Player development coming slowly, surely

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By Ben Goessling

By the traditional metric of baseball success - wins and losses - the Washington Nationals' minor league teams enjoyed a productive 2008 season.

The organization posted a winning record for the first time since the team came to the District, its 432-405 mark the ninth best in baseball. Three teams qualified for postseason play, with two of them (Class A Potomac and the Nationals' Dominican Summer League affiliate) winning league championships.

But in the minor leagues, player development takes precedence over the final record. By that standard, 2008 is a little harder to judge.

Myriad injuries and ineffectiveness at the major league level forced the team to move some players through the system quicker than it had planned. In several cases, that unearthed players who hadn't registered as potential major leaguers before the season.

The biggest story of the year might have been pitcher Jordan Zimmermann's rapid development. Zimmermann raced from Potomac to Class AA Harrisburg in his first full professional season, won organizational pitcher of the year honors and put himself in position to make the Nationals' rotation out of spring training in 2009.

However, the players that will eventually propel the organization are the high draft picks that Washington handed large bonuses to.

First baseman Chris Marrero, the team's first-round pick in 2006, struggled early at Potomac and broke his right leg sliding into home plate in June, truncating a season that had started to turn around. And left-hander Ross Detwiler stagnated at Potomac, his mechanics going through an overhaul that robbed the 2007 first-rounder of consistency much of the year.

Josh Smoker, last year's second-round pick, was sent from Class A Hagerstown to rookie ball.

And presented with the opportunity to infuse the system with another frontline pitcher, the Nationals failed to come to terms with first-round pick Aaron Crow, as the two sides were almost $1 million apart as the Aug. 15 deadline passed.

"They have made a lot of progress," said Baseball America executive editor Jim Callis, whose publication moved Washington's farm system from 30th to ninth in baseball last year. "Looking at it objectively, you hope some of these guys would do more than they did this year. It's slightly disappointing these guys didn't show more, and not signing Aaron Crow is a blow as well."