You never have enough pitching. Washington fans expected the starting pitching to be a strong suit last year. Washington ended up using ten starting pitchers.
The starting four of Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmerman, Gio Gonzalez and Ross Detweiler returns for the 2014 campaign. The available in-house options for the fifth starter include Tanner Roark and Taylor Jordan with Christian Garcia, Ross Ohlendorf and Nate Karns as the dark horse candidates. The question that the organization faces is fairly basic, do you stay put with what you have or do you acquire another starter.
The decision is far from a basic one. Do you make a trade? Washington has the talent to do so, but pitching is always expensive, and who wants to trade away a good arm? Will the big four stay healthy? Do you expect Roark and Jordan to compete at a level that will allow the organization to be competitive enough to win a World Series? Will a veteran add stability to the staff? What we write in the cold days of winter hardly ever transpires the following fall. Who would have thought that Michael Wacha would have had such an impact for the Cardinals. The decision to be made by the Nationals is tempered by expectations. The ownership has made it clear that they want to win now.
Tanner Roark’s 2013 numbers were terrific. He combined for 159.1 innings last year, close to the 147 he posted in 2012. He will be 27 in 2013 and should be entering his best years as a pitcher. Roark has the ability to pitch in the bullpen and could be an important upgrade there. Taylor Jordan will be 25 and has been a starter for his entire career. He made the big jump from Potomac to the majors after having an up and down career. Christian Garcia has a lot of talent but can he stay healthy? If so expect him to stay in the bullpen for now. Ross Ohlendorf resurrected his career and looks to be the long option out of the pen. Nate Karns has a lot of promise but 2013 was not his year. Our guess is that he’ll be at AAA trying to polish his skills.
It should also be expected that the team has learned from its Zach Duke/Henry Rodriguez experiment of 2012 and proceed to build a balanced and productive bullpen for 2013. Teams like the Cardinals have a phalanx of hard throwers on speed dial.
You also need a pitching staff for the 162 regular game season and one for the playoffs. The structure for the playoffs is different. Having a fifth dependable starter who can eat innings takes stress off the bullpen during the season, but in a seven game series a fifth starter often becomes an option out of the bullpen.
The top free agents are position players. It is a rather lean year for pitching and since most teams need pitching competition will be fierce.
The most hyped free agent is Mashiro Tanaka, the 25 year old twirler from Japan. A right hander he is 6-02 and 205 lb. When you look at his 2013 numbers it is hard not to be impressed at his record of 24-0 with a 1.27 ERA and a WHIP of 0.943. In seven seasons he has pitched 1,315 innings, 212 of those in 2013. That strikes us as a lot of innings. Zack Greinke, similar build, although not similar pitcher pitched 887 innings by the time he was 25. If you factor in the time off because of the issues Greinke had to face the total his would be roughly 1,200. Tanaka projects as a solid starter although given past history it is problematic to predict the success, of any pitcher brought over from the Japanese leagues. Still his relative youth makes him especially appealing.
Tanaka’s posting is projected to be higher than that paid for Yu Darvish. Would the expenditure in excess of $100 million be worth it? Would Tanaka be a healthy top of the rotation starter, or would he be a very expensive bust. Contract decisions will shortly be made on Jordan Zimmerman and Ian Desmond. And over the horizon are two other contract decisions. Rizzo will have to decide if the return on investment is worth the cost. Washington has not been linked to Tanaka and given the organization’s reluctance to sign international players extremely doubtful they would do so in this case.
Assuming Washington passes on Tanaka, and wants to add a front line starter then there are three, high-level, options; Ervin Santana, Matt Garza and Hiroki Kuroda. Washington has been linked to both Santana and Garza. There are other options, Tim Hudson or Bartolo Colon, for example.
Rizzo, given his behavior the past two seasons might want to sign a veteran pitcher. The 30 year old Santana was 9-10 with Kansas City in 2013. He can be good or just awful, posting 5+ ERAs in 2007, 2009 and 2012. You would expect a 10-10 season with an ERA just under 4.00 from him. The 29 year old Garza, split time between Chicago and Texas, overall he was 10-6 with a 3.82 ERA. Roughly the same age Garza has pitching less innings than Santana and is more consistent. He might be a better pitcher in the National League given his past numbers. Santana is known to give up a lot of home runs, but works deep into games and has good control. The knock on Garza is that he is injury prone.
The problem is that the pitchers named all want multi-year deals, something the team has been reluctant to do. We might see a scenario play out where some other club pays top money to sign a pitcher right out of the gate, thus increasing the cost of the others.
So it looks like Washington might end up with someone like Phil Hughes, maybe even Roy Halladay. But it might make sense to throw caution to the winds and acquire Mashiro Tanaka, then put Detweiler in the pen, giving the team a power left arm. If you look at Detweiler’s splits for the 2013 season you notice that he is a pretty good pitcher for the first three innings, an ERA of 2.77. From 4 to 6, he gets hit and hit hard, the ERA jumping to 5.76.
Just our take.
