The Nats were bad.
There is no way around that fact. But even bad teams can be lucky or unlucky and a team that ends with 60 wins might be a 52 win team (as bad as teams usually can get) or they might be a 68 win team (average bad) in disguise.
The adjusted standings suggest the Nats, a 55 win team, were probably a little unlucky with how the season went. Their record WAS in line with their runs scored and runs allowed, but they probably got a little unlucky in how the runs happened* and their schedule was probably a little tougher than the average team. In the end they were probably more like a 60 win team. This really does nothing for this year. Those 55 wins are what happened. But it gives us a starting point for next year. This team with no changes might end up with a few more wins next year especially if the division eases up (see the Mets and their FAs). Of course next years team won't have 4 months of Soto and Bell...
Let's get to the pieces of the season itself. Now remember ALL teams have lucky things and unlucky things happen. The hope is the lucky outnumbers or outweights the unlucky. Worse players get hurt. The lucky surprise is a star turn. That sort of thing.
UNLUCKY
Strasburg is hurt and basically doesn't pitch. As I said before, you need the second part because Stras getting injured is a given. It happens pretty much every year. Even given that the hope is this year that Strasburg could give them something. A month or two of good pitching, an on-and-off season of mediocrity. Something. He gave them nothing which immediately turned a problem rotation into a disaster.
Corbin got worse Corbin had a poor 2020, then a bad 2021. There was hope he could turn things around but the reality was the Nats were just expecting something between the two performances and a 5.00 ERA guy eating up innings. Instead Corbin put up an ERA well over 6.00 and had one of the worst full seasons of all time. Combined with Strasburg the disaster rotation became one that flirted with the worst of all times.
No FA worked out to be tradeable That Hernandez, Franco, Cruz, and Cishek each failed is not surprising. That they ALL failed is. Think of it this way - there could be an 80% chance each one does poorly enough to not bring back anything in trade. But the chances that they ALL fail like that would be 0.80*0.80*0.80*0.80 or like 41%. So it's more likely that at least one would have done something. Rizzo rolled snake eyes here
Rainey got hurt Some pen arm was going to go down. Probably more than one. Rainey was arguably their most important one so having it be him was on the unlucky side if not necessarily unexpected
LUCKY
Bell was great In 2021 the up and down Bell had an up year but that really didn't tell us much about 2022 as he had up years in the past only to disappoint. Instead Bell hit like an All-Star even if he didn't make the team. This made him a much nicer trade piece and helped bring in the haul from San Diego.
Joey was great The post Soto trade story was Joey Meneses and really only Joey Meneses. But what a story it was .324 and 13 homers in 50+ games would project out to star numbers. Ok that's unlikely in a full season but imagine the limping toward the 50 win finish the season would have been without him. You want to hear weeks of "In the past few games Abrams didn't look too bad"?
Thomas showed full-time capability No guarantee after only a half-season of decent play in 2021, Thomas basically kept up his performance over the entire year. Not a big lucky thing but one of the few even small breaks the Nats got
Vargas had his good stretch with the Nats This is one of those things. Some guys get hot in small stretches, some guys don't. Vargas did for an extended time well above expectations. Take it and run.
Rainey bounces back Rainey is seen as the Nats closer and had been usable in 2019 and good in 2020, but 2021 was a bust. This was a make or break type year for the young man and he was actually ok. Of course he got hurt though. See above.
Pen results better than pen pitching The Nats pen was only fair, with FIPs suggesting a bottom third performance but luck broke for a lot of them and they were decidedly average. A lot of 4.30 ERA type pitching actually getting 3.40 ERAs. Small victories, I know.
Hunter Harvey might be real deal Gotta be excited about something next year and I have chosen Harvey. Pedigree is there. He barely had a chance to get into relief before this year thanks to the pandemic being during his transition from starter year. Got a new pitch (the splitter) going. In 2022 he pitched great actually. He could be the All-Star for the Nats next year. I'll give you odds.
EXPECTED
Ruiz/Gray/Garcia were all usable rookies - Garcia was ok, good once they stopped trying to force him to be a SS. Ruiz was good for a catcher. Gray wasn't good, but was healthy and available. With large variance always in play these guys didn't do anything wildly outside of what they could have
Hernandez/Franco were bad- There was a decent chance this could be the possibility with Franco never being consistent and Hernandez getting older. Don't try to say this is surprising.
