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Bullpen pitcher Yusmeiro Petit burned the Washington Nationals in the postseason in 2014. Now, he will reportedly join them in 2016.

According to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, the Nationals agreed to a one-year contract with the right-handed pitcher on Wednesday, pending a physical. Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet.ca confirmed that Washington was “nearing” a deal with Petit.     

Petit pitched the last four seasons with the San Francisco Giants and posted a 3.67 ERA, 1.18 WHIP and 59 strikeouts in 76 innings in 2015. He only made one start last year, but he does have some experience in that role with 57 starts throughout his MLB tenure.

He finished with an ERA under 4.00 in each of the last four campaigns after he struggled as a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Florida (now Miami) Marlins early in his career.

Sherman noted the Nationals “wanted to upgrade” their bullpen, and Petit will in all likelihood serve as a significant piece in their relief core. However, he provides Washington with some flexibility in case it needs a spot starter because of injury or someone to eat significant innings in a game when the initial pitcher struggles.

Petit is a familiar face to Nationals fans, considering he pitched six innings of one-hit baseball during the Giants’ 18-inning Game 2 victory over Washington in the 2014 divisional series. Jesse Spector of Sporting News reflected on that performance in light of Wednesday’s news:

Petit also set a major league record in 2014, when he retired 46 straight batters with the Giants.

He now joins a Washington team that finished a solid 10th in the league in bullpen ERA last season. Still, Jayson Stark of ESPN.com reported earlier in the offseason that the Nationals were interested in potentially trading Jonathan Papelbon and Drew Storen.

Even if the Nationals only traded one of those back-end pitchers, the bullpen would look vastly different in 2016. Adding a veteran like Petit with postseason experience will help with any transition period.

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Washington Nationals closer Jonathan Papelbon filed a grievance against the club for failing to pay him during a four-game suspension that he served during the 2015 season, per Rob Bradford of WEEI in Boston.

The issue at hand is whether the Nationals owe him the salary they did not pay during his suspension. According to Bradford, Papelbon claims “there is no precedent of a player having his salary withdrawn after such a team-issued suspension.”

Here is video footage of the incident involving a skirmish with teammate Bryce Harper that resulted in Papelbon’s suspension, per MLB.com:

Papelbon ended up serving a seven-game suspension after MLB added three games to the team-imposed ban, shutting him down for the rest of the season.

Whether Papelbon agreed with it at the time or not, the Nationals issued a statement shortly after the incident, noting the team would not pay him during the suspension:

This creates an awkward situation for both sides. But MLB is a business, and Papelbon is trying to recoup some, or all, of the money he missed out on.

MLB has a strong players’ union, but this seems like a clear-cut case: Either the rule says a player is paid during a team-imposed suspension, or it doesn’t.

According to Bradford, no hearing date has been set for the 35-year-old closer who has amassed 349 saves during his 11-year career.

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The Washington Nationals have signed left-handed reliever Oliver Perez to a two-year, $7 million deal, according to Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com.

Perez, a 13-year veteran, spent 2015 with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Houston Astros, pitching two games in the American League Division Series.

He was a starter for his first nine years before rejuvenating his career in the bullpen in 2010 with the Seattle Mariners. As a reliever, Perez is 9-14 with a 3.31 ERA, a 1.322 WHIP, 11.1 strikeouts per nine innings and a pair of saves.

Nationals relievers were 10th in the majors last year with a combined 3.46 ERA, and Perez will likely be a setup man in Washington. At closer, the Nationals already have Jonathan Papelbon, who took Drew Storen’s job when the Philadelphia Phillies traded him to Washington before the non-waiver deadline in late July.

Addressing the bullpen was a chief offseason concern for the Nationals, per Bill Ladson of MLB.com:

It needs a serious makeover. The Nationals need everything from a closer to setup men to middle relievers. During the second half of the 2015 season, they had a tough time getting to closer Jonathan Papelbon in the ninth inning because setup men, such as Casey Janssen and Drew Storen, were getting roughed up.

