Photo of the Day: November 27, 2009
Car Pushed Into Anacostia River By Train
Morning Roundup: Black Friday Edition
Devendra Banhart @ 9:30 Club
Saturday Thanks Don't End At Thanksgiving Photo: November 28, 2009
We mentioned it briefly at the end of the day yesterday, so by now you've heard that the Washington Nationals have signed outfielder/firstbaseman Adam Dunn, breathing a bit of off-season life into what's been a fairly tepid winter for last year's worst team in baseball. Dunn theoretically adds some much needed pop to the anemic Nats offense. The left-handed power hitter has hit 40 homeruns in each of his last 5 seasons, and has reached over 100 RBI in 4 of those.
The deal is reportedly for $20 million over 2 years. For $10 million a year, the Lerners can now argue that they are willing to spend at least a little bit of their cash to improve their flailing baseball team.
Dunn, an 8 year veteran, spent most of his career in Cincinnati before being traded to Arizona near the end of last season. At 29, Dunn is durable—he is not prone to injury and almost never misses a game (fingers crossed there's not really a Nats injury curse!). He's also a model of consistency. The last four years he's hit 40 home runs on the dot, though he also consistently hits for a low batting average and is a career .247 hitter. He's led the National League three times in strikeouts, though his 166 Ks last year were a marked improvement from his career high of 190, which came in 2004. If you look up strikeout on Wikipedia, you will see a picture of Adam Dunn. Really.
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Now they'll lose only 101 games!
What's the over/under on how many games he plays for the Nats before he's indicted in a steroids ring.
This is a great signing - the Nats offense has been awful. They desperately need a power hitter to help out Zimmerman. And, they got Dunn at a pretty good price!
Definitely a good signing. Dunn's power far makes up for his low batting average (which the baseball market far over values).
But at what cost? Defense.
For all of the HRs and RBIs Dunn will add, how much will he give back due to his less than mediocre defensive prowess?
But hey, anything associated with the Nats is certain to be an uphill battle.
seriously, how many more former cincinnati reds can we have on this team. the GM is just bringing over as many of his own people as possible.
i personally look forward to the day where they bring out the exhumed corpse of marge schott on the field, complete with nazi regalia.
(how's that for going zero to godwin in under 5 seconds!)
As a lifelong Cincinnati Reds fan, I can tell you that Dunn will be an excellent acquisition. Look past the strikeouts and focus on the consistent HR, RBI and OPS production. He's pretty much a lock for 40 HRs and 100 RBI every year. And at $10 mill per season, he's a virtual steal by MLB contract standards. Great pickup by the Nats.
He's not a "virtual steal" at all, not in this market where Bobby Abreu just signed a one-year, $5-mil contract. The Nats had to overpay to get Dunn.
Dunn got on base at a better clip, slugged 40 points higher, doubled up Abreu in homers, posted an OPS 50 points higher than Abreu, and posted a RC/27 that was a full run higher than Abreu. All that and Dunn is six years younger.
Look at a number of recent signings, though. The market is in a definite downturn [Yankees besides]. I don't think Dunn is "twice" as good as Abreu. I don't think there is much question that the Nats had to overpay to get Dunn; teams coming off 100-loss seasons often have to pay a premium to attract free agents.
It depends on who the comp is. A guy like Teixera goes for $180 million over 8 years. Is Teixera over twice as good as Dunn? Of course not, but it highlights the fallacy of picking a single contract from which to base another player's value. Even in this economy, $10 million per for a guy who is a virtual lock to hit 40 HRs, knock in 100 runs, and get on base at a .380 clip is solid. Plus, the Nats picked him up to play first, which means the gimpy Nick Johnson will no longer be a factor, and Dunn's subpar OF defense will be neutered. Win-win.
My only concern with this signing is that his HR production came in a tiny little bandbox of a ballpark in Cincinnati. I'm not convinced yet he'll be as productive at Nats Park. Sure hope he is, though.
actually, Dunn's homeruns are about equal for home/road last year (21/19) and his average was 20 points higher on the road.
Yep, Dunn's power is for real, and is as consistent as they come. Although Nationals park does slightly supress home runs (.942 park factor for home runs) whereas Cinci's is pretty homer-friendly (1.230 HR park factor), Dunn has such raw power I don't expect it to appreciably decrease his HR totals.
I saw a cool stat recently which said that Dunn's HRs last season averaged the greatest distance of any hitter in baseball.
He'll probably break his arm or tear his ACL by the end of next week.
The guy has plenty of pure power. As long as he doesn't get hurt (and as long as opposing teams don't pitch around him) he should be fine at Nats Park.
Uh... yeah... no one will pitch around him. With that stellar Nats lineup and all...
Well, let's hope he's hitting between Nick Johnson and Ryan Zimmerman all season. 1-8, this doesn't look too awful...
Milledge-8
Dukes-9
Johnson-3
Dunn-7
Zimmerman-5
Guzman-6
Flores-2
Hernandez-4
Well, it ain't...
Rollins-6
Werth-9
Utley-4
Howard-3
Ibanez-7
Victorino-8
Ruiz-2
...but y'all have to start somewhere!
Dunn in LF, keep Johnson at 1B. So for 2 OF positions you have:
Milledge
Dukes
Willingham
Kearns
Pena
Poor Sweet Willy Mo hasn't amounted to much, so you're left with a real battle among the 4. Logjam!!
I suspect somebody gets traded...
I dunno, Pena was good offensively in limited time a couple years ago. Wasn't he hurt last year?
Geez. A .250 career batting average and you can get $10MM a season? Will they pay me $2MM a year for .050?
Maybe - but I'm willing to bet you couldn't hit 8 home runs.
Good point, Kev29. What I lack in HR production, I would undoubtedly have to make up by stepping into fastballs.
No, you're paying for that .900 OPS, .450 SLG and 40 HR/100RBi consistency. Valuing baseball players predominantly on their batting average is a fool's errand.
I'm not sure how signing a ginger will help matters. But as I'm full of prejudice and old fashioned notions of genetic fitness, I'll hold off from making further comment.
Ugh. This guy is going to kill rally after rally after rally with all of the strikeouts.
Yep, cause Ryan Howard is surely hurting the Phillies.
I don't think anyone is confusing Dunn with Howard here ...
Howard and Dunn aren't far apart at all. With Dunn, everyone focuses on the K's and the batting average, which for him only tell a small part of the story. Dunn out OPS'ed Howard by 20 points last year, and their lifetime OBPs are virtually identical (.880 vs. .881). Edge goes to Howard for most overall numbers, but anytime you can present a decent comp to the top NL offensive performer not named Pujols, that's nothing to harp about. Dunn has hit 40 or more homers for five straight years, doesn't get injured, and will create a lot of runs for your team. With a two year deal at a very reasonable cost, this was indeed an excellent pickup by the Nats.
Great signing? Maybe a decent signing, or a pretty good one, but it's not great. The aforementioned strikeouts coupled with not terribly good defense raise some questions about this pickup. But I mean, a few more homeruns puts a few more people in the seats, and maybe this team gets a dozen more wins next year. The real question, posed above, is why the Nats continue to snap up the latest Reds castoffs. It's not as though Cincy (though I love them) has had any real success at all in recent years.
Perhaps they mean great by comparison? The bar is very low.
Outstanding. The Nations have now increased the number of their good players all the way up to, well, one. They now have enough pieces to exceed the goal Blackcloud mentioned of losing the division by 101 games. They should only be 99 back this year! Add five or six more players and the Nats could contend for fourth place in the division.