Yesterday The Athletic published a piece by national reporter Ken Rosenthal that took Mike Rizzo and the Nationals to task for still being a bottom-feeding team during what the headline called a lengthy rebuild. In it Rosenthal talks about the organization’s lengthy failures in drafting and development while also saying that the 2019 World Series win was more a result of luck (specifically referencing Soto’s hit in the Wild Card game and Houston’s inability to win even one game at home) than anything else. It was something of a hit job on Rizzo that probably germinated in Rosenthal’s mind during the midst of the recent seven-game losing streak and that feels weirdly timed now (it would have made a lot more sense to come out in, say, spring training).

Our EIC here at The Nats Report, Richard Wachtel, wrote a response yesterday encouraging fans to embrace the rebuild, which if you missed you can read here and makes a lot of strong rebuttals to a national reporter who hardly ever pauses to think about the Nationals with a capital N. Here’s what I will say; multiple things can be true at the same time. Rosenthal is right that - as I myself have written about ad nauseam - Rizzo’s record in drafting and development leaves a lot to be desired, especially when you consider that any slack-jawed yokel (🎼 Some folk’ll never eat a skunk, but then again some folk’ll, like Cletus the slack-jawed yokel - enjoy having that in your head all day!) could and would have drafted Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper 1-1. And Rosenthal is right to take ownership to task for sitting on their hands and not spending money to compete now that most of the young talent acquired via the trade of Juan Soto has graduated to the majors. HOWEVER, we must also remember that Rosenthal came up through the media ranks as a beat reporter for the Baltimore Sun covering the Orioles, and that he had a very good relationship with former O’s owner Peter Angelos. So his words must be taken with a grain of salt.

This would probably not have been worthy of a story if Rizzo himself had not promised a ‘retool, not a rebuild’ after the Great Fire Sale of 2021. Those remarks smacked of hubris at the time and even more so now. In August 2021, the Nationals possessed just two players who were a) under 30 years old and b) were good enough to be even average regulars in the immediate future; Soto and Josh Bell. Thus Rizzo did a poor job of evaluating his own system, which took two more years to graduate a passable regular pitcher (Jake Irvin) and three to turn out a decent position player (Luis García Jr., who has since regressed). As part of that misevaluation, he in those July 2021 trades principally targeted players who were viewed as close to the majors: Josiah Gray, Keibert Ruiz, Mason Thompson, Riley Adams, Lane Thomas, Donovan Casey, and so on. It is entirely fair to ask if Rizzo perhaps did not get the most talented return he could have in some or all of those trades because he was at least as focused on taking a swing on guys who might be able to help right away (and/or was perhaps high on his own supply with regard to his - much deserved - reputation as having perhaps the best acumen in the sport when it comes to making trades). The end result is that the rebuild is almost four years old, the team is still mired below .500 thanks largely to poor personnel/spending decisions (like the bullpen), and Rizzo over-promised and under-delivered with his “retool” remarks. So Rosenthal does have a point, although he expressed some of it lazily.

If you didn’t stay up late to watch this one, you missed very little. Mitchell Parker once again was not fully prepared for the first inning, surrendering home runs to Julio Rodríguez and Cal Raleigh (who went yard again a few innings later) to dig an early 3-0 hole that the Nats never really threatened to climb out of. James Wood launched a ball 448 feet off the batter’s eye in center field - his longest home run this year - but that was the only offense for the Nationals in a 9-1 loss in which Mariners starter Logan Evans cruised through eight innings on 88 pitches.

For all that the rebuild is still mostly muddling along outside of the Soto return - which we might one day look back upon as baseball’s closest comp to the Herschel Walker trade - Rizzo has done a lot to rebuild what had been baseball’s most depressing farm system both through the draft and through trades, including taking the difficult step of jettisoning/demoting two of his best friends (Johnny DiPuglia and Kris Kline) once he finally figured out that he needed to evolve beyond the caricature of the old scouts as portrayed in Moneyball. Lane Thomas, traded to the Nats for the final two months of Jon Lester’s career, was himself dealt last summer for three players, one of whom is current Wilmington Blue Rock southpaw Alex Clemmey. Yesterday Clemmey took on the Hudson Valley Renegades (NYY) and had the following line: 6 innings, 2 hits, 2 walks, 1 HBP, 0 runs, 9 strikeouts, 84 pitches. In ten starts this season he has punched out 58 batters in 40.2 innings while allowing just 28 hits - the downside is the 37 walks/HBP. But more importantly, Clemmey has multiple dominant starts in high-A despite still being a teenager; he won’t turn 20 until mid-July, and is more than four years younger than the average Sally League player. All of this bodes well for his future success, aside from the free passes - keep your eye on him as closely as on Jarlin Susana (currently injured) or Travis Sykora.

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📌 Stearns On Analytics (Fangraphs)

📌 Harper X-Rays Negative (Yahoo!)

📌 The Last Career Closer? (The Athletic)