An Interview With The Biggest Washington Nationals Prospect Sicko Any Of Us Know

When I first heard about Wings Week, my brain immediately shouted Red Wings. When anybody thinks about Red Wings, their mind of course flies to Rochester, N.Y., where the Rochester Red Wings play Triple-A baseball as an affiliate of the Washington Nationals. And when it comes to the Nats' minor-league system, there's no name I trust more than Andrew Flax.

You might remember Flax from his role in the early days of Defector, working for the business side of the company as Manager Of Strategy And Revenue. Now a grad student in Philly, he remains near to our hearts as both a fantasy baseball opponent and a font of wisdom on 19-year-olds in the Nats pipeline. I speak for much of the staff when I say that the names of too many random Nationals prospects rattle around in my head simply because Flax posts in volume and earnestness about their development, with no motivation besides his own fandom.

Wings Week, given its obvious connection with the Rochester Red Wings, felt like the perfect time to get Flax on the phone. The following is a lightly condensed and edited transcript of our conversation.

The first question I was actually going to ask is, are you OK with the word "sicko," as in, "prospect sicko?"

To describe myself that way?

Yeah.

I think that's fair. Yeah.

So have you been a Nats fan your whole life—or like, since they came to D.C.?

Yeah, I was born and raised just outside of D.C. But being born in 1995, for most of my childhood, there wasn't a team. And my dad is also a D.C. native, and he was born in the '50s, so he got to see D.C. lose two teams. They lost the Senators twice, in 1960 and 1971. So when he was 14, they lost the team for the second time, and he just kind of never got back into baseball after that. He took me to a lot of Orioles games growing up, but I never would have said that I was an Orioles fan—I don't know that I ever had, like, a hat or anything.

But then when I was 10, and the Nationals came from Montreal, he got really into it. And it was just about at the time in my brain development that I could start understanding and appreciating sports, despite not being athletic myself. So I got super into it, and then I just stayed super into it. I was always a kid who liked math, so baseball was the easiest sport to get into, because all the math was the simplest. There was just one hitter and one pitcher, and you could calculate who was good and who was not.

What's the jump from being a major-league fan to being someone who gets into prospects and guys who are coming up?

One thing is wanting more information when there isn't any, or I guess there's some, but there's not as much as I want there to be. It's like, you know where the team is now. But you want to know where they'll be in the future and what you can get excited about, so you want to understand as best you can the minor-league system and their role in that.

Especially now with the Nationals being in a rebuild, there's not a lot to cheer about or be interested in in the majors, with the exception of some recent promotions, including James Wood. They were pretty bad in my first few years of liking them. They didn't really get to be very exciting until 2011, 2012, when I was 16, 17. The minor leagues were what was most exciting. It was more about potential than that actuality.

Back in the day, there used to be a lot of drama around whether or not players would sign out of the draft, under a different CBA, and I still remember where I was when I saw that [Stephen] Strasburg had signed. They gave him some colossal bonus. So for me, it was just a lot about looking forward to the future as opposed to being focused on the present, because the present wasn't very exciting.

Is there any particular experience that stands out of following a guy from the very beginning, and then he comes up to the majors and has a lot of success?

Yeah, I think there are a lot guys who will have some success and then never quite enough, and then you'll be sort of cheerleading for them. It's sort of a reverse I told you so where it's like, Ah, I was almost right. Some guys I can think of are like this guy Tyler Mapes—a late-round draft guy, never a big prospect, sort of like a pitch-to-contact guy who just worked his way up the minors. I was such a cheerleader for him online. I think his agent DMed me and said something about how he appreciated it. I was like a big cheerleader for him, and then he never quite made it.

Another guy is Richard Bleier, who's sort of a journeyman reliever who was in the Nationals system for a little bit and I remember tweeting all about, like, Oh, this guy's got a great groundball rate, they should call him up. Of course they never did. He went on to be decent for the Marlins and Orioles. That was a little bit of an I told you so.

The downside of rooting for the Nationals is that the player development is not very good, so there are not a lot of success stories like, Oh, wow, this guy really came out of nowhere and they sniffed out the special thing that he could do that made him work.

That sort of raises the question: What is the payoff for you, then?

