- 13 hours ago
Grant & Danny discuss the Nationals calling up catching prospect Harry Ford. Also, the looming trade deadline.
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00:00Harry Ford, getting called up by the Nationals, will make his debut today.
00:04I guess. We haven't seen the lineup yet.
00:06They play a late-night game, 9 o'clock hour, in Sacramento against the A's.
00:11I say I'm not sure if he's going to play because here's what's weird about the Harry Ford promotion.
00:16You've got a catcher in K. Barrett Ruiz, who is your typical starter.
00:20Now, he and Millis pretty much play every other game, boy-girl-boy-girl style,
00:25so Harry Ford will play while Millis is on the shelf, but he's not going to play every day.
00:29And I wonder, are they going to just treat him like Millis and try to keep Ruiz fresh where he
00:34gets a bunch of days off?
00:35Of course, he just had the All-Star break, so his body's going to be feeling okay.
00:39Maybe you play Ruiz a little bit more, and Harry Ford just kind of gets in where he fits in
00:43a couple times a week.
00:44I'll be curious to see how they handle this because it is a little bit of a window into how
00:48they're thinking in the grand scheme of things
00:50where Ford is a 23-year-old, 7th prospect, rated in the top 25 in the system.
00:57Playing at AAA was one of the first trades that this front office made to go get him.
01:02Do they want to prioritize his development and make sure he's on the field playing?
01:07Or are they okay with him just sitting on the bench watching because they're trying to win baseball games?
01:12If that's what they're doing, it might be an indicator that maybe they could be adding it to trade deadline
01:17if they keep winning.
01:18We'll see.
01:19Again, we are at, I don't want to say crossroads because that makes it sound a little bit maybe more
01:24significant than it is,
01:25but to a degree, who do you want to be and what's the priority this year?
01:28All options on the table to me are reasonable.
01:31As much as fans might be annoyed, if it isn't about winning this year because they've gone through the desert,
01:36I was there too, I'm with you guys, seven years since 2019 have not been very kind to us,
01:40as Nats fans who kept showing up and kept kind of getting slapped in the face with the indignities,
01:43but if the priority is the core and developing, see the Wizards, what they just kind of went through,
01:49I think that's reasonable, especially for this new group that's in charge who doesn't have the same baggage that you
01:55guys did.
01:56Taboni and company were very, I think, open early on about saying, please be patient.
02:00This is going to take a while.
02:01I know it's already taken a while and it's led you to me, but our thing is going to work
02:05and it's going to take a minute.
02:07That means more Harry Ford, probably less Joe Vivas getting ABs, less Andres Chaparro, less, you know, the veteran Victor,
02:14and a little bit more emphasis on the young players, even if it means losing a couple games here and
02:18there.
02:18Or it's, my God, this offense is so premium, we kind of have to shelve a little bit of the
02:24long-term plan
02:25for some immediate goals here that we can strike.
02:27And there's some development in that too, but it's not the same caliber.
02:30These are philosophical questions that I'm hoping they already have answered and know what they're going to do.
02:36Yeah, the next few weeks are going to be absolutely captivating for the Nationals
02:41because the trade deadline is coming up in about three weeks now.
02:45Well, under that, really, it's two-plus weeks.
02:48And we're going to find out, first, do they buy, do they sell, do they stand pat?
02:52And what does that look like?
02:53But when does Brady House get back to the big leagues?
02:56You know, he was killing left-handed pitching, was struggling against righties,
02:59was struggling defensively at third.
03:01They sent him down.
03:02He has not sniffed the major leagues again.
03:05I have a hard time believing that Brady House will stay in the minors for the rest of this season.
03:10I mean, I think that would be a pretty bad look because if he does, then they claim a year
03:14back of control
03:15and they will have done that with Dylan Cruz and him.
03:17And it's kind of makes you scratch your head a little bit like,
03:20are we sure that wasn't part of the decision-making here to get him down when they did?
03:24Like, the timing's a little bit odd that Cruz got called up about a week after you had to keep
03:28him down too.
03:29And then if Brady House stays down there all season, that basically that was what needed to happen to get
03:34his year back.
03:35And it's still good business.
03:36It's smart from the team's standpoint.
03:38But that'll make some agents and some players feel some type of way about you if that's what they're doing.
03:43I don't think they are.
03:44I think House will be back up.
03:45But like Seaver King, who's been in AAA now for several weeks and has performed,
03:50is an infielder who feels like he's closing in on being big league ready.
