All That Twitters is Not Gold

Spring Training is a time of hope, it is said. But of course there is hope and then there is the stuff they sell on the sidewalks in Chelsea packaged as hope.  Maybe Bryce Harper really will hit ten home runs during the Spring and make the Opening Day roster. And that dude actually is selling a Rolex on Canal Street for $40.

Spring Training is full of oversell.  There are plenty of nostrums and carney’s to bark them out. But they will hardly pass muster, like the notion that 37-year old Mark Derosa is part of the answer to the Nationals outfield needs.

However, it is not the press but Davey Johnson who is the one selling Harper the hardest, although he has elite company. Baseball Prospectus (see pages 501-502) may have been the first, but they are certainly not the only ones to link Davey Johnson’s belief in young stars–Strasburg and Harper–to his 1986 Mets team fronted by young marquee stars Daryl Strawberry–24–and Dwight Gooden–21. It is an “intoxicating” brew. Yet it remains to be realized and few believe 2012 will bring it to market.

The comparisons between the 19-year old Gooden–who won 17 games playing for Davey in 1984–are apt to Harper. Gooden was good in ’84, untouchable in 85 and merely excellent in 86.  But after those early accomplishments, it all went downhill too quickly.  Unfair or not, his success as a 19-year old in the Big Apple is sometimes linked to his substance abuse problems that began a few years later. Would he have handled life in the big city better with more seasoning, or was it all just fated to be?

Bryce Harper is unlikely to fall prey to cocaine addiction. Yet the ability to bring more than a 19-year old’s level of maturity to bear on fame and fortuune can only help him withstand whatever problems he might encounter. Can spending time with the Crash Craddock’s in Syracuse make Harper into not only a better player, but a better man? Can Davey Johnson remember back to 1984 and wonder about all of that? It’s hard to know what is going on behind the posturing of the Nationals’ brain trust, but seemingly not.

The more reasoned approach to what the Nationals will look like in 2012 comes from examining players like Jordan Zimmermann, who was the subject of another Spring Training profile in the Washington Post. In contrast to Harper, Zimmermann has worked his way through the system and overcome setbacks already. He is only 25, and stands poised to become a legitimate star in 2012. The odds are that the Zimmermann– with two “n’s”–will have at least as much to do with the Nationals 2012 success as Strasburg, who will be limited to 160 innings.

Zimmermann has more in common perhaps with Ron Darling who pitched second behind Dwight Gooden in the Mets rotation. But it wasn’t just Gooden and Darling, it was Bobbie Ojeda, Sid Fernandez and Rick Aguilera that gave the 1986 World Champion Mets a rotation of fine quality arms from start to finish, not to mention a bullpen of Roger McDowell and Jesse Orosco at their peak.

Again, the similarities to the Nationals of 2012 work better when not wowwed by the stars flashing off the twinkle twins. It is the talent of players like Gio Gonzalez, Wilson Ramos, Danny Espinosa, Michael Morse, and even Anthony Rendon; a bullpen of Storen and Clippard, all of that will likely have as much to do with the Nationals winning an NL pennant as Harper and Strasburg.

Harper sells newspapers and dreams, but it is the depth of talent–the team–that will win pennants. Davey Johnson probably knows all about it, knows that consummate professionals like Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter, Ray Knight and a second-year player named Lenny Dykstra had as much to do with the ’86 World Championship as Daryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden.

Jordan Zimmermann said that the best thing about all of the new talent brought in by Mike Rizzo for 2012 was keeping reporter’s attention elsewhere. Maybe that is just how it works. The blue collar guys that get the work done toil out of the limelight, while the stars shine under the bright lights.

Maybe the best news of the spring so far is Bryce Harper ditching his Twitter account. Maybe he is a quick study, maybe Crash Craddock has already got him under his wing. But in the golden days of summer, when the heat is on, my money is on the two Zimmermans and the rest of the T-E-A-M. And that is what will bring success to the Nationals under Davey Johnson if they are really headed down that same road as the Mets in the mid-80’s.