The Nationals failed to make the playoffs in 2015 after beginning the campaign as preseason World Series favorites, per Odds Shark.

Washington’s remarkable rotation has already lost Jordan Zimmermann in free agency, which means it will have to lean on its bullpen even more if it hopes to catch the reigning National League champion New York Mets in what is developing into a competitive NL East.

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Washington Nationals infielder Yunel Escobar is reportedly on the trade block as front offices begin preparing their plans for the 2015 winter meetings.  

Continue for updates.

Nationals Expected To Shop Escobar Next Week

Thursday, Dec. 3

Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com reported Escobar is one of the players who could be on the move when general managers meet up in Nashville, Tennessee.

The 33-year-old natural shortstop spent all of his time at third base for the Nationals last season. He also put together one of the most complete seasons of his career at the plate with a .314 average, .375 on-base percentage and 35 extra-base hits, including nine home runs.

In turn, the Nationals may view this as a chance to sell high on the veteran.

James Wagner of the Washington Post noted in October there might not be a spot available for Escobar next season. If Anthony Rendon and Danny Espinosa are both healthy and prospect Trea Turner continues to make progress, the team will become overcrowded on the infield.

So the winter meetings represent an opportunity to move Escobar while he still holds solid value in order to upgrade the roster elsewhere.

Trading for him would come with some risk, though. Before his resurgent 2015 campaign, he posted a batting average below .260 in three straight seasons. He’s also struggled in the field as of late, posting a minus-24 Defensive Runs Saved figure at short in 2014 and a minus-11 mark at third last season, per FanGraphs.

Those numbers should temper expectations in terms of what the Nationals could get in return. But, given their limited space on the infield, it sounds like they’ll at least listen to offers.

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Last winter, the Washington Nationals signed the best pitcher on the free-agent market and proceeded to have a massively disappointing season.

So what should they do this winter? Why, sign the best pitcher on the free-agent market, of course—a fellow by the name of David Price.

Here’s where you raise your hand and mutter something about the definition of insanity. Fair enough. But let’s think about this for a minute.

The Nats didn’t miss the playoffs in 2015 because of Max Scherzer, their shiny offseason prize. In fact, Scherzer was a bright spot; he twirled a pair of no-hitters and generally lived up to his seven-year, $210 million pact. 

The rest of the Nationals’ hyped “super rotation” didn’t fare as well. Jordan Zimmermann and Gio Gonzalez wobbled in stretches, Stephen Strasburg suffered through injures and inconsistency and Doug Fister was demoted to the bullpen.

Now, Zimmermann and Fister are free agents, and the Nats have a need.

Enter Price, the biggest fish in the hot-stove pot.

The ace left-hander and former American League Cy Young Award-winner won’t come cheap. His leading suitors, according to Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal, include the Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants. 

That has insane bidding war written all over it, as Rosenthal spelled out:

The baseball planets are aligned perfectly for David Price.

Two heated rivals in the NL Central want him. So do two in the NL West. So does another team from his old AL East that is widely expected to be the high bidder.

Don’t be surprised if Price gets a deal that meets or exceeds Scherzer‘s. Even in a deep pool of starting pitchers, he’ll have his pick of destinations with a Matterhorn-sized mountain of cash waiting.

So why should the Nationals even consider wading in? Well, again, they need a starter, at least, if Zimmermann and Fister walk. And remember, Strasburg is due to hit the market next winter and will command a crazy contract of his own. 

Adding Price would give Washington a world-beating lefty-righty combo. Scherzer is 31 and Price is 30, and the former Detroit Tigers teammates have been extremely durable. A team in win-now mode couldn’t order a much better one-two punch.

That raises the question: Are the Nats in win-now mode? Entering last season, the answer was an unequivocal “yes,” but the picture’s murkier now.

After limping to a dysfunctional second-place finish, Washington is suddenly staring up at the New York Mets in the NL East.

