{"id":2307,"date":"2016-12-02T18:24:27","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T23:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/?p=2307"},"modified":"2016-12-02T19:40:20","modified_gmt":"2016-12-03T00:40:20","slug":"report-nationals-acquire-derek-norris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2016\/12\/02\/report-nationals-acquire-derek-norris\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Nationals Acquire Derek Norris"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite the\u00a0<b>MLB winter meetings <\/b>being just days away, the <b>Washington Nationals<\/b> have already hit the ground running.<\/p>\n<p>According to <b>Chris Cotillo<\/b>, the Nationals have acquired <strong>San Diego\u00a0Padres<\/strong> catcher <b><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/n\/norride01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-lastwordonbaseball.com\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Derek Norris<\/a><\/strong><\/b>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">RHP Pedro Avila heads to San Diego for Norris.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Chris Cotillo (@ChrisCotillo) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChrisCotillo\/status\/804807882864726016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">December 2, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In return, the Nationals\u00a0will send\u00a0minor league righty <b><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.cgi?id=avila-003ped&amp;utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-lastwordonbaseball.com\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pedro Avila<\/a><\/strong> <\/b>to San Diego.<\/p>\n<p>This move gives the Nationals their replacement for <b><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/ramoswi01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-lastwordonbaseball.com\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wilson Ramos<\/a><\/strong><\/b>. Ramos tore his ACL\u00a0in late September, and his\u00a0availability for this upcoming year remains unclear. As a result, the Nationals went into the off-season in search of a new backstop; Norris will be that guy.<\/p>\n<p>In years past, Derek Norris has been a power hitting catcher who has also been a presence behind the plate; Norris was even an <strong>All-Star<\/strong> in 2014; however, last year his offensive production plummeted.<\/p>\n<p>While Norris has never hit for average, he still hit over .245 from 2013 to 2015, but last year his average took a huge drop.<\/p>\n<p>Despite hitting 14 home runs and driving in 42 runs, Norris ended the year hitting just .198. His recent drop in offensive consistency is a major red flag for the Nationals; however, despite his incredibly low average, Norris may have been the right move for the Nationals to make.<\/p>\n<p>The free agent market began with three more than serviceable backstops: <strong>Houston<\/strong> <b>Astros<\/b> catcher <b><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/castrja01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-lastwordonbaseball.com\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jason Castro <\/a><\/strong><\/b>(who signed with the <strong>Minnesota<\/strong> <b>Twins<\/b>), Washington&#8217;s own Wilson Ramos, and the<b> Baltimore Orioles\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/w\/wietema01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-lastwordonbaseball.com\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Matt Wieters<\/a><\/strong><\/b>.\u00a0While Wieters didn&#8217;t hit for that low of an average, he would&#8217;ve been a huge gamble for the Nationals.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout his career, Wieters has struggled to remain on the field, due to injuries, and that is one thing that has\u00a0decimated the Nationals in year&#8217;s past; Wieters\u00a0may have\u00a0been one too many risks for Washington to make.<\/p>\n<p>The acquisition of Derek\u00a0Norris was a good move for the Nationals. While he is coming off a bad year, Norris doesn&#8217;t have as many question marks surrounding him as free agent catchers Wieters and Ramos do. Norris was\u00a0also a good pickup considering how little they gave\u00a0up to acquire him.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/600179712\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.666667% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/600179712?et=j6YJo7wLRPJhg05EZmuReA&amp;viewMoreLink=on&amp;sig=oIGi6WEBskMiNaZSTrus8S6KnpVuV6tP1j6mgGlhhMc=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite the\u00a0MLB winter meetings being just days away, the Washington Nationals have already hit the ground running. According to Chris Cotillo, the Nationals have acquired San Diego\u00a0Padres catcher Derek Norris. RHP Pedro Avila heads to San Diego for Norris. &mdash; Chris Cotillo (@ChrisCotillo) December 2, 2016 In return, the Nationals\u00a0will send\u00a0minor league righty Pedro Avila [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1631,"featured_media":2311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,35,30],"tags":[68,571,484,69,756,93,38,385],"class_list":["post-2307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nationals","category-news","category-padres","tag-baseball","tag-derek-norris","tag-matt-wieters","tag-mlb","tag-pedro-avila","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-washington-nationals","tag-wilson-ramos"],"modified_by":"Josh Greenberg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1631"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}