Nationals Baseball: NL Least

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

NL Least

Some fun facts about the rest of the division the Nats will win

The Nats have gotten a little distance between themselves and the competitors in the NL East and if the season ended today they would take the division. Also if the season ended today they would be 2 games out of the final Wild Card spot. 

The Mets are currently in 2nd place with a .500 record. They would be in 3rd place in the NL West. They would be no better than t4th in any other division. 

The Marlins are entrenched in 4th place in the NL East, 5.5 games behind the Braves but 4.5 ahead of the Phillies. The Marlins would be in last place in every division but the NL Central where the Brewers sit as the 2nd worst team in baseball.

The Reds at 32-37 are further to first in their own division than the 26-47 Phillies. (This is an NL East fact and a "man, the Cardinals are having a great season" fact)

The NL East has one other above average offensive team, the Braves who clock in at 4.15 R/G.  However the Braves are not actually that far off the league average of 4.04 and are clumped with a mess of teams between 4.04 and 4.22 R/G.  If that's where the clump is why isn't the average in there? Because there are more teams dragging the average down than pulling it up. Who are the anchors? Why the Marlins 3.81, the Mets 3.64, and the Phillies 3.32 are three of them.

The Mets are last in the NL in hits and total bases.
The Braves are last in home runs. If you removed Freddie Freeman from the team the Braves have 6 more home runs than Bryce Harper.
The Phillies are last in runs (obviously) and slugging.
The Marlins are last in doubles (not as interesting but I was on a roll)

The Phillies have also given up the most hits, runs, home runs and walks in the National League. Hamels has an ERA of 2.96. Harang 3.41.  Here are the rest of the ERAs for guys who have started more than 1 game. 4.30, 5.34, 6.43, 6.75, 8.69, 8.76. If we throw in 1 start wonders we alos get a 6.94 and a 13.50 but a 1.59 too. Adam Morgan to the rescue.

Atlanta doesn't look that bad in all this - decent O, decent P? Their relief pitching has an ERA of 4.45, 14th in the NL and almost a half-run worse than 13th. (almost a run worse than the Nats)

Jeff Baker is hitting .256 / .356 / .564 vs LHP.  I say this for no reason other than IT MADE SO MUCH SENSE TO SIGN HIM LAST YEAR

Amazingly, despite the cross game effect, right now the Nationals, Mets, Braves and Marlins would all have worse records if you took away their games versus the NL East. It's less "beating eachother up" than "falling over eachother".  And lest you think it's a "they are all beating up on the Phillies" thing. It isn't. Only the Mets are (8-1) and even taking away those games this holds for the Mets.

In conclusion, the NL East is a hideous garbage division. How are the Nats not winning this division by 10 games already? Despite jerking around the first 70 games of the year or so, the Nats should win this division with ease. If they don't, that's a huge failure injuries or no injuries.  

Let's get on with it. Sweep the Braves. End their dreams.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thoughts about Stras last night? On the plus side, it seemed like he had more whiffs on the fastball than he's had in a start in years, which is very encouraging. On the meh side, he got zero whiffs on the curve although he was locating it pretty well. On the minus side, he had no changeup. All in all, I think it was a very encouraging start. Being able to get hitters out consistently with the fastball has been Strasburg's major weakness in the past, and if that's improved, he could be excellent. Also, one would hope that improved mechanics would lead to better offspeed too.

Anonymous said...

Stras was encouraging but I'm nervous about the number of pitches he's been throwing all year, not just last night. 5 innings and he almost hits 100? That's not sustainable, especially when last night's WHIP was 1.00. It's a downfall of K pitchers, but this is uncharacteristic even for Stras

Anonymous said...

Mostly, I think Strasburg is extremely lucky Freeman wasn't in there, especially given how well Markakis was hitting.

They may have gotten rid of most of their strikeout kings, but that Braves lineup without Freeman absolutely stinks on ice.

Anonymous said...