I don't know if there's a payoff necessarily. I don't do it to be right. I do it out of a quest to be as informed as possible and have as much information as I can, even if I can't do anything with it. I care a lot about the Nationals, and I really enjoy following them, and the minor-league system is a big part of that. But it doesn't do anything. It doesn't make the team good. It just makes me happy to think about. It's like the green light from The Great Gatsby. It's my enchanted object. It loses its magic when it moves into the actual, but it's just something to hold on to.

I like that. How do you follow performances, day to day, week to week?

A lot of it's just Twitter. A lot of teams recently have launched these Twitter accounts specifically focused on their minors. The Nationals were a little bit late to that, but I think for two or three years they've had a player development Twitter account that will tweet highlights of guys from the minors. I follow other people who are similarly interested in Nationals prospects who will tweet about them. I have a little dashboard that—whoever made it is not supporting it, so a lot of the links are broken—but it's this URL that basically shows the box score for every Nationals minor-league team. I don't check that every day, but I'll check it every once in a while. I'll do more frequent check-ins on guys who are either close to the majors or have maybe just gotten a promotion. I want to see how Dylan Crews is faring in Triple-A relative to Double-A.

Yeah, I think from my outsidery perspective, Dylan Crews and Brady House look like the two guys on the Red Wings that have the most hype around them. I was curious what your takes are on those guys.

Crews and House are the clear top two prospects in the system that are still in the minors. James Wood, up until 10 days ago, would have been that guy as well. I think there's a lot to be excited about with Crews and with House. Crews, I think, is enough of a household name that somebody reading this might know who he is—the No. 2 pick in last year's draft, this incredible college performer who hit over .400 his senior year. I don't think he profiles as a super-megastar like James Wood, but I would compare him to like a Bryan Reynolds type—a sort of all-star center fielder, smart baserunner, a good power hitter, good contact hitter, not incredible at either of those, plays good defense, just a very good all-around player and a hopefully lower-risk guy who's performed really well at the highest level of college baseball and is now at the highest level of the minors just about a year after being drafted.

Brady House is a little bit of a different story. He was a high schooler when he was picked in 2021, so obviously a longer row to hoe for him. He came up as a sort of power-hitting shortstop with some questions about his contact and batting eye. He's since moved to third base, where all the reports say that he's actually very good and could be a pretty strong defender there. He's still hitting for power, especially in a lot of Nationals minor-league parks that don't really facilitate that. Especially in High-A, Double-A, the Nationals' minor-league parks are pretty cavernous. But he's definitely still been striking out and not walking a ton, so he's maybe a slight down-arrow this year. It hasn't gone to zero or anything like that, but he's still trying to figure out the strikeouts and trying to get on base a little more than he has been. He's still a very exciting guy who I think most Nationals fans are hoping will be playing third base by September next year.

Are there any other guys with the Red Wings that you're interested in?

I think the storylines of the minor leagues can be split into two different categories: One is guys who are substantially likely to have an impact on the team in the near future, and the other is guys who are interesting for their own reasons. Crews and House are the main two guys at Triple-A who are the most interesting. Jackson Rutledge, former first-round pick, was always a guy who had a big fastball and not a lot of everything else, and I think he's finally hitting a wall at Triple-A. He's got five walks per nine this year, almost two home runs per nine, so I think the arrow is starting to point toward him being in relief there.

And then there's just a bunch of like, My Guys, who are interesting, who I don't necessarily think will ever be at the major-league level but are interesting on their own. The biggest one there is this guy Jake Alu. I was always a big, big fan of his, and he was this 20-plus round draft pick out of Boston College. He had no fanfare but just sort of hit his way up the minor-league ladder and finally made it to the majors. They put him in left field for some reason, and he was horrible, and then he didn't really hit, and so he's off the 40-man now and not likely to be in the majors anytime soon, especially because he's got a sub-.600 OPS at Triple-A this year. But he was one of my guys, so I always think fondly of him.