03:54We mentioned Harry Ford getting promoted.
03:56Luis Perales, who's a flame-throwing right-hander who's at AAA and has been all year, 23 years old,
04:02came over in the deal they made with Boston for Jake Bennett.
04:06How many of those guys get to the big leagues and when?
04:10It's hard to know until after the deadline when we see how they're viewing this season.
04:14If they go for it and they add a couple pieces, which I don't think they will,
04:18then they're not worried about developing those guys and getting them the reps.
04:21But if you trade Luis Garcia when the iron is hot, if you move Foster Griffin, let's say,
04:28if you do a couple things like that, then you should absolutely go all the way in with that part
04:32of the process.
04:33And Seaver King should be in the infield and Harry Ford should be catching
04:36and Luis Perales should be making some starts or pitching out of the bullpen.
04:42Remember, I was super annoyed at Ron Rivera pretty much all the time,
04:45but there were certain moments and things where you go,
04:48this is why he sticks around and this is why people like him.
04:50But the Jeremy Reeves story with Ron Rivera, and I'm going somewhere with this,
04:55when he said, or really did, when he said,
04:59if we have injuries or whatever, if you do the following things,
05:05you'll be able to take over, right?
05:07You stay with us.
05:08You're going to go to the practice squad.
05:09Keep the faith.
05:11We set these milestones and metrics.
05:12You meet them.
05:13You'll end up being the guy.
05:14They had injuries at safety.
05:15You and I are coming on the air, because we didn't know about those conversations,
05:19going, look who's available in trade.
05:21Look who they might go get.
05:22Let's see what the plan is.
05:23And no, no, no.
05:24It was Jeremy Reeves.
05:25And he went in and played admirably and began the all-pro-revo story, right?
05:29You say what you're going to do.
05:32If you have an organizational philosophy, bring it to the Nats now,
05:35where you go, if you command the strike zone, if you do this metric, this, that, the other,
05:39whatever the things they're telling these guys to do, you do that, you don't get promoted, right?
05:44Think of Yo-Yo Morales.
05:45Think of Trey Lipscomb, who over the last month is hitting .363 with a 1,000 OPS, five home runs.
05:49He may not be part of the long-term plan, not their guy.
05:51But if guys are crushing it, doing what you tell them to do, and there's no reward behind it,
05:59eventually you do enough of those and people start to question things.
06:02So here is the rub, though, on that.
06:05When you're the number one offense in the sport and it's not broken.
06:10You get leeway.
06:10Sure.
06:11And you're, well, I don't even mean that.
06:12You're a game, for the most part, you've been a game to three games over .500 for about a month.
06:16Right now they're a game under after getting swept by the Yankees
06:19because their bullpen blew three more games right before the break.
06:22Not an exaggeration.
06:24But when you are operating the way they have, there's not a lot of space to be had.
06:31Like, people could say, well, Jose Tenna could be replaced.
06:34Or you mentioned Jorbit Bebas could be replaced.
06:37Those are not starters.
06:39You don't necessarily, just as a general rule, call up prospects to not play.
06:43Have them sit, yeah.
06:44The worst thing you can do with prospects a lot of the time is to call them up from AAA
06:49to then be on your big league bench.
06:51Well, Bebas playing two or three days a week still feels like too much as far as I'm concerned.
06:56But that is a better role maybe for him to try to execute as a guy that doesn't mean a
07:00ton to you
07:01than that being Seaver King.
07:03Because not only do you not play and it stuns your development,
07:05but it's really hard to perform at the major league level
07:08when your playtime is sparse and limited and guys are spread out and having several days off.
07:14It's an underrated story, by the way, especially for young players.
07:16It's a skill to be able to do that at the big league level.
07:18Guys have to teach themselves to be ready every third or fourth or fifth or seventh or two weeks.
07:24It's really, really hard to do, and it's especially hard for a 22-year-old
07:27that's all he's ever done is play.
07:28The other part of the argument, and I care less about this,
07:31but this is something the Nats might say would be,
07:34they want to keep as many of these players in their organization as possible.
07:39So you think about like a Jose Tena who struggled at the major league level,
07:42or Bebas, or whoever it is that you've grown tired of that you go,
07:46if that guy's not on the team, if he's no longer in the organization,
07:51I don't care that much.
07:52Well, they would like to have all of these players,
07:55and so the way to do that is to keep the guys with the options in the minor leagues
07:59and being sent back and forth.
08:00So if you call up, just as an example, a Seaver King,
08:05and you want to send him back down, you have the ability to do that.
