Mike Rizzo on a Cold Day in Hell

Mike Rizzo’s father was a scout before him and he followed in those footsteps even after the senior Rizzo advised a more conventional path anchored by a college degree. But he proved his father wrong. Mike Rizzo rose to become GM of the Washington Nationals and Baseball Executive of the Year in 2012. Rizzo worked his way up the hard way. He flunked out of a minor league career and caught on as a scout with the Los Angeles Angels before going over to the Arizona Diamondbacks. Unable to command the topmost position in Arizona, he jumped ship to Washington where he has found his greatest success to date.

The question raised by the Moneyball crowd is whether scouts, of which Rizzo is definitely one–have a blind spot. The book and movie have cast a long and storied tradition in a bad light. Scouts like Tom Greenwade, who discovered Mickey Mantle between stops on the back roads of Oklahoma, helped craft the legend. The old caricature merged the showmanship needed to plant stars in the eyes of homespun youngsters like Mantle, with an uncanny eye for rough hewn talent.

Scouts have not stepped forward to dispel the charges made by the Moneyball crowd. Crusty and calloused to a fault, baseball scouts are the strong silent type if nothing else.  They are savants with a singular talent–apprising the arms and legs that fill out baseball uniforms. They unpack their pitching charts, the radar guns and they sit behind home plate long enough to make their judgments and then just as quietly they pack it all in and are gone. No small talk except among themselves on rare occasions.

The idea that they have an inherent flaw is not undone by Mike Rizzo. He has admitted that stat heads do not impress him. He employs a few but when decisions need to be made he goes almost always with the instincts of his scouting brethren. One of the oddities is how often Rizzo and Billy Beane–the consummate Moneyballer–have found common ground. Beane traded Gio Gonzalez to the Nationals for a boatload of talent. While the trade has worked well for both teams, it is interesting that the player least revered by the scouts, Tom Milone, has been the most successful for Oakland. Milone’s success in the Athletics’ rotation is the one resounding benefit to give the trade a semblance of equity.

Milone is the most interesting piece of the puzzle. He was a soft-tosser with impeccable numbers over the whole of his minor league career. Gio Gonzalez was a strikeout artist who could pump a fastball past hitters at 94 mph. Gonzalez was known for his curve, but he was no Tom Milone. Milone was signed late in the draft and got by on his command of an 88-90 mph fastball and an assortment of other pitches–read “junk.” There were other Milones in the pitching ranks of the Nationals. Before trading Milone, Rizzo had shown remarkable disdain for John Lannan, the ace of the Nationals staff in the pre-Strasburg years. Despite three years of major league success, Rizzo beached Lannan in Syracuse and gave his spot to Ross Detwiler, a first round talent taken sixth overall in the amateur draft.

Scouts love “live” arms and the high heat and Lannan and Milone possessed neither. Without Lannan, Rizzo’s starting rotation led the majors in strikeouts at various times last season. But fast forward and all is not well in the 2013 Nationals starting rotation. There is still plenty of heat, but Ross Detwiler is hurt and Dan Haren has lost his 95 mph fastball and is pitching on guile and command. Yes, the threesome of Strasburg, Gonzalez and Jordan Zimmermann is as imposing as any in the majors, but given the state of the 4- and 5-hole pitchers, it is only natural to look for back up  in the team’s minor league organization.

And that is where Rizzo the scout runs out of options. Matt Purke, Lucas Giolito and all the other “live” arms that have made the trip to Birmingham to see Doctor Andrews are still on the shelf. A healthy John Lannan would look pretty good even to Mike Rizzo who was forced to call up Yuniesky Maya when Detwiler was unable to make his last start.

There is really only one pitcher in the Nationals farm system who has any real chance to help the cause and Rizzo would not even put him on the 40-man roster. Unprotected in the Rule Five draft, Danny Rosenbaum was chosen by the Colorado Rockies, but returned at the end of the spring. Rosenbaum began his pro career with three minor league seasons in which his ERA was 1.95, then 2.25, and 2.52. When asked about Tom Milone and Rosenbaum, Jim Callis at Baseball America called them fringe prospects. Callis explained the scouting orthodoxy: they rely too much on command and when that deserts them it gets ugly in a hurry.

There is no denying the wisdom Callis brings to the table. And yet, Rosenbaum is back with the Nationals in 2013 and pitching as well as ever. At Triple-A Syracuse his 3.15 ERA leads the team. The ERAs of Princeton-educated pitchers Ross Ohlendorf and Chris Young make Rosenbaum look like quantum mechanics. The question is whether he will ever convince Mike Rizzo that he is the smart move.

It will be a vexing conundrum for last year’s Executive of the Year. It is rare that a team can make it through the season without a pitcher on the DL. Haren, Detwiler or any of the others may spend time on the mend and when that happens, Rizzo will need someone. Chris Young was the fallback, but in six outings so far this season, he has only a single quality start and a 7.26 ERA.

There are no guarantees with any pitcher. Rosenbaum is not necessarily the answer. But I would bet Rizzo is working the phones trying not to be boxed into the corner of having to use him. Rizzo is going to need help and so far there is none on the horizon. If the cavalry have to be called upon, it will likely be Chris Young. But then again this might be that once-in-a-lifetime emergency situation, that despairing moment when Rizzo goes against type, closes his eyes and puts a pitcher like Rosenbaum on the mound in DC.  If it happens I am making a trip to Bowie, MD to see if all those scouts behind home plate are wearing clown costumes. Because there is no telling what kind of funny business might be afoot on the day that hell finally freezes over and Rizzo uses a soft-tosser like Dan Rosenbaum.