Stinks - Offensive talk

 Stinks. 

The Nats are having problems scoring. 

The Nats have the best batting average in the National League. 

What exactly is going on? 

Now if you look at counting stats it'll show the Nats lacking in several categories but the Nats (and the Mets) have played significantly fewer games than most other teams. So counting stats won't tell the full story. 

The first place to look is to check the other primary offensive statistics. The Nats can hit for average. Can they walk? Can they hit for power? (We'll limit this to NL since the pitcher hits and everything) There's a couple easy to find stats that clear this up, walk rate (BB%) and isolated slugging percentage, or slugging with the singles pulled out (ISO).  

If we look at the rank of the Nats ISO it doesn't look too bad. They are 9th in the NL. It's tempting to say they are about average in the NL. But the raw number is as further away from 8th (.156) than it is from 13th (.138).  They are distinctly below average when it comes to slugging. The Nats walk rate is 14th out of 15 NL teams sitting at 7.8%.  That is a fairly terrible rank and being as close to 13th and 15th means they are fairly judged at the spot they are at.

TLDR - The Nats don't hit for power and they REALLY don't walk. This is why despite having a batting average well ahead of #2 in the NL and 16 points ahead of #4 (.258 to .240) They only rank 4th in OBP  in a group of people pretty good but not great at getting on base. 

To put in another way the Nats hit...but they hit a ton of singles. The Nats hit a single every 6.3 PA, the next closest team is Pittsburgh at every 7.1 PA. That distance repeated is further than Pittsburgh, again the 2nd most "singly" team in the NL, is to the 11th most singly team. 

Is there anything else?  

The Nats don't steal alot (few teams do) but they do have a terrible SB rate - 61% which is good for 29th in the majors. They are not particularly bad at baserunning - their outs on the basepaths otherwise is normal - sorry Robles haters/Stevenson lovers. But this is in part because they are a pretty much station to station team - not taking the extra base often. They rank as a very slow NL team. As you can imagine from the singles they hit the most GBs (highest GB%) and as a slow team obviously they hit into more than their shares of double plays

But even all this doesn't explain why they are 11th in RS (thanks Orioles!) pretty far from the league average. So now we look to the situational stats.  They hit poorly with RISP, though not too badly with men on in general. They are even worse with with 2 outs and RISP, with remarkably little power. 

 

Take this all together and you have something. The Nats hit a lot of singles but don't walk and don't hit for much power which means they have to string together those singles to score, making big innings harder for them than other teams. They are a slow, groundball hitting team which also keeps them from manufacturing runs by taking extra bases and hurts them by increasing the chances of double plays wiping out baserunners. On top of this they have had bad luck in when they've gotten hits, doing worse with men on base especially with 2 outs, meaning a higher number of stranded runners than would be expected from the stats alone. 

The clutch hitting you can't do much about other than hope it evens out. As for the rest, the Nats haven't been a fast or powerful team for a while now. Going into this year they doubled down on trying to get more power bringing in two big bats in Bell and Schwarber. Both have actually lived up to that - when they do hit the ball it goes far (HR/FB rates are good) but both have very high K rates meaning they don't hit the ball often enough to make it count as much as the Nats thought it would. Starters Josh Harrison and Starlin Castro don't hit homers and Victor Robles REALLY doesn't hit homers (0 this year). Juan Soto has seen a significant dip in his power while also hitting more GBs and fewer FBs. And a guy like Yadi Hernandez might provide pop off the bench if he could get the ball off the ground. 

The end result is a team that we said, doubled down on trying to get more power, at the expense of already questionable speed, and has created a weird boring amalgam of a team. One that gets a lot of hits, which should be exciting, but not enough hits or walks or big hits to drive people in. A lot of single and stand there moments. Part of this should go away as that luck in "clutch" spots evens out a little. But this is the team as constructed. Harrison, Castro, Robles don't hit for power. Bell and Schwarber strike out a bunch. Only Schwarber might walk with Soto.*  Chances are that when the guys hit their singles the big bats will strike out, and when the guys bomb things out there won't be more than one guy on base. 

Soto is really a key here though - as a star he is supposed to walk a ton and hit a lot of homers. He should drive in anyone hitting the singles and be on the base all the time for the guys hitting the homers. He's still getting on base well but not the "all the time" presence he was in the past. He's not driving in the runs. If he gets right, like all the way to "Ted Williams" right, the offense could work even with the flaws of the players around him. But as a mere star Soto isn't enough to power production.

  

*I haven't mentioned Gomes at all - he's fine!   He doesn't walk, but his power is ok.