The season is about 1/6 over, and exactly so for the Nats, so where are the Nats now?
Well first off, the Nats aren't the worst team in baseball. This was always likely, with the A's doing the whole "crash and burn and bring nothing to Vegas and laugh and laugh and laugh at all the money they spend and the tears of Oakland fans" thing. And KC and the Rockies being a bit worse right now is no surprise. But the Nats manage to pass a couple of surprise crashes, the missed their window White Sox* and the not THIS bad but no one cares if they are unlucky Cardinals. They are right on par with Detroit, San Fran, the Reds, and ahhahahahahah The Mariners.
But secondly, the Nats aren't secretly good. Maybe they are more an 11-16 team than 10-17, but that would only be a 66 win team, only a bit over the 62-64 I had them down for. They don't hit, they don't go deep in any particular skill, there isn't anything right on the horizon coming from AAA, or a big known contributor coming back from injury or playing way under expectations. This is who they are.
Then why are Nats fans relatively happy? Well they have been playing better recently 5-4 in their last 3 series, which featured some non-terrible teams. But mostly because Gray and Gore have been pitching well and if the Nats are to be good in the near future (say 2025) they need this to be a reality.
If you take the month as one big chunk as you should, you can only be happy with two batters. Ruiz who looks about what peak Ruiz could look like; higher average, with enough patience and power to make him better than average. And Robles whose early season stretch of increased patience has given him value in a way he didn't have before. Otherwise, holding off on the two-week Garrett for another week, Call is the only positive. Abrams isn't where you'd like him to be, Smith looks bad, Garcia had a bad month, Candelario struggled recently to go below average, Thomas is not doing well, and Meneses has disappointed. No one on the bench has been special.
The biggest problem lies with the rotation. Williams has been decent enough and Corbin has settled into usable 5, but the actual 5, Chad Kuhl has not been good. But there isn't anyone in AAA that looks good, or in AA for that matter. High-A isn't that great either. Basically outside of Gore and Gray only Dustin Saenz (3.86) and Kyle Luckham (1.80) have ERAs under 4.00. This means there isn't a solution here and every 5th day is going to be a hard win for the Nats. With 1-4 not given with a weak offense, it's going to be tough to make any real noise. This team isn't going to surprise.
The pen has mostly settled down to where we thought it would be with a strong front end and a weak back one. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if the Nats had say 4 decent starters or if Finnegan, who they were seeing as the best guy, wasn't having a bad start. Instead they have to save Thompson, Harvey and Carl Edwards Jr for a couple games a time through the rotation while running with some pretty bad choices the other three times. Maybe Machado up for Banda helps or Weems and eventually Cronin will work. But for now it's a pen that can hold late wins but can't hold other games close. And until we see more fresh arms the Nats are living on how long Carl Edwards keeps defying his stats.
It's been a good April with a nice finish and several important bright spots. What does May and beyond hold? Probably a worse record and tougher times, which when you are looking at a 66 win team already isn't fun. But as long as Gray, Gore, and Ruiz are coming through, Nats fans don't need much more to feel ok. Maybe one more guy up here being great. Another great month from Thompson. Abrams or Garcia going on a run. And maybe one of the young OFs moving up a level and still looking good. This season isn't about winning, which is good, because they still aren't going to.
*Giolito isn't doing too bad though. Lopez is having a terrible season as the new closer
8 comments:
I think that's a solid recap of the first month, and I would add the following:
1. Looking at statcast, most of the team is about on target, but Garcia is getting extremely unlucky (wOBA of .264 vs xwOBA of .347). Which is to say that there's a good reason to hope that another 100 PAs will straighten him out. Which is part of why I'm "happy" though you are 100% right that we need Abrams and Garcia to perform better than this.
2. I am just thrilled with the improved approaches we're seeing this year. Mediocre base running instead of a complete joke. Watchable defense, for the most part. Better patience and contact hitting across the board. Especially Robles and Garcia, who have K%s way way below their projections. Coaching can feel like a bit of a black box to me, and I don't want to go all the way to "well coached", but this team has improved in a number of dimensions that are typically associated with coaching. It feels remiss to not name that. (Which isn't to say I want Davey managing in 2025. I don't. But if the opposite were happening, we'd be explicit about the blame, so it only feels fair to give some credit.)
3. This biggest problem may be the rotation but the downside surprise happened in March with Cavalli's injury. Once that happened, this is pretty much the best we could hope for. We're going to lose a lot games this year but that's been baked in for a while now. No sense in rending our garments at this point.