Still, there’s plenty to like about this team, beginning with newly minted NL MVP Bryce Harper, whose monster season may have been a mere preview of coming attractions. Yes, Washington needs to add pieces around Harper to bolster an offense that was bitten by injuries and could lose shortstop Ian Desmond and center fielder Denard Span to free agency.

That sounds like an argument against breaking the bank on Price, and if signing him precludes adding anyone else of consequence, the Nationals should think twice.

Again, though, this is a franchise that not so long ago was viewed as a prohibitive World Series favorite. After jettisoning manager Matt Williams and bringing on the veteran combo of skipper Dusty Baker and pitching coach Mike Maddux, Washington has a shot at redemption.

“I think the team is ready to win, that’s what I like about it,” Maddux said, per the Washington Post‘s Chelsea Janes. “I don’t see what’s holding them back, really.” 

To keep pace with the pitching-rich Mets, however, bold action is required.

While a Price/Scherzer pairing would represent a huge expenditure, the Nats can fill in the rest of their rotation with young, affordable talent. Assuming Strasburg departs next winter (if he’s not traded sooner) Gonzalez—who is inked through 2018 at $12 million a season—would be the No. 3.

After that, the Nats could slot in some combination of Tanner Roark, Joe Ross and top prospect Lucas Giolito, all of whom are under team control through 2020 or beyond. Splurge at the top, save at the bottom.

To further make the financial side feasible, ESPN’s David Schoenfield suggested the Nationals could backload Price’s contract, since only Scherzer and first baseman Ryan Zimmerman are locked into expensive long-term deals. 

No matter what, this winter represents a turning point for the Nationals, as general manager Mike Rizzo recently acknowledged.

“The decisions we make this season are going to shape not only the 2016 season but beyond,” Rizzo said, per James Wagner of the Washington Post. “It’s going to be an exciting, busy, important offseason.”

Important is a given. To make it busy and exciting, Rizzo must get to work. Dangling a serious offer in front of Price and seeing if he bites would be an excellent start.

All statistics and contract information current as of Nov. 26 and courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

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A few months ago, Bryce Harper entered 2015 looking to silence the many doubters who thought he was, at worst, a huge disappointment or, at best, overrated.

If nothing the Washington Nationals star right fielder did throughout his phenomenal 2015 campaign could, him winning the National League Most Valuable Player should do the trick.

It was hardly a surprise when the news came down on Thursday. Though Arizona Diamondbacks first baseman Paul Goldschmidt and Cincinnati Reds first baseman Joey Votto were technically in the running for the NL MVP next to Harper, there was little question that the award was going to be his in a landslide.

It was just a question of how big of a landslide it was going to be, and it turned out to be unanimous.

At just 22 years and 353 days old on the final day of the regular season, Harper is the third-youngest player ever to win the NL MVP, behind only Johnny Bench in 1970 and Stan Musial in 1943. But of all the unanimous winners in the history of the MVP, he stands alone as the youngest.

And now for a point that is very, very, very hard to argue: Harper deserves every bit of the satisfaction he’s now feeling.

Harper’s 2015 season was, after all, nothing short of stupendous. All he did was hit .330 while co-leading the NL in home runs with 42 and leading all of baseball in on-base percentage (.460), slugging percentage (.649) and OPS (1.109). In the eyes of OPS+, a version of OPS adjusted for league average, Harper’s 2015 season was the best offensive performance since Barry Bonds’ 2004 campaign.

Throw in solid work on the basepaths and on defense, and Harper also topped all other position players in wins above replacement, whether you ask Baseball-Reference.com or FanGraphs.

In all, the only argument against Harper’s victory is that the Nationals didn’t make the playoffs. But that’s not a prerequisite for winning the MVP, nor is it a legitimate criticism of the season Harper just had.

For that matter, there are no legitimate criticisms of the season Harper just had.

This, of course, is the first time in Harper’s major league career that we’ve been able to say such a thing.