08:07As soon as you try to send down Tena, he's able to be claimed by another team.
08:12As soon as you try to send down Bebas, he's able to be claimed.
08:15And so you're losing big league caliber, even if you think it's 4A,
08:20like organizational depth and talent.
08:23Is the juice worth the squeeze if it's not for a starting role?
08:26If it's for a bench spot that's not ideal for the player?
08:29Now, I'd make it work because, just as an example,
08:32like Ioani Morales to me, I can find at-bats for,
08:36whether it's DH-ing first base once a week at third base
08:40with Meade being spelled, something like that,
08:43even though they're both right-handed.
08:44I think you could get to a point where he's playing maybe five or so days a week.
08:48So, like, I would have liked to have seen him called up.
08:50But the role people want him in, the one that's not working,
08:55is Andres Chaparro as a right-handed pinch hitter
08:57who does not produce and hasn't performed.
09:00Well, I wish that was Ioani Morales coming into the game
09:04for that late-inning at-bat.
09:05That's not that friendly of a role for a young guy
09:08to just sit there with your butt bolted to the bench for two days
09:11waiting for the late-inning AB against a lefty throwing 97.
09:15Go in the cage starting in the fifth in case you face a lefty in the eighth.
09:18It's not easy for a kid to do.
09:19It's not easy for anybody, let alone a kid.
09:20So I think that that's part of the complication,
09:23that they really are adamant about the splits, righties, lefties.
09:27There's a lot of platoonable positions right now.
09:31Luis Garcia's played so well that he's getting more opportunity.
09:34But basically, first base is platoon-ish.
09:38Meade is taking over as seemingly an everyday guy at third.
09:41Second base seems to be Nassim Nunez.
09:43But I am interested.
09:44I am curious to see, just bigger picture, what do they think they are.
09:49And they're not going to answer it publicly,
09:51but their actions are going to tell us here in short order
09:53within the next two weeks.
09:55Are you going to add to the bullpen?
09:57My guess is they probably do a little bit of both.
10:00I think they probably sell a piece or two off
10:02that might actually net them something decent back in the system.
10:06But I also would assume that they add a reliever or two.
10:09I don't think they cannot.
10:11I think that the bullpen is so debilitatingly bad
10:14and so crippling to the psyche and the mindset
10:18and the overall makeup of the ball club.
10:22Think about just the last two homestands.
10:25Maybe it's three homestands.
10:27That Philly series where they blew three straight games against the Phillies.
10:30Maybe could add a four-game sweep.
10:32And then the three-game sweep at the hands of the Yankees going into the break.
10:36That's six games where your bullpen lost you games.
10:40Three in a row twice on homestands.
10:42That could completely derail your season.
10:44You flip that script, they're in the playoffs.
10:46Just those six games.
10:47If you just win half of those, you're a game or two out right now.
10:51I just think you can't not do something and be taken seriously.
10:55So in other words, your vision of it is, you know,
10:59you have six of one and half dozen of the other and you kind of swap it.
11:02In other words, you're going like, this isn't going to derail the long term.
11:05We're not really giving that much up.
11:07We're not getting a ton, but we're just sort of changing a couple faulty circuits here.
11:11So if I was running it, Grant to Boney, I would say I'm not doing anything major
11:18to change the construction of this ball club this year necessarily
11:21because I don't think we can win big.
11:24I'm not going to give up any of my blue-chip prospects.
11:27You know, Willett, Sikora, Susana, Cruz, Fitzgerald.
11:30None of those guys are getting moved.
11:32But here's what I won't do.
11:34I'm not going to let the deadline come and go,
11:36and we're just going to keep operating with the same players in the bullpen that can't do it.
11:40I think that's unfair to James Wood.
11:42It's a slap in C.J. Abrams' face.
11:44It's unfair to Curtis Mead.
11:46It's a slap in Cade Cavalli and Foster Griffin's face.
11:49I am going out and I'm getting a couple of relievers.
11:52Even if they're not proven, steady-eddy big leaguers,
11:55if they're like AAA guys that throw 96 to 98 who are worthy of a chance
11:59that are new faces that we're going to give a long leeway to, fine, no problem.
12:04I'll trade from organizational depth.
12:05I'll give up, you know, Eric Swan or, you know, Angel Feliz or Sam Peterson
12:14or whatever that looks like way down my system to go get some of those arms.
12:18But I'm going to add two relievers somehow, someway,
12:20and then otherwise I'm even willing to sell off.
