On Friday, April 13, 2012, I turned to Amanda and said to her, “The Nats are going to win the World Series.” At the time, that sounded ridiculous. In fact, Amanda told me to relax, reminding me that it was mid-April in a 162 game season.
Of course, I was wrong. The 2012 Washington Nationals were the best team in baseball. They won the regular season, but were eliminated in the NLDS. But in that moment, coming off of an extra innings win over the Reds (one that featured an Xavier Nady pinch-hit homer), it felt right. There was a magic around that team. I’ve never enjoyed watching a team more in my life and I might never enjoy another.
On May 18, 2013, I turned to Amanda and said to her, “The Nats aren’t going to the playoffs.” At the time, it sounded like an overreaction. Hyperbolic, even. It’s very early. The 2012 San Francisco Giants were 24-21 after their 45th game. They won the World Series. The 2013 Washington Nationals are 23-22 after their 45th game. Time will tell where they end up. But, right now, the feeling isn’t right.
The 2012 Washington Nationals were affected by injuries from the get-go. I’ve written it in this space before, but it bears mentioning that the Nats never got to put their “A” lineup on the field. Not once.
It didn’t matter. The Nats got really good “spot starts” and pinch hits from players like Chad Tracy, Tyler Moore, Steve Lombardozzi, and Roger Bernadina. When needed, each guy filled in and contributed.
In 2013, that hasn’t happened. None of those four guys has an on-base percentage above .250. They have 2 home runs and 71 strikeouts between them. The guys who were called the “goon squad” in 2012, haven’t deserved a nickname this year. They’ve been failures.
Danny Espinosa has been the face of the Nats failures this season which seems a little unfair because Danny Espinosa was never very good to begin with. That said, he has been, statistically, the worst player in Major League Baseball, at least offensively, this season. And it’s not really close. Espinosa’s OPS+ (100 is average) is 33. It’s really hard to have an OPS+ that low and play nearly everyday. But, alas, Danny Espinosa is playing nearly every day. And striking out more than once a game.
Can the Nats be fixed? Sure. They need Jayson Werth to come back healthy sooner rather than later. They need to cut ties with Espinosa and take the risk of moving top prospect Anthony Rendon and his glass ankles to second base. They need the bullpen to pitch more like last year’s bullpen. Whether that means DFA’ing a few guys and bringing in new blood remains to be seen. And they need Stephen Strasburg to just relax a little bit. Watching Strasburg pitch sometimes makes me exhausted. And it’s the same thing that it’s always been: high pitch counts, trying to be too perfect, and flying open on his follow through when things aren’t going right. I’ve begun to question Strasburg’s ceiling more this season. The ability is certainly there. But I don’t see that presence, consistently, that I do when I watch Clayton Kershaw and Justin Verlander pitch. Oh, and if you’re going to use age as a point of measurement, because it feels like Kershaw has been pitching in the Majors for a long time, he’s 4 months older than Strasburg. And miles more developed. But that’s probably another post for a different day.
The Nats are missing a spark. Bryce Harper brought that spark last year and it never really faded. This year’s team never had that. It didn’t feel that way in Spring Training and it certainly doesn’t now. I was confident that this was the best team in baseball when I wrote my season previews, because on paper, they were. But the games aren’t played on paper anymore. They’re played on grass. And right now, that grass doesn’t look particularly green.
Mid-Atlantic Bias 