Two years after the Nationals drafted him No. 1 overall, Harper was good enough to win Rookie of the Year in 2012. Even still, he often looked like a rookie throughout the year. He was good again in 2013, but he was often hurt and was inconsistent down the stretch. In 2014, it was the same story.

By the end of that year, you could apparently look at Harper’s .816 career OPS and feel underwhelmed. His fellow players sure did, anyway, voting him baseball’s most overrated player in an ESPN the Magazine poll at the outset of 2015. At the time, you could wade into virtually any comments section and get the sense that fans felt the same way.

Harper’s response? Well, he just sort of clicked.

It wasn’t any one thing that led to Harper’s monster season. One guy who’s well aware of this is Nationals hitting coach Rick Schu, per Bill Ladson of MLB.com:

It was a combination of things as to why Harper had a great year. The No. 1 thing is that he stayed healthy. This past season, he was able to get comfortable with his hands. He was able to take the pitch that was given him. He was going line to line. I think his confidence really helped him with everything—pitch selection and taking his walk. He really slowed things down.

Harper staying healthy was indeed the No. 1 thing. After playing in only 218 games total in 2013 and 2014 because of injuries, he experienced only minor aches and pains on his way to playing in 153 games in 2015. If nothing else, this afforded him a chance to settle into a rhythm.

But Harper made tangible changes as well, most notably with his plate discipline. When looking at his Zone% and O-Swing% rates—those being how often he saw pitches in the strike zone and how often he swung at pitches outside the strike zone—Schu’s point about Harper’s learning to take pitches rings true:

In 2015, pitches in the zone continued to come infrequently for Harper. But because he stopped obliging pitchers by chasing their junk, he drew a ton of walks (19.0 BB%) and reaped the benefits of keeping his swings confined mainly to the strike zone.

Like, for example, a career-high 40.9 hard-hit rate and, by extension, slugging percentages over .800 to right field, center field and left field.

Such is the technical explanation for how Harper went from being a solid hitter to being the game’s most dangerous hitter. The more practical explanation is that he became more than just an incredible bundle of raw talent. For the first time in his career, Harper played with his body and his head.

As much as anything, this would appear to be related to how Harper’s head was finally in the right place in 2015.

Beyond his inconsistency, one of the problems Harper’s critics had with him before his big breakout was that he acted too big for his britches. He often came off like a walking, talking ego. When he got into a dugout scrap with Jonathan Papelbon at the end of 2015, it looked like maybe nothing had changed.

Either that, or the Papelbon confrontation was an anomaly. Teammate Ian Desmond saw an improvement in Harper’s attitude, per James Wagner of the Washington Post:

He learned from the negative stuff he was doing a couple years ago. Beyond what happened at the end of the year, no one talked about Bryce Harper not running the bases hard. He was playing the game the right way. At the end of the year, emotions are high, and that [fight with Papelbon] just surfaced from basically nothing. All year long, he played the game the right way and carried himself like a professional.

Looking back, it’s almost as if Harper chose to stop and listen to every last critique that was being hurled his way, and that his 2015 season was his way of saying, “This is what you want me to be? OK, then.”

And now that Harper’s 2015 season is in the bag, it’s amazing how different his career looks. Beyond placing him among today’s elite players, Ace of MLB Stats couldn’t help but notice that Harper’s 2015 campaign elevated him to a pretty special place among the all-time elites:

Mind you, this is not to suggest that Harper is destined to have a career that will rival that of Hammerin’ Hank. He has a lot of baseball ahead of him, and we’re obligated to grant that anything could happen.

But for now, at least, things are definitely looking up. For anyone who dared to peg him as such, Harper is no longer a disappointment. Or overrated.

Nope. He’s now an MVP and everything that anyone ever wanted him to be.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.

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That headline sounds absurd, doesn’t it? The guy already has three All-Star appearances, two postseason appearances, 97 major league home runs and a DVR full of knock-your-breath-away highlight clips.

Seriously, you need more Bryce Harper hype right now probably only slightly more than you need an IRS audit.