Yadi was good. The Cuban late-comer immediately hit in the minors to the point where you had to give him a try despite being older. He was good last year. He can hit well enough to be on someone's team
Robles stayed as-is It's been long enough that this hitting should be expected from Robles. He did field better this year but that's actually more in line with expectations than last year's bad numbers.
Cruz crash Again - always a possibility going in given he was 41. And it happened just as would be expected with a loss of power but not enough to make him unplayable, just untradeable.
Soto was Soto Soto is Soto. The average was oddly low but didn't matter
Escobar was terrible - The ONLY possibility. He didn't hit years ago and that was before being out of the game for a while. Last year's blip was a "take the money and run" situation. The Nats made it a plan. A terrible plan that ended terribly
Rookies were mostly bad - The Nats farm isn't good and rookies tend to struggles so seeing guys like Adams and Adon and Tetreault do poorly? Yeah that's what we thought would happen
Sanchez was passable, Fedde was bad, and the rest of the rotation was worse. This is what these guys are.
Where do we end up? The Nats, one could argue in pure numbers, were more lucky than unlucky. But all those lucky things were pretty minor except Bell's breakout and that didn't matter as much given he got dealt. Harvey is potentially a nice find but happened at the extreme back-end of the season. Meneses sort of the same with the added note that we don't even see him without losing better bats in Soto and Bell.
But I said "outnumber or outweigh" for a reason and the bad luck with the rotation dominates the minor good breaks. Strasburg being a complete zero and Corbin not even holding on to being his bad 2021 self was something no team could overcome. The Nats needed their #1 and #2 to be #1 and #2 to even be 65+ win competitive. Instead they were effectively gone and even major luck with the bats probably doesn't keep them from being an embarrassment. Concentrated bad luck at the top of the rotation might be the worst bad luck to have and for a team already in the 60-70 win range? Where the biggest variance between good and bad probably lies at the top of that rotation? Well you see what happens.
3 comments:
Good overall revue, thanks. One quibble is that I don't think that the Nats in any way, shape, or form made Escobar a "plan" for 2022 except as a possible utility infielder that (since they only signed him for $1M, a pittance in today's game) they could jettison at any time if he faceplanted. Which they did when he did. The only reason that he got as much PT as he did was because other options flopped and pushed Escobar into a role that he wasn't intended (or able, frankly) to play.
He was the OD shortstop! I think he was the plan in as much he was the 4+ month bridge to Garcia. And I think even that was a terrible plan
I think he was the plan, too. I just think that even if they didn't believe he'd be 2021 (Actual Useful Player) all over again, that he'd be at least a normal level of badness (like Hernandez and Franco actually were) that they could live with because there was almost no chance 2022 was going to matter (okay, if Strasburg had been able to come back healthy and decent, Corbin was only normal bad or even meh, Gray and Ruiz broke out and Cruz was the guy he'd been up until the second half of 2021, the narrative would have been "what are the terms of the Soto resigning?" instead of the "what can we get for everything not nailed down?") instead of completely abysmal to the point they were forced to jettison him.
I think the fundamental problem here was that instead of getting one-year veterans like Schwarber or Harrison or even Lester--players that you could reasonably expect to have decent seasons and be flippable for lottery tickets--Rizzo signed Franco, Escobar, Hernandez, Cruz, and Aaron and Anibal Sanchez: players who each, individually (except maybe Cruz, if the expectation was "age wore him down in the second half, but he'll be fresh and good at least until we can move him) were more likely than not to be actively bad and therefore untradeable. As Harper pointed out, it was unlucky that none of them was any good, but it was a reasonably foreseeable scenario, and it was really hard to see a world on which multiple among them was good enough to be flipped. Rather than spend a little money to get more bullets to reload with, Rizzo instead elected to tread water for pennies.
Though in fairness, I also think Plan A was to let Kieboom play 3B and let him either sink or swim (either he proves MLB-adequate over a full season and claims the job, or he busts out and they look for a real solution in the 2022-23 offseason), but he immediately got hurt, forcing Franco into the lineup.
That said, Yadiel Hernandez put up a 101 wRC+ and was worth -0.1 fWAR on the season on account of his defense and baserunning. That's not enough bat to justify starting him in LF.
Post a Comment