The Nationals have signed right-handed pitcher Edwin Jackson to a one-year contract, but questions remain about the starting rotation as pitchers and catchers prepare to report to spring training Feb. 20. Who exactly is Jackson replacing? Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann and Gio Gonzalez aren’t going anywhere. The obvious candidate is left-handed pitcher John Lannan, who on Thursday lost an arbitration case against Washington — he settles for $5 million instead of his requested $5.7 million — and learned he was “aggressively” being shopped by the team in trade talks, according to a Fox?Sports.com report.
Now, being shopped is far different than being traded for spare parts. Presumably, the Nats would use Lannan and other pieces to fill their continuing issue in center field and at the top of the lineup. Whether other teams will be willing to help is another story.
Washington general manager Mike Rizzo insisted that the team didn’t acquire Jackson to trade another starter. And on some level that makes sense. Because while there are five pitchers on staff right now who could push Lannan out of the rotation, two of them have no history of pitching 200 innings in the big leagues. Strasburg will not go past 160 innings next season in his first full season back from Tommy John surgery. Zimmermann has never pitched beyond 1611Ú3 innings. Plus, they can’t exactly count on Chien-Ming Wang. After missing two-and-a-half full seasons following shoulder surgery, he looked OK in 11 starts last summer with the Nats.
“We felt that we had an innings shortage, and if you do the research of the eight playoff teams last year, six of them had at least two 200-inning pitchers on the team,” Rizzo said. “This not only fixes the innings shortage, but it also gives us a quality standard that we feel can compete with any team in the division.”
That might be reason enough to keep Lannan around. He is relatively cheap at $5 million for next season and even has a minor league option left. However, Rizzo said they consider Lannan a big leaguer player, so that route isn’t likely.
– Brian McNally
