Washington Nationals Ship Nick Johnson and Joe Beimel, Receive Prospects

I promise this will be my last post on pre-trade-deadline trades.

The Nationals sent first baseman Nick Johnson to the Marlins for pitcher Aaron Thompson and left-handed pitcher Joe Beimel to the Rockies for Ryan Mattheus and Robinson Fabian.

If any team needed desparately to sell off their valuable veterans for prospects, it was the Nats. 

So what did they get for Johnson and Beimel?

Aaron Thompson is a 22-year-old left-hander who the Fish drafted with the 22nd pick of the 2005 Draft.  However, a first round pedigree is about all he’s got going for him.

Thompson pitched fairly well in the Class A Sally League in 2006 and in the Class A+ Florida State League in 2007. 

However, he apparently suffered an injury late in the ‘07, because his 2008 season was limited to 18 starts.  Sixteen of those starts came in the AA Southern League, and Thompson was hit hard, posting a 5.62 ERA and terrible ratios.

This year Thompson is pitching better in AA ball. 

His ERA is down to 4.11 after 20 2009 starts.  In 114 IP, he’s allowed 121 hits and 43 walks and knotched 75 Ks.  This is a big improvement on his ‘08 performance, but he sure doesn’t look like a sure thing.

The Nats should have gotten more for Johnson. 

Thompson is no better than Scott Barnes, the pitcher the Indians received for Ryan Garko, and Nick Johnson is a better player than Garko.  Johnson has a .412 OBP and an .816 OPS this year, while Garko has a .355 OBP and a .798 OPS.  Over their careers, Johnson has a .399 OBP and an .847 OPS, while Garko has a .353 OBP and an .800 OPS.

One gets the impression that the Nationals way overplayed their hand with Johnson. 

He was one of the first players talked about this year as a possible upgrade-trade candidate to a contender, but he didn’t get traded until almost the deadline.  I tend to think that the Mets and Nats might both have been better off if they had pulled the trigger on a deal in late May or early June.

I also suspect that the Giants traded for Garko because the Nationals wanted too much in return for Johnson.  If Scott Barnes alone could have pried Johnson loose from the Nats, then the Giants made a big mistake.  Johnson has a history of injury problems and he isn’t hitting with much power this year, but a .412 OBP is extraordinarily valuable to weak OBP team like the Giants who were getting little production out of first base, especially when considering that Johnson’s OBP so far this year is well within his career norms.

Garko, as a first baseman, is a player that most teams need to replace if they want to build a contending team, so the Indians were probably overjoyed to get Barnes for him, especially with Garko set for a big raise as an arbitration eligible player this off-season.

The Giants have been so weak at first base the last few seasons, that a first baseman with a career .800 OPS is an improvement.  However, if he doesn’t play better in San Francisco over the last two months than he played in Cleveland over the first four months of ‘09, he isn’t worth the money in this economy that he’ll get as a result of his arbitration eligibility.

I like the Beimel trade better for the Nats.  Beimel has value solely because he’s a left-handed relief specialist who’s having a decent year.  He’s 32 this year, and he really doesn’t have any value except to face one or two left-handed hitters per appearance.

Because Beimel still does that one thing well, he’s good trade bait to a team like the Rockies trying to make the playoffs.  He’s a luxury the Nats don’t need at this point in their rebuilding process, so any young players they get for him is a positive development.

Of the two minor league pitchers the Nats received, Ryan Mattheus looks better.  He’s a 25-year-old right-hander from Galt, California (near Sacramento), who is currently pitching in the AAA Pacific Coast League.

Mattheus started his professional career as a starter and got hit pretty hard from 2005 through 2007.  In 2008, he became a reliever and had a strong year at AA Tulsa, finishing the year with 17 saves and a 3.28 ERA with 27 walks and 56 K’s in 57.2 IP.

Since being promoted to AAA Colorado Springs earlier this season, Mattheus has made 13 relief appearances.  His ERA is only 4.32, but he has 20 Ks against eight walks in 16.2 IP.  He’s at least got a real shot to have a major league career.

The second pitcher the Nats received, Robinson Fabian, is a 23-year-old Dominican, who hasn’t done anything yet in his minor league career to suggest that he will one day pitch in the majors.  He currently has a minor league career ERA of 5.64 and he’s never pitched higher than the Class A Sally League.

Fabian appears to have decent stuff with 249 Ks and 113 walks in 319 minor league innings pitched.  However, he has been hit hard everywhere he’s played.  At age 23 and pitching poorly in Class A ball, it’s hard to see him making it past AA ball, if he makes it that far.

Given that the Nationals have some other veterans who were obvious trade candidates and who would have brought a lot more and better prospects back to Washington (Dunn, Willingham and Christian Guzman to name three), it gives you an idea why the Nationals are as bad as they are. 

Neither the Pirates nor the Indians are as bad this year as the Nats, but they were bad enough to realize they needed to rebuild in a big way.  Meanwhile the Nats did very little, when the only players on their roster they shouldn’t have looked to trade are the two Zimmerman(n)s.