Washington Nationals: Signing Tony Sipp is a Great Move
The Washington Nationals made an upgrade to their bullpen yesterday signing veteran left-hander Tony Sipp to a one-year deal.
After the release of Sammy Solis last weekend, there were many questions about if the Washington Nationals had enough quality left-handed arms in their bullpen to be successful. On Wednesday morning Washington erased that doubt singing 35-year-old veteran left-hander Tony Sipp to the roster.
Before the Sipp signing, it seemed that Washington was going to go with lefties Matt Grace and Vidal Nuno in their bullpen. Although both of them did have very successful 2018 campaigns, neither is as quality of a reliever as Sipp is especially at getting left-handers out.
Last season Sipp held lefties to an amazing .188/.263/.294 batting line to go with a 1.86 ERA in 38 innings pitched. Sipp also struck out 42 batters in those innings while walking just 13.
Sipp will fill a much-needed role of lefty-specialist in the Nationals bullpen, and with powerful left-handed hitters like Freddie Freeman and Bryce Harper in their own division, he likely will be used very often.
Even though Sipp was about as good as you can be against lefties in 2018, the most impressive thing he did was allow just one home run in the 38 innings pitched, opposed to 20 home runs he allowed in 2016 and 2017.
That stands to be the biggest question mark in this signing. Will Sipp be able to keep the ball in the ballpark as he did in 2018, or will he revert back to his old self allowing tons of longballs?
No matter the outcome this was an extremely low-risk high-reward signing for Washington. Sipp is only on a one-year deal. If he performs well, the Nationals can try to resign him in the offseason. If he struggles, the team has no commitment to his past this year.
In regards to the other lefties in the bullpen, this all but certainly pushes either Grace or Nuno off of the Opening Day roster. Washington likely will lean towards keeping Grace over Nuno due to his ability to pitch multiple innings as a long reliever. If starter Joe Ross makes the team and the Nationals intend to use him as a long man, Nuno has a much better shot of making the roster.
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All in all, it wasn’t All-Star Craig Kimbrel, but signing Tony Sipp was a great move by Mike Rizzo and the Washington Nationals organization that could prove to be crucial to the team’s success.