Who is Wilson Ramos?

The newest member of the Washington Nationals, that's who! The Nats made their first splash on the trade market Thursday night, moving All-Star closer Matt Capps to the Minnesota Twins for minor league catcher Wilson Ramos and lefthanded pitcher Joe Testa. The 22 year old Venezuelan catcher hit .296/.321/.407 in 7 games for the Twins this year, but struggled in 71 games in AA, to the tune of .241/.280/.345. The 24 year old New Jerseyan reliever burned through low levels of the minors after being signed as an undrafted free agent in 2008, but has been hit hard in his first stay in AA this year, allowing 22 earned runs in 25 innings.

Ramos' rankings amongst all prospects:

#42: Keith Law of ESPN (1/28/2010)

#58: Baseball America (2/23/2010)

#65: Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus (3/3/2010)

Ramos' rankings amongst Twins prospects

#2 overall prospect, best power hitter, best defensive catcher: Baseball America (1/12/2010)

#2 overall prospect, Marc Hulet, Fangraphs (12/14/2009)

#2 overall prospect, Josh Johnson, Josh's Thoughts (4/16/2010)

#4 overall prospect: John Sickels, MinorLeagueBall.com (10/19/2009)

Winter League Player of the Year: Baseball America (3/5/2010)

Notes on Ramos:

"Grade B-. Power and defense are positives, main question is weak walk rate." John Sickels, MinorLeagueBall.com (10/19/2009)

"The Venezuela native isn’t far from being MLB-ready after hitting .317/.341/.454 in ’09 at double-A. Ramos has always hit for a solid average, but he’s also consistently produced healthy BABIPs, although many catchers suffer from chronically-low numbers in that area (due to a lack of foot speed). A catcher with raw power, he has nonetheless failed to post an ISO above .149 in his four-year career. Ramos also posted a walk rate of just 2.8% in ’09, so that obviously has to improve and he typically walks about 7.0%. His strikeout rate plummeted from 22.8% in ’08 to 11.2% in ’09, but injuries took a chunk out of his season and he had just 214 plate appearances. We’ll have to wait for 2010 to see if that was a true adjustment, or a small-sample-size blip. Behind the dish, Ramos has thrown out +40% in each of the past three seasons." Marc Hulet, Fangraphs (12/14/2009)

"While Ramos seems capable of becoming a quality starting catcher in the majors one day, he has struggled to stay healthy: he broke the tip of his left middle finger and injured his hamstring last year, missing nearly three months total. Also, Ramos doesn’t have much experience in the upper levels of the minors. He took 214 trips to the plate at Double-A last year and was off to a slow start at Triple-A this season (.179/.214/.328 in 70 PA, with three walks and 15 punch outs). CHONE projected a .263/.303/.394 line prior to 2010, and ZiPS had a .256/.297/.369 forecast. Four-for-five start aside, Ramos might not hit the ground running." David Golbiewski, Fangraphs (5/3/2010)

"A key factor for Ramos going forward will be learning when to use his aggressiveness, strength and bat speed, and when to lay off pitches. His plate discipline showed signs of improvement in winter ball. Overall, after drawing just six walks in 224 at-bats during the minor league regular season, Ramos drew 29 in 273 at-bats in Venezuela." John Manuel, Baseball America (3/5/2010)

"Ramos' offensive prowess is mostly what he is known for, but Ramos is also a stout defender behind the plate. Pitchers like the way he calls the game and his strong arm makes it hard for base runners to steal on him." Josh Johnson, Josh's Thoughts (4/16/2010)

"Even if this year's struggles can be chalked up to some bad luck, however, Ramos is far from a sure thing as a prospect. His walk rates, while along his career norm, are still very low. For his professional career, Ramos has walked just 82 times in 5 seasons, spanning over 1400 plate appearances and coinciding with 242 strikeouts. Without the power to compensate such free-swinging tendencies, Ramos will have to hit for a high average in the majors in order to avoid being an out-making machine. Whether or not he is able to adjust to major league pitching and curtail his tendency to hack away at the plate will ultimately determine his career path as a major leaguer, but his Mendoza Line-straddling batting average this year in Triple-A is no more a prediction than was his red-hot major league debut." MLB Prospect Watch (7/6/2010)

"On the other hand, Wilson Ramos has been totally overmatched by Triple-A pitching, posting a hideous 41-to-8 strikeout-to-walk ratio while hitting just .208/.244/.319 in 52 games. Ramos showed reasonable enough plate discipline in the low minors, but since advancing to Double-A last year he has 14 walks and 64 strikeouts in 106 games. He's making contact at a palatable rate, but the total lack of patience is disturbing along with a .427 career slugging percentage.

Ramos remains a very solid prospect largely due to projecting as a good defensive catcher, but it was always wishful thinking to assume he was even close to an MLB-ready impact bat and that notion now looks silly. With that said, he's still just 22 years old and has fewer than 450 plate appearances above Single-A, so there's no need to sour on Ramos too much." Aaron Gleeman (7/7/2010)

Here are Wilson Ramos' Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference links.

Not a whole lot on Testa.

He had a Q and A with SethSpeaks.net in 2009: "I throw a fastball, curve, slider, change up and a cutter. I’d say my out pitch would be my fastball and cutter. I’ve been working a lot more on my off speed pitches and my pick off move."

Bleacher Report (via Baseball News Share, as the original article has been taken down) had him as the 49th Twins prospect in 2010. Top insight: "He doesn’t have great velocity on any of his pitches, in fact he tops out around 90 mph, but he does fool hitters with outstanding movement."

Here are Joe Testa's Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference links.