Carter Kieboom, one-time top prospect, is now at Triple-A. He was like the No. 9 or 10 prospect in the game a few years ago and just could not hit the majors. He's hitting a little bit in Triple-A, but I think the odds of him being a meaningful major leaguer are basically none. Another guy who will be of interest is Darren Baker, Dusty's son, famous for getting pulled away from home plate by J.T. Snow. He is now 25 years old and is a sort of second baseman/left fielder, not a great defender, doesn't really hit for any power, but kind of gets on base. There's a chance that he makes the majors, which would be very fun story. That's pretty much it. Anyone else who's of note on the roster is just, like, a guy who spent a little time in the majors but is not a very exciting guy. Something like a Stone Garrett, who had a great run last year but has struggled in Triple-A this year. Somebody like Drew Millas has been an up-and-down catcher, or like an Alex Call, who was up last year.

One of the minor-league storylines of late is the growing gap between MLB and Triple-A. Have you noticed anything different about Triple-A, or the way it has or hasn't prepared players over the last few years?

So the big change recently in Triple-A is the introduction of the automatic balls and strikes system. What Triple-A has done this year, I think for the first half or however much of the year, they had a system where on certain days, it'd be completely automatic balls and strikes, so every pitch was called by a robot instead of an ump, and other days would be just a challenge system, where a player or catcher can basically just tap their helmet to initiate a very brief challenge sequence to see if a pitch was actually a ball or a strike. They've moved now to where it's just the challenge system every day. Obviously, this is Major League Baseball attempting to treat this as a laboratory and see if they can bring it to the majors. The effect that it's had on Triple-A is that the run environment is totally crazy. Pitchers are at a huge disadvantage there, because they have to be a lot more aggressive than they might otherwise have been under the ump-call system. Between that and just the extremely high level of pitching in the majors, with guys throwing so hard with really nasty stuff, all these hitters have had a really hard time adjusting to the majors.

The automatic strike zones are smaller, you mean?

Not smaller, just like: You as a pitcher can't try to have your catcher frame something. If you go out of the zone, a hitter is less likely to chase, because they know that even if it gets called a strike, they can challenge it. So pitchers have to be a little more aggressive in the zone.

Have you been any Rochester Red Wings games?

I've never been. I don't think I've ever been to the city of Rochester. They only became a Nationals Triple-A affiliate two or three years ago. But by following their Twitter account, I've learned a little bit about the culture of Rochester. It seems like a wonderful place.

Yeah, they have the the "Flour City" nickname, as in the baking ingredient, and also "Flower City," as in the plant.

Really? That I didn't know. I just think about the garbage plate, which is their fun cuisine.

Yeah, that's what I know about Rochester. Have you been to Harrisburg or Fredericksburg?

I've never been to any Nationals minor-league games, which is hilarious given how much I talk about them. But I will say I'm not a scout. I am not a guy who will ever look at a player and form his own opinions—like, Oh his plane's looking good or His stuff's looking sharp. I've never played baseball. I do not know, and I do not claim to know how to do that, so all my opinions are based on stats and aggregations of other scouting reports. But I would love to go. There have just never been any that were particularly close to me. I haven't lived in D.C. since I was 18. Living in Philly now, I would like to go to a Harrisburg Senators game. I think that would be a lot of fun. But the only minor-league games I've been to have been like spring training games, and then I went to a PawSox game or two when I was living in Boston.

I think at the end I was just going to give you an opportunity, if there were any Nats minor-league guys from the past or anyone that you wanted to remember. I wanted to give you free rein there.

I want to see how far back I can go. Some of these may be cheating, because they may have hit the majors, but they're just like guys who are Nationals prospects in my mind. Going all the way back, Larry Broadway was from like 2006, which I just thought was a funny name. I always remember Alex Meyer, this really tall pitcher who they traded to the Twins for Denard Span. Brian Goodwin is with him in my mind. He and Anthony Rendon and Alex Meyer were all drafted in the first round in the same year. The other guys are notable for their very brief major-league careers, like a guy like Christian Garcia, who was a reliever who came out of nowhere and had like a really good stretch toward the end of the season in 2012, and then you just never heard from him ever again.

I want to think of some more. Cole Kimball. I don't know anything else about him, but I remember his name. He didn't make the majors. I'm gonna give you one more. [long pause] The last one I'll give you is Gerardo Carrillo, who they got in 2021 from the Dodgers as part of the Scherzer/Turner package, and then basically immediately blew up and they released him and he's never been heard from since.

That's a good list.

Ending on a sad one.

After the call finished, Flax texted me the following names: Eury Pérez, Nate Karns, Yasel Antuna, and Kylin Turnbull.