Baseball's a business. It always has been, no matter how vivid the memories of purity that tend to correspond with any particular person's childhood are.
Nats fans are learning that with what the team is doing with pitching prospect Jordan Zimmermann. The team is likely to send him to the minors, despite his excellent spring.
There are a few reasons why this makes sense.
First, bringing him north would create a roster crunch.
Zimmermann isn't on the 40-man roster. To play in the majors, a player has to be on the 40-man, but the Nats' current roster is already full. To remove a player, the Nats would have to expose him to waivers, meaning they could lose a player to another team for nothing.
His chief competitors -- Shairon Martis and Collin Balester -- are already on the 40-man.
Second, sending him to the minors lets them control his workload.
Unless you're a Syracuse fan, nobody's going to care if they yank him 80 pitches into a game in the fourth inning. But if he were facing the Mets, and the bullpen's tired, there'd be a temptation to make him work through it. He's young, and there's no need to push his arm and risk injury.
Third, it's all about the money. Sure, some will immediately cry "CHEAP!", but sending him down makes sense.
Players accrue service time for each day in their majors. When they finish a season with three or more years of cumulative time, they become arbitration eligible -- and that's when their salaries start to skyrocket. After six seasons of cumulative time, they're free agents. (And that's when Boras drools!)
So by sending him to the minors now for a few weeks, it gains the team an entire season on the back end.
And what's more important to the franchise? A few starts by Zimmermann in a year where the best case is .500? Or an entire season of starts from a fully developed Zimmermann six seasons down the road after all the fruits of the farm have ripened?
It's not a "CHEAP!" decision. It's a smart business decision.
Chris Needham used to write Capitol Punishment. He's amazed he's defending the Lerners.
