A Few Good Men: 5 - Balester

It's week two along our journey to 44 player reviews covering each and every player that graced NatsTown's presence this past season. We will continue to tweak the process based on your comments, so keep those going.

Collin Balester "Bally*" - Age 25 - @ballystar40

How he became a Nat: Drafted by the Expos in the 4th round of the 2004 MLB First Year Player draft.

The Raw Numbers:

ERA - 4.54
WHIP - 1.48
WAR - -0.3
K/9 - 8.58

Key Stats: HR/9 - 1.77. This stat says that Collin gave up 1.77 home runs per every nine innings pitched - and it doesn't paint a pretty picture of Balester's season. Of all MLB relievers with at least 30 IP Balester places 8th worst in HR/9. To have success as a Major League reliever Bally* needs to give up far less long balls.

Best Game: This was a pretty tough task because he had some valuable games where he affected the game positively but wasn't outstanding and then he had several games where he didn't affect the outcome but pitched extremely well. That being said, I think that his best game was September 10th vs Houston where he pitched 2 innings of 0 hit ball and managed to strike out 2 hitters with 0 walks.

Worst Game: Definitely June 28th vs the LA Angels of Anaheim. The Nationals busted out with a 4-run 6th inning to take a 5-3 lead, Marquis gave up a lead-off homer to start the 6th making it a 5-4 game and in came Balester. Things went downhill fast. Single, Strikeout, Home Run, E5, Wild Pitch, E1, and a Walk. His day was over and his line was 0.1 IP, 2 H, 2 ER, 1 E, 1 K, 1 BB, 1 WP, 1 HR - Ouch.

Capball Grade: D+. Bally* has only been a reliever for a year and a half, but his growing pains should be long gone - especially because it looked like he had overcome those issues back in 2010. Granted, the trek to and from Syracuse will definitely take its toll on a player (he made the trip 3 different times in 2011), Bally had a rough year by any standard.

2012 Nats Status: Being under club control pre-arbitration (READ: salary about $400-450k) will continue to affect how the club treats Collin in 2012, but, by my amateur count, he is now out of Options; meaning he needs to stay where he is assigned or the Nats risk losing him via waivers. Spring Training will be a seminal moment in Collin's Nat career, but I see him staying with the big club due to the relatively low pricetag. Hey, it would be an honor to have the Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year on our team - go vote for Collin HERE.

Tale of Two Pitchers

We are going to do a little blind exercise about the performance of two Nats pitchers. Lets look at some 2010 2nd-half stats, as well as some Spring Training stats, and then decide which pitcher you would rather have.

Pitcher 1 - 24 years-old
2nd-half 2010 - 17 games. 21.0 IP. 28 K. 11 BB. 2.57 ERA. 1.24 WHIP. .203 AVG Against. 12.0 K/9.
Spring Training - 11.1 IP. 11 K. 2 BB. 7 H. 3 R. 2 ER. 1.59 ERA.

Pitcher 2 - 23 years-old
2nd-half 2010 - 30 games. 29.2 IP. 32 K. 11 BB. 4.55 ERA. 1.32 WHIP. .252 AVG Against. 9.7 K/9.
Spring Training - 11.1 IP. 11 K. 2 BB. 24 H. 24 R. 16 ER. 11.12 ERA.

One of these players is on the Nats Opening Day Roster, and one is not. If you guessed Pitcher 2 was the player traveling north, you would be correct.

By now you have probably figured out that Pitcher 1 is Collin Balester and Pitcher 2 is Drew Storen.

I am not saying that Drew Storen doesn't deserve to be there with the big club, I am simply pointing out that it seems as though the decision for Storen is an emotional one as opposed to a statistical choice.

When I started researching this topic, I found several things that kind of surprised me. First, there is only a 1 year age difference between the pitchers, despite Balester being drafted in 2004 and Storen being drafted in 2009. Second, I didn't expect to see the huge difference in 2010 stats; I mean there is some huge differences there. Third, as relievers, Balester's ERA is a full point lower than Storen's; though with an admittedly small sample size for Balester.

I am well aware that the reasoning for sending Balester down to AAA is that it was purely based on the fact that he had an option. Where I find issue is that, Drew Storen still has several options remaining and its a lot easier to figure out potential issues in AAA as opposed to the Braves and Phillies.

So, I'll leave it to you. Would you rather have Storen with his potential? or Balester and his results?