1. This is right and what we all need to remember is everyone here is two hot / cold weeks from pretty substantially different looking seasons. Memorial Day is when we move from "we need to see" to "wonder what's up" (for anyone that's pretty much played a full two months)
2. Someone got through to Robles. I doubt it was Davey as he's been here for long enough but also the whole coaching staff returned I think... who knows. Baserunning still feels worse than it should be - there aren't many stiffs on this team but they run very cautiously. Defense is better but it's mostly roster fixes. Which is good but again - not Davey.
3. The only thing is bad short outings start hurting the relief pitching, especially with Davey who likes to throw guys out / warm them up more often than most (it feels like). See Mason Thompson - the new multi-inning guy. I actually LIKE to see this but also know it's not necessary now and if it hurts a guy that could help late that's a big minus. Nats entered March with no room for anything then Cavalli got hurt. It's not rending garments as much as noting this didn't have to happen and it's the result of bad planning.
Harper, Braves fan here who has enjoyed your Nats writing in recent years. I wondered if you wouldn't mind doing a post on Juan Soto's struggles since he joined the Padres. I've seen some stats from one article indicating he's still hitting the ball very hard, but more often at extreme angles that don't yield quality production, for instance, but still wonder about him. I'm a big Acun~a fan, and have often kept these two in mind for comparison sake, but as much as people were indicating Acun~a needed a bounce-back season this year, I thought the same for Soto. Would love your thoughts!
I don't recall Soto ever having a slump like this during his time here.
I haven't watched more than a couple Padres games, so I'm not sure if there's anything visible, but that's another datapoint that we'd be blaming on the coaches if it were reversed.
Though, to Harper's point, there's no reason to think it's Davey in particular. And maybe, with the level of player that Soto is, you're slow to credit/blame coaching at all? Though Soto always felt very cerebral and coachable to me, at least as far as I could tell without really knowing anything.
Honestly, if I had to guess, I bet he's having trouble with the clock. If any hitter really made use of that spaciousness beyond just clearing his mind, it was Soto.
His platoon stats are hellish this year - worrisome
Soto's spray chart tells the whole story, he's pulling everything. He has 20 hits and only 2 are to the left side. He popped his first left-center HR in Mexico so maybe he'll turn it around.
Garcia is in the 99th percentile for K% and has doubled his walk rate. For a 22-year-old that is such a major positive adjustment that I think the rest will fall into place (currently .216 BABIP)
Anon - but Soto isn't a Nat anymore! This isn't AllBaseball.com!
I think that was a thing. Sounds familiar
Soto's problems seem to be all contact based. He doesn't seem to be swinging the bat much differently. He's not chasing bad pitches more. But he's just slightly off on everything so when previously he'd square up everything he's hitting more pitches in toward the hands or off the end of the bat. Previously he'd still make contact on the few pitches he did chase. This year he's missing those completely. The end result is a lot of hard hit balls but next to no line drives. All GBs and FBs. Seriously. He has 7% LDs which among qualified hitters is dead last and HALF the number of the 2nd to last person.
The pull thing mentioned by OCW is real. And that's probably caused by seeing a lot more slower movement pitches and fewer fastballs. I looked at the area in the zone the pitches are going and in comparison to 2021 there is a clear shift away. He's getting NOTHING inside. At the same time though there isn't a huge increase in pitches out of the zone caused by the shift. The pitchers are nailing the outside of the plate.
So, He's seeing a lot more junk & a lot more away, but still in the zone. That sort of forces him to act on these pitches but he's swinging for hard contact, not good contact. Because he's generally a good hitter that means he's hitting a lot these pitches instead of missing them, but the contact isn't square.
In some respects I have a hard time seeing this last. You've got a lot of pitchers looking to throw nothing inside but not at all missing outside. It's like he's getting everyone's best. But this should only lead to more walks, not better average or power. The way I see it he can make two adjustments 1) try to lift the ball more. The average probably will go down only a tiny bit and he'll hit several more homers. Essentially turn into an Ultra Adam Dunn type. or 2) try to serve the ball into LF for singles or down the line doubles. I think he has shown the skill to do this but make it his primary attack. Tony Gwynn/Wade Boggs it. I think this is the better path forward bc if he's successful then they have to start throwing inside too or at least feel more cautious about hitting the outside part of the plate meaning more misses
Great analysis on Soto, Harper, and it's fascinating that pitchers are painting the black on the outside of the plate against him so effectively. Will be interesting to see how he adjusts.
Love it, and that's why I come here, even as a Braves fan. I also enjoyed the tweet from the Nationals on the night ATL won the World Series back in '21 - something to the effect of "The visitor's clubhouse in Houston is a great place to celebrate a championship!" Respect.
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