Getting a top 50-75 prospect in return for a non-elite closer is a great deal in my opinion. Getting an interesting lefty as well is icing on the cake. Well done, Mike Rizzo. Best of luck in Minnesota, Matt Capps.

3 reasons why the Nationals should avoid Edwin Jackson like the plague

MLB Trade Rumors first reported a month ago yesterday that the Nats were interested in Edwin Jackson. I thought the interest was just going to blow over, as teams have "interest" in dozens of players at any given time. But on Saturday, Jackson's name was tied to the Nats again. And yesterday, Tim Dierkes reported on two different rumors, one where the Nats would get Jackson in a 3-way deal that would send Adam Dunn to the White Sox and another where the Nats would simply acquire Jackson for prospects. There are more than just 3 reasons I think making a move for Edwin Jackson would be a bad idea, but these are 3 reasons I think are specific to the Nats.

1. In a deal for Dunn, Jackson is worth less to the Nats than an elite prospect would be.

Daniel Hudson alone is worth more than Edwin Jackson to me. If the Nats can snag him alone for Dunn, they've made out okay at least. If, as rumored, they can come up with another nice prospect like Danks/Flowers/Morel, or even a guy a tier below that, they've blown a Jackson-for-Dunn deal out of the water. The prospects they can get back for Dunn can come close to Jackson's performance right off the bat, but will also be controllable (and cheaper) for many more seasons. This leads into my next point.

2. Jackson is expensive and only controllable through 2011.

Jackson signed a 2 year, $13.35 million extension with the Diamondbacks in February, with $8.35 of the payment planned for the 2011 season. He stood at 4 years and 70 days of ML service time going into the 2010 season and is more or less a lock to hit the 6 years of service time needed to reach unrestricted free agency at some point next year (thanks to Cot's for the info).

While Jackson is on the borderline between Type A and Type B status in Eddie Bajek's latest Elias Rankings Update on MLB Trade Rumors, his value there is trending downwards. It stands at 70.663 now while it stood at 73.050 on July 14 and 74.41 on May 23 (a score of 71.5 is currently the cut-off in the NL between types A and B). Jackson will need to repeat (or better) his 2009 performance in 2011 to be a type A, as the rankings only take into account the last 2 seasons. The Elias Rankings involve some combination of games, innings pitched, wins, ERA and K's, and Jackson's win total and ERA this year have seriously underwhelmed. He'll have to work himself back towards the 13-9 record and 3.62 ERA he put up last year to make it back.

While there is always a chance the Nats retain him into his free agent years, he's not worth as much to the team them. You trade for young pitchers in part to try and get as many years out of them as you can at less than market value. Once pitchers hit free agency, you start paying true value or more for them.

3. Jackson is potentially overworked.

This is my biggest beef with Jackson. Not every pitcher is made equal, and I certainly am not an expert on pitching, but if I had a penny for every red flag there is concerning Jackson's workload, I would be a rich man.

Jackson's 149 pitch no-hitter leads the league in pitches thrown by 17. He's atop the charts by an obscene amount in total Pitcher Abuse Points (151623 to second place Roy Halladay's 84331). You can check out this Baseball Prospectus sortable stats page if you want to sort through these things yourselves.

Some pitchers, Livan Hernandez for example, can handle a lot of Pitcher Abuse Points. But the Nats are paying Livan $900k. If I'm paying a guy $8 million+, I want to know for sure that he isn't damaged goods.

(Some links on Jackson's workload: 6/2009 (Baseball Daily Digest), 6/2010 (FJB), 6/2010 (Sabernomics), 7/2010 (AZ Central)

If the Nats could acquire him for a combination of fading prospects like Shairon Martis and middle relievers like Sean Burnett and Joel Peralta, sure. Jackson can an effective middle-of-the-rotation starter But if the Nats have to give up Adam Dunn or anyone that sniffs their top 15 prospects for him, I'll pass.

Suddenly it all makes sense...

Ronnie Belliard has been traded to the Dodgers. So this is why we called up Pete Orr the other day!

The deal: Belliard for minor league RHP Luis Garcia and a PTBNL.

A quick look at Garcia:

-22 years old, 6'2" and 175 lbs

-Always puts up good ERAs (4.32, 3.55, 2.40 and 2.92 in his 4 minor league seasons).

-Walk and K rates? All over the place. Walks are way down this year, from 5+ BB/9 each year to 1.9 this year. K's aren't much more consistent, but have gone up last year and this year to 7+ K/9.

-Doesn't give up many HR and has a pretty decent H/9 as well.

-A potential workhorse. 8 GS over the last 4 years suggest he's not really a rotation candidate, but he has pitched 71 innings already this year. He has pitched less than 2 innings in only 9 of his 33 games this year.

Can't find any scouting reports, so I doubt he's really much of a prospect. Adios, Ronnie!

Two trades that I like

First off, the Nats dealt 2B Anderson Hernandez back to the Mets today for 2B prospect Greg Veloz. I like. Hernandez isn't doing anything, is never going to do anything, etc. While Veloz probably won't either, he at least has "tools," a scary word when used in Jim Bowden context, but not one you want to avoid. He's very fast and has a good enough glove to handle 2B in the bigs. If his contact and on base skills (and I use "skills" broadly), he could be mildly useful...best case scenario he turns into Emilio Bonifacio and worst case scenario he turns into Anderson Hernandez.

The other deal was for Daryle Ward and Norris Hopper. Both guys are organizational depth at this point, but a) the Nats didn't give up anyone, b) they're not blocking anyone (and its probably more beneficial for most of our guys' development to leave them where they are) and c) Daryle Ward is back! I loved Daryle in 2006 when he had a .958 OPS off the bench for the Nats. He hits righties hard and can play 1B when Dunn turns the circus music off.