He is going to win his first National League MVP award Thursday, and it probably will be unanimous, and it absolutely should be unanimous. (Full disclosure: I had a Baseball Writers’ Association of America NL MVP vote this year and had Harper No. 1 on my ballot.)

But, about this “we’ve seen nothing yet” part of the equation?

Believe it.

Here’s the thing about Harper and the historical season he produced in 2015: It was the first time in his career he played from Opening Day until season’s end without landing on the disabled list.

Going into the summer, we all knew what he could do in spurts. We’ve all seen the hot streaks. But the one part of his game left to our imagination was if he could stay healthy for an entire season, what would it look like?

Boy, did we get our answer.

Some of the statistical hurdles he jumped in his age-22 season have only been cleared before by Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Eddie Mathews, Mel Ott, Johnny Bench and Joe DiMaggio. All Hall of Famers.

No player in history has produced 42 home runs and 124 walks in a season as young as Harper since Babe Ruth (54 and 150) did it in his age-25 season in 1920.

No player ever has produced 42 homers, 124 walks and 118 runs scored in his age 22 or younger season, and no player of any age has done it since Barry Bonds in MVP seasons in 2001 (age 36) and 2004 (age 39).

The 42 homers he jack-hammered are the second-most by a left-handed hitter age 22 or younger after Mathews (47 in 1953) and Ott (42 in 1929).

At 22 years and 335 days, Harper became the sixth-youngest player in MLB history to reach the 40-homer plateau in a season after Ott (1929, 20 years, 203 days), Mathews (1953, 21 years, 316 days), Bench (1970, 22 years, 249 days), DiMaggio (1937, 22 years, 285 days) and Juan Gonzalez (1992, 22 years, 331 days), according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

In ranking second in the NL in batting average (.330; the Marlins‘ Dee Gordon was first at .333), and first in both on-base percentage (.460) and slugging percentage (.649), Harper narrowly missed winning the “slash” Triple Crown. Only three players as young as Harper have ever won the “slash” Triple Crown: Cobb (1909), Williams (1941) and Stan Musial (1943).

“Two years ago I saw him against Philadelphia and he had a play in the outfield and threw the runner out easy at third base, and [it was such a great play] I was like, ‘I don’t believe he can do that again,'” one longtime scout said. “And he did it again.”

That’s the thing about Harper: He is doing things we haven’t seen before—at least, not in this generation—and he is young enough to keep doing them again and again.

Two specifics distinguished this season from Harper’s first three, both of which he and I discussed in March during a visit at the Nationals‘ spring training camp in Viera, Florida.

The first, of course, was balancing his need to stay off the disabled list with that fine line between playing all out all the time and being smart enough to know when to throttle things back, even if just a tiny bit.

“I just need to be a little smarter, pick my spots, but I’m still going to play hard and play this game the right way,” Harper told me that day.

Consider that item checked off his to-do list.

The second thing that elevated him to historical proportions this season was his soaring on-base percentage: Not only did he reduce his strikeout percentage to 20 percent in ’15 from 26.3 percent in ’14, bur he sharply increased his walk percentage to 19 percent in ’15 from 9.6 percent in ’14.

Most interesting about that is last spring, strikeouts didn’t seem to concern him much.

“My on-base percentage was pretty good,” he told Bleacher Report. “As long as I’m getting on base and doing the things I’m doing, if I strike out, I strike out. That’s just how it is.

“Just like a groundout to third base or a popup to the second baseman. Instead of putting the ball in play, you’re striking out. It’s still an out. If my on-base percentage is still there, that’s the biggest thing. If I get on base, I make things happen. That’s the biggest thing for me.”

Yet his refusal to bite on pitches outside of the strike zone in 2015, elevated to Bondsian-like discipline, is the part of his game that was most noticeable and most responsible for boosting his on-base percentage to .460 in ’15 from .344 in ’14.

