18 Mondays to go: Rule 5 draft to be Josh Wilkie's farewell party?

Posted by Mike Henderson on Nov. 30, 2009 at 6:50 AM
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It takes a bit of imagination to picture what the Nationals will look like a year and more from now.  Even so, let's take a deep look into the future, say Opening Day 2011.

Imagine a team whose pitching, the worst in MLB in 2009, is poised to benefit from the careful development of its 2009 number-one draftee, as well as that of their second-round and 19th-round picks from 2007 and a then-unheralded 2006 trade acquisition.  Together with returnees from injury, a left-handed anchor with three-plus seasons under his belt, and maybe a cagey free-agent pickup or two, the starting pitching is looking pretty fair.

April 2011 may or may not see a rotation of Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann, Rich Harden, John Lannan and Jeff Mandel.  But it'll look something like that, with guys like Erik Arnesen, Collin Balester, Shairon Martis, Brad Meyers and Craig Stammen also competing for roster spots.

Good so far with the starters.  How about that relief corps?

As we discussed last week, the bullpen will almost certainly be much improved.  In addition to having middle-to-late-inning relief guys like Sean Burnett and Tyler Clippard in the mix, imagine being able to choose your closer from between Drew Storen and Josh Wilkie.

Washington's closer situation could be an enviable one.  By 2011, Storen should be comfortably ensconced at 1500 South Capitol Street.

But they may be without a potential contributor they'll regret having lost, for it's quite possible that Wilkie -- an undrafted free agent from GWU who signed with the Nats in 2006, and who in 2009 posted a 2.64 ERA in 71 2/3 innings over 51 appearances in the minor-league regular season, striking out 65, walking 17 and allowing 67 hits, and followed up with a creditable showing in the Arizona Fall League -- will be long gone to another team.

This columnist erred last week in stating that there was still time for the Nats to protect Wilkie in advance of next week's Rule 5 Draft by opening a spot on the 40-man roster and putting him on it. In fact, 40-man rosters were frozen on November 20.

And so when teams come looking for spare arms a week from Thursday, they'll have to bypass 32-year-old Mike MacDougal and 31-year-old Saul Rivera, both of whom Washington has protected on the 40-man.  No such protection has been afforded to Wilkie, who may well get snapped up by some enterprising outfit like the one up the Parkway.

There would seem to be no logic to frittering away a 24-year-old pitcher who presumably has a fine decade and more in front of him -- and thus no reason why Wilkie shouldn't have been protected over either MacDougal or Rivera, each of whom has surely reached, if not bypassed, his peak.

So all we're left with is questions, such as these:

• Does Wilkie have issues that no one outside the team knows about -- perhaps an emerging injury risk invisible to the naked stat?
• Might the Nats think that Wilkie has already reached his ceiling?
• Is there some service-time technicality by which Wilkie can be considered not to have put in the full four seasons that an unprotected player must have accrued to be eligible for the Rule 5 draft?  (He didn't join the Nats until a week after the June draft in 2006.)
• Does Washington plan to trade somebody on the 40-man, say Josh Willingham, for a flock of prospects, thus opening a slot that the team can draft Wilkie back into?  (It'd seem a bit uneconomical for a rebuilding organization to waste its first-round Rule 5 draft pick -- and the number-one pick, at that -- in such a fashion.  Not to mention that, if the Nats are unwilling to carry Wilkie on the 40-man roster, they should be less willing to have to carry him on the 25-man MLB roster all season.  Then again, it's not clear what consequences, if any, would ensue from trying to send a Rule 5 pick from their own organization back to the minors.)
• Or did the Nats just get caught flat-footed?