Lucky or Unlucky - 2017 version

I've done posts like this before but it's always fun to try to look at a season impartially in regards to luck. Most fans percieve their teams as unlucky regardless of what happened during the season. The good is expected, the bad is not. But that's not the way it goes. I don't expect to find that the Nats were super-lucky or anything. This team was built to be good, but I do expect to see a lot of lucky in there because teams don't win 95+ games without some things going their way (or NOTHING going against them)

Lucky (Better than expected)  
Zimmerman bounces back like one of those balls you can buy for a quarter at the front of a grocery store - For a good chunk of the season Zimm was sort of a "best case" in terms of reasonable recovery.  From May 1st through August 30th Zimm hit .269 / .330 / .476 with 18 homers. Forecast that out for a whole year and .270 with 28 homers? It's almost 2013 pre-injury Zimm again!  That itseslf would have bordered on lucky. But what pushed it over the top was how he hit in the other two months. .325 with 7 homers in the last month. Best hitter in baseball in the first one. These were long stretches of baseball we didn't think we'd see again from Zimm. The Nats got two of them in the same year. There was a minor slump mid-year but there was no low that matched those highs.

Anthony Rendon better than ever - It could be reasoned that Rendon doing well as he ever had done was as expected. But Rendon did better than that.

MAT breaks out - 75 OPS+, 73 OPS+, 70 OPS+.  See a pattern? We all did and those first three years of MAT in the majors all spelled out the same thing - below average hitter. But an injury to Eaton meant they had to run with MAT and in what might of been his last chance to be a starter MAT broke out. Now, for the seaosn that actually only meant he hit around average. But given his fielding that turned a 4th OF into a starter.

Rolling straight 7s on the bench - That any one of Lind, Kendrick, Starter Difo, or Goodwin, would hit like they did isn't too much of a surprise. Difo maybe a little but it was a limited time frame. The fact that they all basically gave you what you would want is though.

Gio reborn - Gio was on a slow decline and even though he'd probably do better than he showed in 2016, putting up a Cy Young vote season was beyond expectations.

Unlucky (Worse than expected)
Adam Eaton misses most of season - pretty self-explanatory. Played 310 out of 324 games past two years. 28. Every team gets this kind of bad luck with a player it's the who and when that determines how bad that luck is and Eaton going out early is pretty bad bad luck.

Matt Wieters RIP - While it could be expected that Matt Wieters would continue a decline it was generally considered that he'd float along as a below average hitter for a few more years. With the exception of a month of great hitting in 2014 that was his MO. Usually a little below average, sometimes surprising with a little above average. And at only 31 going into this year there were still a couple more years before you were sure age would play a role. Instead Wieters was one of the worst hitting regulars in baseball

Trea Turner gets injured - I can't call his performance unlucky because we only got half a year from the kid so far. However, you don't expect your young SS to miss 40% of the year.

Bryce Harper gets injured - ok this is only a mild bit of bad luck because injuries are a thing for Bryce, but he had managed to play basically full seasons the last two years so it's reasonable to think as a very young guy he could put his early injury history behind him. Also the injury itself was a fluky slippery base step thing, as opposed to gotten by swinging the bat too hard or just running around the bases.

Rolling straight 12s on the bullpen - Bullpen swings are not unprecedented. And there was a lot of things last year that were question marks going into this year. Could Blake Treinen repeat? How was Glover's health? How was Kelley's health? Why was Joe Blanton left in FA for so long?  Were one of these guys going to rise into the closer role? Talk of "best bullpen ever" was ridiculous but you sit here and look at those 4 after 2016 and think - ok worst case 2 come out of this and if they find one more arm they are passable. Instead 0 came out of this and the bullpen needed to be fixed by trade.

As expected 
Daniel Murphy - overall on target
Jayson Werth - didn't hit well and injured?  That literally happened two years ago and he's 38. If this wasn't within your expectations I don't know what to tell you.
Jose Lobaton - he's not good.
Max Scherzer - he is good.
Stephen Strasburg - I could maybe put this in lucky but anyone watching him closely could see he had this type of season in him if he could get the big outs.
Back of the rotation fails - Ross ended last year not pitching well and hurt. The Nats traded away best SP prospects. No surprise here

Questions
Tanner Roark - I'm not sure what was a fair expectation for him. As a starter in 2014 and 2016 he was better than this year but those were only two seasons with a season of mediocre pitching in between. It was a different role yes, but at the very least it doesn't give us the 3 straight years of results we would like to lean on. I could see an argument either way.


Overall opinion 
It was a pretty even season luck wise. The Nats offensive performances cancelled out the injury issues and the bench play pushed them higher. The Nats starting pitching was a little better than expected with Gio more than overcoming Roark's inbetween year. However, you can't ignore how the pen crash hurt the first part of the year. This was a team built to win 90+ games. The luck balanced as you hope for a good team and the NL East parted and the Nats were able to run away and hide.