12:24Like, I would be shopping Luis Garcia, who's turned into Barry Bonds right now,
12:27because I think this is the best it's ever going to get.
12:29You could probably do okay in a return for him.
12:31You could probably get a legitimate big league controllable reliever for him.
12:36You might get a back-end, back-of-the-rotation type starter
12:38with a couple years of control for Luis Garcia.
12:40I would be looking into kind of turning a bat into an arm somewhere, if I could.
12:46Yeah, I'm going to trade my 6 out of 10 for your 6 out of 10,
12:49but different positions, something to that effect.
12:52Garcia's the interesting one to me, because of what he's done over the last month.
12:55As you said, he's turned into Percules.
12:56I basically go, I've got first baseman that I think will do almost this,
13:03waiting in the wings, whether it's House coming back up and Meade goes to first,
13:06whether it's Yo-Yo Morales comes up and he's doing that, whatever it is,
13:10I can probably find not the equivalent of that, because, again,
13:13he has 20 homers at the break, already set his career high,
13:16and the last month, nobody in the org is doing that.
13:18That was unbelievable.
13:19But I don't know, as you said, that that's repeatable
13:22or how realistic some of this is.
13:23There's a cooling that's inevitably going to come.
13:25But he's got enough bat to ball that a different org might be intrigued,
13:29might be excited, this might be the guy that helps put you over the top or something.
13:32Someone that comes up in a big spot, you want,
13:34because he's going to put the ball in play with some authority.
13:37So maybe that's your best trade chip right now.
13:39In terms of Griffin, maybe that's the guy that you could dangle somebody,
13:43but for the most part, this is probably an extension candidate,
13:46because I think you pointed this out very well during the course of this week.
13:48It wouldn't cost you that much, and you could have, at minimum, at worst,
13:52a pretty good innings guy.
13:53But at best, it's this, a really good, effective pitcher.
13:56Here's the question on Griffin we could get to next, though.
13:59If you approach him and there's mutual interest, then you keep working on it.
14:03You can get a pretty good feel for how seriously he wants to do an extension.
14:06If he and the agent say, hey, this is an unbelievable year,
14:09I've got to get to the market and see what I can get.
14:12Okay, then I can come back to the table with you in the offseason
14:15and be one of those teams trying to sign you.
14:16And I know that you like me, and I like you, and I know you work well with my pitching
14:20coach,
14:20and he told us on this show he thinks a big reason for the breakout is the way the Nats
14:24have coached him,
14:25essentially.
14:25So you've got a chance to sign him on the open market.
14:28But I would consider moving him in the short term.
14:31Absolutely.
14:31How could you not?
14:33Because, again, he's not bolted down.
14:35If somebody's under contract beyond this season where it looks like you can contend in the next year,
14:39you should do that.
14:40The other thing we've got to talk about, though, is they're going to determine in the next couple weeks
14:44what this looks like for the moment at the All-Star break.
14:47They play their first game of the second half tonight in Sacramento against a bad A's team.
14:52They play two bad teams out of the break.
14:54So if you come out and you go 5-1 in these two series,
14:56and you're 3-over-500 and you're 2-back-in-the-wild card,
15:00I think the story changes a little bit.
15:02But right now, you've lost 3-in-a-row, 6-of-10.
15:05You're 4-back-in-the-wild card.
15:06You're 8-back-in-the-division.
15:08You have not forced Paul Toboni's hand into helping you.
15:11Now, the only way he is going to go out and get them help is if they make him.
15:15And the way to do that is to be within a game or two of the wild card
15:18and to be on the right side of 500.
15:20So they've got to play.
15:21They've got to win.
15:22If they lose 4-in-a-row out of the break,
15:24and now it's 7 straight sandwiched around the All-Star festivities,
15:28and they're 5-under, 500, and they're 7-back-in-the-wild card,
15:32well, the inverse of that is you've made it really easy for Paul Toboni to go,
15:35all right, let's trade Foster Griffin.
15:37Let's make some calls on, you know, I don't think they'll trade Abrams right now,
15:41but other players like Luis Garcia or some of the veterans that have had decent years.
15:47But we can open up the phones on this for you guys next.
15:50800-636-1067.
15:52The Nats are calling up catching prospect Harry Ford.
15:56They are also getting ready to play game one of the second half.
16:00What do you want Paul Toboni to be thinking here going into the final couple weeks
16:05ahead of the trade deadline, and how would you operate if you were him?
16:09Grant and Danny.
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