If Kieboom is totally wholesome and raking in spring coaching, the Nationals might get Candelario loads of at-bats at first base or designated hitter to begin the season. Martinez, the Nationals’ soon-to-be sixth-year supervisor, acknowledged as a lot Monday, describing Candelario as a bounce-back candidate who can slot in many spots.
But there’s a feeling amongst membership officers — which, once more, is the view from early December — that Kieboom may need a stretch in the minors come April, giving him an opportunity to regain his timing and rhythm on protection. There can be the looming query of how his arm will operate after Tommy John surgical procedure final May.
Kieboom, 25, has lengthy been a standard offseason matter, principally as a result of he has but to be who the Nationals imagined once they drafted him with the twenty eighth decide in 2016. Instead, he has handled accidents, underperformed and needed to regularly show himself towards stopgap veterans. Before Candelario arrived on a one-year, $5 million deal this month, that listing included Asdrúbal Cabrera, Starlin Castro and Maikel Franco, who appeared in 103 video games for Washington in 2022 and is now off to play for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles in Japan.
Across 414 plate appearances in the majors, Kieboom has a .197 batting common, .304 on-base proportion and .285 slugging proportion. Candelario, a 29-year-old change hitter, was extremely productive in the two years earlier than the final one, throughout which he stopped mashing four-seam fastballs. His popup price doubled to 9 %, sapping his gap-to-gap energy. The Nationals’ greatest case is that he rebounds to regular a younger lineup and then will get flipped at the commerce deadline. The technique behind including Nelson Cruz, César Hernández, Steve Cishek and Sean Doolittle final offseason is again for extra.
Discussing the Nationals’ wants Monday, Martinez described a left-handed hitter who can play left discipline and perhaps first base. His imaginative and prescient, it appears, is to have Joey Meneses at first, Candelario at third and a timeshare in left, the place Alex Call, Stone Garrett and Lane Thomas might obtain probabilities alongside an exterior addition. When each Meneses and Candelario play the discipline, this unspecified left-handed batter may very well be Washington’s DH. When Meneses wants a break day, he might DH, Candelario or this left-handed hitter might slide behind him at first, then Ildemaro Vargas might slide behind Candelario at third. All the higher if this left-handed hitter is flexible defensively.
“We definitely would like to have one [DH],” Martinez stated Monday. “But I think we have enough moving parts, if we had to platoon two guys, we could do it. It would be nice to have a big bat in our lineup.”
One complication, although, is a finances that got here into focus forward of the winter conferences. An individual acquainted with the Nationals’ offseason plans, who spoke on the situation of anonymity, known as it “just incredibly tight.” So whereas a left-handed hitter akin to Joey Gallo would possibly match Martinez’s description — and the sample of hoping for constructive regression from low-cost free brokers — he may very well be too dear, particularly as a result of Rizzo nonetheless needs so as to add a veteran starter. Same goes for Cody Bellinger, who signed a one-year, $17.5 million cope with the Chicago Cubs on Tuesday. And identical goes, realistically, for any participant who sparks even modest curiosity from a contender.
The Nationals aren’t primed to win bidding wars right here. The parameters from possession are extra designed to restrict monetary commitments whereas the Lerner household continues to discover a sale of the group.
Should the entrance workplace reply Martinez’s name for a left-handed bat, two main targets could be to maintain the roster versatile and the payroll thinned. The group has not dominated out carrying Kieboom and Candelario on the Opening Day roster, nor has it dominated out becoming them in the identical lineup. Washington is simply being lifelike about Kieboom’s monitor report and instant future, performing as if his final main league at-bat got here on Oct. 3, 2021.