Lol, you write NL Least and your Yankees get destroyed by every team in the division, even the Phillies.

Anonymous said...

You have to realize the injuries in the NL East, they are never ending.

The NATural said...

And here I was, hoping for an ego boost as the Nats seem to be turning this thing around (again).

Bjd1207 said...

@Anon (1st one) - I think I may be at the point where I give up on worrying about Stras' pitch count. I'd much rather have him generating K's/foul balls and giving up 0 ER over 5 innings then trying to "pitch to contact" and giving up 4 runs over 7 innings with people hitting bombs off his fastball.

5 innings may be a little short, but i'll take 0 runs over six innings each and every time, regardless of pitch count. And I think he should ditch the "pitch to contact" mentality almost altogether with his arsenal. Put the fastball on the corners, strike em out with your offspeed, and let the rest fall where it may.

He's not the 22-year old we need to protect for the next 6 years anymore. He's up for FA after next year, let's start using his skillset while we've got it

Ben said...

This is silly, what division is "good" outside the NL central with 3 legit teams? The only difference between the NL east and everyone else is that there can be only 1 Phillidelphia dumpster fire.

I look forward to your AL least column when the Yankees make the playoffs with 85 wins ... how are those Yankees doing against the dumpster fire btw?

blovy8 said...

The timing of this wouldn't seem so weird if the Nats hadn't just swept the Pirates who came into DC playing really well. Probably they should be in the east instead of Atlanta so maybe they are just taking longer to expose their ultimate suckiness.

Anonymous said...

I was pleased with Strasbourg's start. This was his first start after whatever problems he was having and he pitched 5 good innings.

The lukewarm response feels par for the course with stras: he pitched well enough that the 'he's a 4/5 starter' trolls aren't chirping, but not cy young spectacular so he gets nitpicked.

blovy8 said...

Also, Jeff Baker?!?! Do I have to remind you that Clint Robinson can PITCH too?

Chinatown Express said...

This felt like a rehab or a spring training start. Stras was throwing get-me-over curves, but not throwing breaking balls in the dirt for whiffs. He wasn't throwing many change-ups. Mostly he was throwing fastballs, which were moving well and hitting their spots. Next time we'll see more of his repertoire.

Ds0589 said...

Hi,

My name is Dan Sohler. I live in New Jersey but am currently working for scoreboard.com as their website manager. Their parent company (livesport.eu) are based out of the Czech Republic. We are always looking to build our brand via link exchange and was wondering if you'd like to link to our respective scoreboard pages, scoreboard.com and flashscore.com to your website. We are a great site when it comes to updating scores in live time and are a welcome addition to sites with sports/gaming news. Your site has a lot of good sports information and we'd love for you to help us get our name more out there. Thanks for your time.

Dan Sohler

Froggy said...

Well Harper? Are ya gonna link to all those millions of baseball fans in the Czeck Republic?

BTW, whatever happened to your Sweetspot gig?

Inquiring minds...

WiredHK said...

I say Harper does the link exchange provided Dan S. can present a coherent counter argument (using advanced stats/metrics and history) as to why the NL East isn't the worst division in baseball. Show your chops!

Nat Least said...

I'm not really sure why the claws are out among some of the commentariat here. The NL East is bad.

Some simple facts:
W L %
AL 551 534 50.78%
East 188 176 51.65%
Cent 181 174 50.99%
West 182 184 49.73%

NL 532 549 49.21%
Cent 186 169 52.39%
West 180 182 49.72%
East 166 198 45.60% (over 162 games that's ~74 wins a team!)

Only 9 teams in baseball had less than 74 wins last season.

And yes, the East is being anchored by Philly, but the NL Central has good old Milwaukee (just a game and a half above Philly).

Now to runs.

RS RA Diff.
AL East 1650 1531 119
NL Cent 1414 1360 54
AL West 1517 1475 42
NL West 1552 1555 -3
AL Cent 1443 1492 -49
NL East 1394 1557 -163

Least runs scored and most given up (for now).

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