The Nats made their first of what could be many deals ahead of the trade deadline over the weekend, acquiring LHP Connelly Early from Boston for infielder Curtis Mead, ending what was the most successful four-month stretch of Mead’s career – one that proved both that patience pays off, and prior connections can, too.
“Curtis is an incredible due and a key piece in our clubhouse, and his trajectory has been different than most; former top 100 prospect, dealt for Cristopher Sanchez at one point in time, bounced around a few different organizations and went from being like this top prospect to DFA by the White Sox,” Nats POBO Paul Toboni told The Junkies on Wednesday. “When we picked him up, I think he was questioning whether he was gonna have a long career. Blake (Butera) obviously had a connection with him going back to his minor league managerial days in the Rays system, and we just thought it was a really good one to get.”
As you can imagine, pedigree or not, dealing a player who had 17 homers and an .851 OPS was not something the team took lightly, especially after the surge came following an initial role that Mead excelled in.
“He started the year just really on the short side of a platoon, hitting against lefties and not playing against righties and he was mashing. He started to get more opportunities and turned himself into an everyday player, that isn't just an average everyday player,” Toboni said. “He’s better than that, and that's how teams valued him.”
And enough teams valued him that, as Toboni said on Sunday following the trade, the Nats weren’t really looking to trade him but got some aggressive offers, and here we are.
“We thought there was no way that we're gonna be considering him given, hey, he's got however many years of control he has, and he's played great for us, all those things,” Toboni said. “Out of nowhere, I think in part because there aren't too many right-handed hitters on the market, teams just started getting super aggressive; over the last 10 years, it's just been really, really difficult to acquire young, controllable starting pitching, and when Boston finally agreed to include Connolly Early, it pushed the deal across the line for us.”
And in Early, the Nats know they’re getting a bulldog – his fifth career MLB start was a win-or-go-home playoff game at Yankee Stadium – and, again, someone who the brass knows well, this time Toboni himself from their days in Boston.
“He’s a stud,” Toboni said. “We’ve known each other for some time, took him in I think the fifth round, and if you really want to get a look at what this kid is, you should watch his playoff start against the Yankees. He goes in there and, you know, it's cold and it's October in New York, and fans are yelling at him, throwing stuff at him in the bullpen, whole deal. And he just hops right out there, and fifth MLB start, he's going right at Judge and right at Stanton and all these guys, with no fear and really good stuff. Those are the types we want; he's gonna fit in great with our group, and we just need to get him healthy and back rolling and we'll be good to go.”
When Early does return, hopefully sometime in August, he will further bolster a rotation that just got Jake Irvin back and has a strong one-two punch at the top in Cade Cavalli and Foster Griffin…if, that is, Griffin isn’t dealt at perhaps his peak value in the next week.
“I've been telling everyone like inside our organization, it's kind of like running the RPO in football, right? You could think about extending them, you could think about keeping them till the end of the year, and then if someone blows you away with a trade package, like you consider that,” Toboni said. “But, we're in this interesting spot where we're trying to find ways to upgrade our team, but also still want to build for the future. It can be a tough needle to thread, but we want to try and do it, and I think realistically, what that means is probably trying to do a little bit of buying and selling to try and upgrade our team for this year, but also be smart about the future. That’s tough to do in practice, so we'll see how it actually works, and we’re gonna figure it out here in the next couple of days. We just want to do a good job of threading the needle between being good this year, giving these guys a shot, while also not sacrificing the future.”
