3rd OF. The only problem I see in 2013 is that they’ll need a new 1st baseman. I see them trying to sign Pujols after this season, and trading LaRoche, though it’s easy to see Pujols not wanting to play in DC.
I totally agree that the financial resources ranking is too low. I can’t argue with any of the rest of it (and I am a Nats fan). But on the financial side, not only Werth’s contract, plus the money for Strasburg, Harper and Maya, they also threw a $100m extension at Greinke and were reputedly the high bidders for De La Rosa and came in second for Chapman at $25m. I think that shows that they can and will spend money.
Angelos kind of has them by the ‘nads on the MASN TV deal. He starts off getting 90% of all proceeds and there is a sliding scale that eventually gets the Nats to 50% in like 15 years or so.
I’m fine with their financial resources score. The baseball market in DC is mostly theoretical and there are a lot of problems with it (note: I live in Alexandria, Va.). Many people in the metro area are immigrants or transplants from elsewhere in the US. Even if they are baseball fans, they are not Nationals fans. The Nats’ media ratings are beyond horrible, even factoring in their newness and losing ways. The Redskins are insanely popular and dominate the sports landscape here.
Over the long-term, the sheer size of the market is certainly a factor to be considered. But it will probably never be tapped to the fullest extent, or at least not within a relevant period of time.
The Washington “transplant” argument doesn’t hold up. This (asinine) myth is always brought up in conversation of the Nationals. You make it seem like all 5,000,000 people living in the Washington metropolitan area are from other cities. That’s absurd.
This argument is further invalidated just by looking at other Washington teams. The Capitals and Redskins consistently sell out their home games.
There’s plenty of support there for the Nationals. They simply haven’t had the chance to build a large, devoted fanbase yet because they’ve been so awful since they arrived. Who wants to go watch a team lose 100 games? I think the Rays, Royals and Pirates fans, with a much greater history, have said the same thing, but done so in even fewer numbers than Nationals’ fans.
That’s all true, but I think that gets to the point that their current financial resources are middling at best. As other commenters have noted, owners tend not to dig into their personal resources. The Nats don’t generate as much revenue as comparatively smaller market teams thanks to half-empty stands and an okay television deal.
As a DC area resident myself I can attest to the fact that fans will come when/if the Nats start winning, and this could become a vibrant market. But that problem is that, a) they’re not winning, and b) for a lot of people in this town, the Nats are only their second favorite team. Most of my friends have adopted the Nats and have started rooting for them, but only secondarily to their original home-town team. That’s good and bad. These guys still come to games, and even more so when their A1 team is in town. But it does damper the enthusiasm by a small degree.
One thing working in the Nats favor is that the Skins and Wizards suck, so if they do start winning I think the fans will start coming out in droves to see a team that’s actually good in this market and that plays in a more popular sport than hockey (sorry, I love hockey, but it is what it is).
Werth doesn’t block anybody on the horizon, and besides Harper, Rizzo’s plan is heavy on developing pitchers and buying or trading for hitters. If Zimmerman, Desmond, Espinoza, Ramos, Flores, Norris, etc. are your young core, they were right to pick up a solid, athletic 5 WAR OF even overpaying. There was no guarantee anyone even above average would ever sign with the Nats if all they have is “rebuilding”, if recent history and Greinke’s explanation is any guide. In the best case scenario, the pitching pipeline continues, Norris rakes at AA/AAA this year, Desmond finally figures out how to play the hop at SS, Espinoza makes enough contact to hit 250, Harper can play center ok, Morse is for real until another good OF is willing to sign, Marerro’s new approach continues to have good results.
I may post this on every organizational ranking. In Dave’s opening description, he said that young talent already on the team would be considered in “Future Talent” as well as minor leaguers. It is now clear that only “Top Ten Prospects” are considered in “Future Talent.” This also contradicts Dave’s assertion that the purpose of the rankings was to predict success for the next 3 years or so.
Thus, the rankings are invalid for their purpose, as well as contradictory to what was promised.
Is this a joke? Are you serious? I just found this site and after reading this, im probly not going to come back. The Nats have one of the best farm teams. And the future is bright even without Harper. The yankees are number 1 and the nats 24? id take the nats farm over the yankees anyday.