One other indicator that the best is yet to come for Harper: Because of his youth, every single pitcher he faced through his first 414 MLB games was older than him. Not until he matched up against Yankees left-hander Jacob Lindgren in early June, in his 415th MLB game, did Harper face a pitcher who was younger than him. Lindgren, 22, was five months younger than Harper at the time.

According to Baseball-Reference.com’s Similarity Scores, the hitters most similar to Harper through their age-22 seasons are Frank Robinson, Tony Conigliaro, Mickey Mantle, Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout, Hank Aaron, Ken Griffey Jr., Orlando Cepeda, Andruw Jones and Cesar Cedeno.

Four of those players—Robinson, Mantle, Aaron and Cepeda—are in the Hall of Fame. Another, Griffey, will be when this year’s Hall election results are announced in January. And Cabrera (32) and Trout (24), at different stages of their careers, are on track.

For all of these reasons, it is reasonable to expect that Harper will improve. And that, as MLB pushes deeper into this century, Harper will continue to emerge as one of the faces of the game who propel it forward.   

“He could be the youngest star to represent the face of the game since Ken Griffey Jr.,” said Blake Rhodes, a longtime media relations director with the San Francisco Giants who now is a vice president in corporate and public affairs for Ketchum Inc., the world’s third-largest public relations firm. “Nike really tied into Griffey in the mid-’90s, especially coming out of the [1994-95] strike.

“He was ‘The Kid.’ He was playful. Harper has a playful side to him, but he’s also intense. Griffey was intense too, but had that million-dollar smile. With Harper, he can come across as more intense, but he’s also got that matinee-idol look.”

It is a good call and an intriguing thought, whether Harper will emerge as this generation’s Griffey Jr. Certainly, both relate to baseball’s younger demographic, which is the lifeblood for the sport’s future.

“There’s some intrigue to Harper,” Rhodes said. “I think people are always curious to see when he takes his hat off, what kind of hairstyle he’s rocking. You also want to see what he does on the baseball field because he does some memorable things. I remember him taking on that wall in Dodger Stadium, and in the division series against the Giants [in 2014], he had some prodigious home runs.

“It’s akin to Griffey back in the day, when it was ‘Let’s see how far he can hit it.’ I was flipping around MLB Network a week-and-a-half ago and they were doing something on Griffey and showed him in the Home Run Derby in Baltimore in ’93 when he hit one to the warehouse and people were just going bananas out there.”

Michael Jordan and LeBron James have since supplanted Griffey Jr. as the chief poster boys at Nike, and other than Derek Jeter, baseball hasn’t produced many national faces. Which isn’t surprising, given the NBA’s surge in popularity in recent years.

“Baseball is such a regionalized sport,” Rhodes said. “Players have more marketability in their region than nationally, from what I’ve found. That’s starting to change a little bit.”

With Harper and the more vanilla Trout, there is a chance that could change a lot in the coming years.

The package that Harper brings with him—incredible talent and a voracious appetite for both the game and success—can help spur that change.

“I want to be an All-Star. That’s huge,” Harper, whose knowledge of and respect for the game’s history is impressive, told me last spring. “To get voted in by the fans as one of the best players in baseball, you want to do that.

“You want All-Star Games and to do Home Run Derbies, and you want to enjoy hanging out with the guys at those things.

“When you’re a little kid, that’s what you dream of. But at the end of the year, you want to be able to place that trophy over your head and kiss that thing every night.”

No doubt, that last part will continue to drive Harper after the Nationals crashed and burned this summer. And after he collects his first NL MVP award, you can count on this: That drive will continue to push Harper to greater heights as he continues to mature, and the game’s best will only get better. It will be something to see.

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

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Washington Nationals starting pitcher Stephen Strasburg is recovering after undergoing surgery to remove a growth in his back, per Fox Sports’ Jon Morosi. 

Continue for updates.

Scott Boras: Growth ‘Caused Discomfort While Pitching’

Wednesday, Nov. 11

Scott Boras confirmed the back issues affected Strasburg’s performance during the season and that the pitcher is feeling better following the procedure, per Morosi.

