Two days after my previous post, the owners of the Washington Nationals all but admitted the 2018 season is lost. They did so by trading away two of their more prolific players, Daniel Murphy and Matt Adams.
It’s weird how things work. There is this thing called “revocable waivers,” which means a player placed on this list can be obtained by another team, but the owning team has three options:
- Work out a trade deal with the claiming team.
- Pull the player back off waivers (thereby revoking it).
- Do nothing, and let the player negotiate a contract with the claiming team.
In this case, they let Murphy and Adams go by negotiating with the claiming teams. The Chicago Cubs took Murphy in exchange for cash and a minor league player, and the St. Louis Cardinals took Adams for “cash considerations.”
Pulling a layer back off the baseball “onion,” this is all business. Both Murphy and Adams would have been free agents after the end of the season. This frees up money the Nationals can use for next year.
It also signals surrender. The Nationals have now given up hope of a 2018 postseason, and are looking toward next year.
Both Adams and Murphy are pretty volatile players with really high upside. A fantastic run by Murphy and Adams are exactly what the Nationals need at the moment and they just sold them. On average, it is probably only one win or two, but the impact on the postseason probability is going to be pretty high.
A local sportscaster once quoted, “If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts, oh, what a party we’d have!” There’s no guarantee that Murphy and Adams were poised to have hot streaks, and even they couldn’t carry the team on their shoulders. Consider that the team was winning while Murphy was out, who’s to say they couldn’t go on a tear without him? (Of course, getting blanked two days straight for the third time this season strongly suggests this isn’t going to happen. Thanks for the comment!