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| Catfish Hunter in 1968, Yankee Stadium |
ESPN baseball analyst Jayson Stark reported on Wednesday that it is now very likely that the Nationals—who seem unable to come to terms with first baseman Adam Dunn—will now trade him by the July 31st trading deadline.
The possibility of losing their offensive linchpin worries Nationals’ fans and fuels the concern that their team is joining the Pirates and Royals in the never-ending cycle of trading established players for prospects.
The Nationals currently have three options regarding the future of Adam Dunn. They can keep him and sign him to the contract he wants, $60 million over four years. They can trade him now and receive prospects or they can let him leave at the end of the season and receive two compensation picks, a mid-round pick and a supplementary pick following the first round.
Most agree that a four-year contract is too long for the 30-year-old slugger. If he sticks to his demands, the team won’t resign him. And while supplemental picks can bring future stars, the Nationals are not in a position to wait another five or six years for Dunn’s replacements to make an impact at the major league level.
So Jayson Stark is right; it’s highly likely that Dunn’s tenure with Washington is almost at an end.
I know it is difficult to lose a star for prospects that may—or may not—make a difference with the big club. But sometimes, not making a move is the worst possible choice.
The biggest problem is that fans don’t want to break up the heart of the Nationals’ order, one of the best in baseball. Ryan Zimmerman, Dunn and Josh Willingham make up one of the strongest three-four-five trios in all of baseball.
The three players are on track to hit .282-89-283 this year and are the heart of the team. The other five starters are no more than supporting players at best. To lose one, it is feared, would further damage a bad team.
And who knows what the team might get in return, right?
Nationals’ fans born after before 1960 remember the team’s predecessor, the Washington Senators. No team had lost more games in the Sixties and 1969 seemed no different. However, new manager Ted Williams brought some magic to Washington and the team won 86 games, the only time the expansion Senators finished above .500.
They succeeded that year—just like the Nationals—on the strength of their three-four-five hitters. Mike Epstein, Ken McMullen and Frank Howard. Those three combined to hit .282-97-283 in 1969, virtually identical to this season’s big-three (.282-89-283).
And just like this season’s Nationals, the other five starters were average to slightly above-average players.
Following the 1969 season, team owner Bob Short turned down manager Williams’ plea to trade two of the three stars for prospects. It would hurt the team the following year, Williams said, but could make the team contenders as early as 1972.
Short said no. He was unwilling to move his best players.
But what if he had made those trades in the winter of 1969? What if Short had taken a chance and built the Senators then as the Nationals are trying to do now?
In his book, Ted Williams and the 1969 Season, Ted Leavengood listed several trades that were not just rumored but were concrete offers by other teams for several Senators’ players, all turned down by Short.
Mike Epstein was one of the hottest commodities at the 1969 Winter Meetings, and both the Yankees and the Oakland Athletics tried to pry him away from Washington.
The Yankees, seeing the public relations value of having a Jewish slugger on their team—Epstein’s nickname was “SuperJew”—offered lefty Fritz Peterson for the Senators’ slugger. Peterson, just 26, had won 12 games in 1968 and 17 in ’69 with an ERA of just above 3.00.
Bob Short said no.
Peterson finished his career with 133 wins, including 20 in 1970, with a 3.40 ERA.
Athletics’ owner Charley Finley next came calling, offering 23-year-old Catfish Hunter for Epstein, who had already won 55 major league games.
Again, Bob Short said no.
Hunter is a Hall-of-Fame pitcher who won 224 games in his career—including 20 five times—with a 3.26 ERA. He was an eight-time all-star and an ERA champion. He was also one of the best hitting pitchers in the American League.
The Senators had a young slugger in 1969 by the name of Brant Alyea, who hit 10 home runs in part-time duty by the All-Star break. Though he would hit only one more that year, Calvin Griffith, owner of the Minnesota Twins, was enamored with his good looks and powerful stroke.
He had offered Short third baseman Craig Nettles, who had shown some promise in parts of three major league seasons. Though major league scouts roundly believed that Nettles would one day become an all-star, and though those same scouts saw major flaws in Alyea’s looping swing (think Austin Kearns here), Short said no.
Nettles, in his first full season as a major leaguer, hit 26 homers in 1970 and played defense equal to that of the Orioles’ Brooks Robinson.
In a 22-year career, Nettles hit almost 400 homers, drove in more than 1,300 runs, was a six-time all-star, won multiple Gold Gloves and led the American League in home runs in 1976.
The New York Mets, fresh off their miracle 1969 World Championship season, recognized that they had a problem at third base and saw the Senators' McMullen as their answer.
The Mets offered a variety of packages for McMullen before settling on a two-for-one trade offer that would have brought to Washington relief pitcher Tug McGraw and starter Nolan Ryan.
Bob Short said no.
McGraw—father of Country singer Tim McGraw—had a great year in 1969, going 9-3, 2.24 with 12 saves. Over his career, McGraw won 96 games, saved another 180, had a very solid 3.14 ERA, and was a two-time all-star. He won two World Series, one with the Mets and the other with the Phillies in 1980.
And McGraw was the worst of the two players being dangled by the Mets.
Nolan Ryan won 324 games in an astonishing 27-year career. He was an eight-time all-star, is the all-time leader in strikeouts and is second in career starts.
Oh yes, he’s also thrown seven no-hitters.
In the end, Epstein, McMullen and Alyea were all out of baseball by the mid 1970’s and the Senators ended up moving to Texas following the 1971 season.
But with Catfish Hunter and Nolan Ryan headlining the rotation, and with Tug McGraw in the bullpen, and Graig Nettles at third, the Senators would have begun the process of becoming a contender.
Just like the Senators in 1969, the 2010 Nationals won’t become contenders with nothing more than a strong middle of the lineup. The rest of the team has to get better, and getting two or three prospects that would make an immediate impact makes just too much sense.
And the $15 million that would have gone to Dunn could now go to one or two free agents who, along with the prospects, could turn the Nationals into contenders rather quickly.
I love Adam Dunn. I would greatly miss him. But in the long run, the Nationals needs are just too great for the team to hitch their star to just one, very big, very strong player.
The prospects that the Chicago White Sox are offering, Dan Hudson, Tyler Flowers and Jordan Danks, may not turn out to be the next Graig Nettles, Nolan Ryan and Catfish Hunter.
But they could. And if they did, the Nationals could become a true contender as early as next season.
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