The injury saga continues for Strasburg, who has made 30-plus starts in a single season just twice in his six-year career.

After a slew of injuries in 2015 that included neck tightness and an oblique strain, he most recently returned from a back issue that forced him out of an August 30 start against the Colorado Rockies that sidelined him for 10 days. 

With the timing of the back procedure, Strasburg will have plenty of rest to recover before spring training begins.

There’s no question it will be imperative that Strasburg has a big season—both for his own career and his team’s benefit.

Washington still has the pieces to win right now, and hiring Dusty Baker showed the franchise’s commitment to competing for a World Series in 2016. If the Nationals lose Jordan Zimmermann to free agency this winter, Strasburg will be a key piece of the starting rotation.

The 27-year-old also has a lot on the line since he has just one more year of arbitration left before hitting the open market. The right-hander is in line for a massive payday should he pitch well and remain healthy next year. Given his recent history, those are both big question marks.

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Washington Nationals reliever Drew Storen went from one of the most reliable relievers in the league to a bullpen liability as the Nats failed to meet preseason expectations in a lackluster 2015. Now, the right-hander finds himself the subject of trade rumors.

Continue for updates.

Nationals Interested in Trading Storen

Tuesday, Nov. 10 

It looks like Storen won’t be a member of the Nationals bullpen for much longer. According to Jon Heyman of CBS Sports, the team is “considering deals” for the former closer who had previously asked to be traded. 

In 2014, Storen was unhittable at times, recording a 1.12 ERA in 56.1 innings. Things changed in 2015, when Storen allowed 23 runs in 55.0 innings, including a pair of appearances in which he allowed the division-rival New York Mets to come back or take the lead in the late innings during the final months of the season. 

When the team acquired closer Jonathan Papelbon, Storen didn’t seem too thrilled about the move, as he told Chris Johnson of MASN:

Really, all I’m gonna say is that obviously I’m aware of the move. I’ve talked to (Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo) about it. I’ve talked to my agent. We’ve had some ongoing discussions. Until those have progressed, I’m just gonna leave it at that and no comment for now. But as the situation goes, I’ll keep you guys posted.

It’s apparent his relationship with the organization has been strained over the past few months, and it might be beyond repair, especially if the team decides to hold on to Papelbon, whom it’s also receiving calls for, according to Heyman.    

Teams who are looking for back-end help in their bullpen should take a good look at Storen. Immersing him in a new setting and new culture could do wonders for a reliever who is still capable of dominating. 

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.

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The Washington Nationals needed wholesale coaching changes, and they got them this week.

First, on Tuesday, Dusty Baker was named Washington’s new manager. And on Wednesday, the team announced the hiring of Mike Maddux as its pitching coach.

The Baker choice—which came after a botched run at Bud Black—raised a lot of eyebrows, and we’ll get to that in a moment.

First, let’s state something for the record: This is a good move for the Nationals as they attempt to steer away from the wreckage of a crash-and-burn 2015 season. Baker and Maddux are the right duo at the right time for an ultra-talented franchise in need of a course correction.

Baker comes to the nation’s capital after 20 seasons at the helm of the San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds, during which he compiled a 1,671-1,504 record, made seven trips to the postseason and won three National League Manager of the Year awards. 

For his part, Maddux spent six seasons as the Milwaukee Brewers‘ pitching coach and another eight in the same position with the Texas Rangers.

When he arrived in Arlington, the Rangers’ pitching staff had put up an unsightly 5.14 ERA between 2000 and 2008. On Maddux’s watch, that number was shaved to 4.06, and Texas posted sub-4.00 ERAs from 2010 to 2013, a span that included a pair of World Series appearances.

So both men boast sterling resumes. And, in Maddux’s case especially, excellent reputations. 

Which brings us back to the matter of Baker, and the oft-repeated knocks against him. Really, there are two. First, that he’s too old-school, a stats-averse, anti-analytical luddite in a game that’s increasingly ruled by numbers. Second, that he rides young pitchers until their arms fall off.

