Today I saw a tweet where someone was pushing CJ Abrams leading the team in slugging as a good thing for the team. While it certainly SOUNDS good it turns out that he's "slugging" .386 which is good enough for... 107th in the majors among qualified batters. That means on a perfectly average team he's likely the 4th best slugger maybe the 5th depending on how many guys not quite qualified yet but likely to be that you'd put in front of him. There's also probably a couple guys on the team that will never qualify that would be slugging better.
I'm not saying this isn't good news for CJ, because it is. He'd been a decent slugging playing in the minors. Mostly doubles but like 40 doubles. But that power hadn't been seen much in the majors and seeing this edge back in that direction is a good development, even if it is early.
But for the team... ugh.
To put it in perspective in 2019, CJ would have trailed : Rendon and Soto of course, and Kendrick and Turner and Matt Adams. And Suzuki and Parra and Eaton and Cabrera and Gomes and Dozier and Robles and Zimmerman.
Yes that's the top 13 PA getters in that season. .386 would have trailed all of them.
To be fair the average slugging is down from .423 to .411 in the NL and in 2019 pitchers are still hitting so it's quite a dip but still. STILL.
Despite the homer to win yesterday this little win streak isn't driven by power. It's driven by a ton of balls in play, a few more walks, average pitching, and a little luck. They'll put balls in play. The pitching seems likely to work out to stay average. Will they keep walking? Will they keep getting a little lucky every 12 games? Then .500 (or really a few games under the rest of the way) is possible. But getting a little lucky every 12 games is tough. It's fine to be +1 wins for 12 games but to keep doing it and be +12 over your last 144? Yeah that doesn't usually happen.
The soulless automaton is telling you to temper your expectations. Unless they develop power, this is about the peak of Nats performance you are going to see. Enjoy it, and don't get too mad at the 9-15 24 game stretch that may follow.
7 comments:
Bobby Blanco covers the team for MASN alongside MZ. He’s been a pretty solid writer this season, but yeah, this take had me raising my eyebrows, too. Leading the team in RBI? Cool. Give him a pat on the back for that. But “leading” the team with .386 SLG is just an indictment of the team.
I read the column to make sure it wasn't a headline or tweet rephrasing that didn't reflect the tone of the article but no it was a "Hey look at this guys slugging like a team leader now!" rather than "Hey look at this guy slugging, by the way the team sucks so bad that makes him the leader now"
context Bobby B!
Haha. Well, you're right of course, but it's not exactly surprising to see rah rah silliness from the team owned media outfit.
Hey Harper -- circling back to your recent tweets on the bullpen, can you elaborate more on what you see as the advantage to Gray and Gore's development to keeping bullpen powder dry for their starts? Is it just avoiding them feeling sad when the team loses and their good work is wasted?
I ask because, while I would agree that Gore and Gray's development is a top priority and one that deserves to be balanced against winning games this year, I'm not actually sure I see much development impact here.
Decisions about when to pull them need to be development focused. So, sometimes protect their confidence by pulling them out with a job well done. Sometimes build their confidence by letting them work through it. Slowly build up arm strength so these are 7+ IP starts next year or the year after. And above all avoid injury.
But even if you grant the assumption that the A-team holds the save 80% of the time, and the B-team holds it 50% of the time (which is a huge differential), I just don't think it should matter all that much. We're talking about a difference of 4-5 pitcher wins over the season, with probably around 3 of them being team losses.
That's huge for a team trying to win, (and maybe it would matter a bit in arb), but I just don't think it has enough scale for the psychology of it to impede development. Or are you saying that Davey wouldn't be able to help himself from pushing them too long in games when he doesn't have a reliable relief arm to turn to? In that case, the real solution would be to fire Davey or at least remove that decision from his portfolio. I mean, yikes. But I don't think he's reached that extreme.
Nah, a soulless automaton would not be so consistently negative :D
And the team isn't good, per se, but it doesn't suck. The power? THAT sucks. But the pitching and defense have been at least solid so far this season. Given how absolutely grim I was expecting this season to be, I'm modestly encouraged that they are at least watchable in a way that the early season 2022 Nats absolutely were NOT, even with Juan Soto and Josh Bell.
The faithful correspondent Bobby Blanco buried the lead.
The Nats suck at slugging. If Abrams is the leading slugger, god things are bad. The REAL story is that, in the absence of slugging, the Nats are MLB leaders in ONE category. They don't strike out.
What makes the team's offense interesting is they put the ball in play --- and manage to use that to score runs and win a few games.
This makes games interesting. People get on base and, even if they have no power, they continually manage to threaten.
Natty, if the Nats make good their threats, they're going to threaten their way to 95 losses. If not, then 100 losses.
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