The first criticism comes in part from a handful of controversial statements Baker has made. Here’s one of the more infamous, recently recycled by Nicholas Parco and Kate Feldman of the New York Daily News, “On-base percentage is great if you can score runs and do something with that on-base percentage. On-base percentage just to clog up the bases isn’t that great to me.”

“Clogging the bases” became a teeth-gnashing rallying cry for the sabermetric crowd, and Baker was cast as a know-nothing knuckle-dragger.

Then again, he managed Barry Bonds in San Francisco and Joey Votto in Cincinnati, and those guys were pretty adept at getting on base. So he can’t hate OBP that much.

We’ll get back to the stats business in a moment. First, though, let’s parse the second critique, that Baker burns through young pitchers.

That comes from his days with the Cubs, when he worked Mark Prior and Kerry Wood hard, particularly during Chicago’s ill-fated 2003 playoff run. Both pitchers, of course, had their careers cut short by injury. 

That memory is burned into a lot of fans’ minds, so they don’t recall that Baker began decreasing his pitchers’ workloads just as the rest of baseball did the same. In fact, FanGraphs‘ Jeff Sullivan created a handy chart showing the number of starts pitchers on Baker’s teams made between 2000 and 2013 during which they threw 120 or more pitches. 

Check it out for yourself, but it takes a steady and dramatic downward trajectory, as Sullivan outlines:

Baker used to push his starters. More recently, he hasn’t done that. The league overall has behaved similarly, now with a greater degree of pitcher caution, and at this point it doesn’t seem like it should really matter how Baker managed between 2003 – 2006. Even if you really, truly, deeply believe Baker has some blood on his hands for what took place with Wood and Prior, that doesn‘t have anything to do with the 2016 Nationals. Over six years with the Reds, Baker oversaw 24 starts with 120+ pitches, a lower total than his 2003 alone. Over those six years, the Reds ranked 10th in baseball in that category, five starts above the league average of 19.

So the pitcher-killer thing is outdated and overblown, and should be particularly neutralized by the presence of Maddux.

What about the stats, though? Can Nats fans expect Baker to make some head-scratching decisions from the top step, calling for a few maddening sacrifice bunts, or putting low-OBP guys at the top of the lineup? Maybe. OK, almost definitely. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and the 66-year-old Baker is definitely an old dog.

Managing, though, is as much about juggling personalities and creating clubhouse cohesion as it is about specific strategies. You don’t want your skipper to be a dunce, obviously, but if he loses control of his players, all the well-laid plans in the world won’t matter.

And one thing Baker has always had is a reputation as a players’ manager. That will serve him well with the Nationals, who were quite literally at each others’ throats by the end of last season.

Former Nats manager Matt Williams, who played under Baker in San Francisco, lost his team as a once-promising season began to circle the drain. 

“It’s a terrible environment,” an unnamed player told Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post in September. “And the amazing part is everybody feels that way.”

Now, Baker and Maddux have a chance to reverse that culture. Baker can call upon his years managing Bonds and Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa as he builds a rapport with brash superstar Bryce Harper. And he can think back to the prickly relationship between Bonds and Giants second baseman Jeff Kent, who once came to blows in the dugout themselves, as he attempts to smooth things over between Harper and closer Jonathan Papelbon.

Maddux, meanwhile, should be like a kid on Christmas morning as he works with co-aces Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg, as well as top prospect Lucas Giolito.

Lest we forget, this is still a loaded roster with more than enough talent to contend in 2016. Yes, the NL champion Mets are now the class of the division, but the Nats are capable of challenging them and erasing the bitter taste of a lost season.

Will Baker and, to a lesser extent, Maddux ever give fans and pundits fuel for frustration? Of course; all managers and coaches do. But on balance, they’re solid hires with complementary skill sets and represent a step toward the light.

At the risk of sounding like a pontificating politician, change was needed in D.C. And now, change has come.

All statistics current as of Nov. 4 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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