Nationals Baseball: Standing now

Friday, May 24, 2024

Standing now

Part way through the stretch of death and they are playing as I expected. 4-10 through it so far (yes, 2-9 recently but you can't parse out the bad anymore than you can the good. We want to look at the entire stretch here) Take that rate amongst the rest of the stretch and you have them ending at 27-41 one game off my guess of exiting the stretch 28-40. 

In the specific death march Phillies through Guardians, we were hoping for no sweeps and maybe a series steal. They did get swept by the Phillies and didn't manage to steal a winnable series at home against a currently scuffling Minnesota. So not a good start. But three more series with the same goals (1) Don't get swept (2) steal a series if you get a chance. 

The good news for the stretch is the Mets and the Tigers, who were noted as being on the back end have really looked bad recently. The Mets matched the Nats 2-8 run in the last 10 and the Tigers have lost their last 5 getting outscored 41 to 14 in the process. So maybe the stretch of death ends with the second Atlanta series with a Mets breather before it. If that's the case there's more of a chance of a little pre-ASB burst to get back to spitting distance of .500. 

The Mets games loom huge here. They have fewer than 40 games between now and the ASB and 10 of them are against the Mets. The Mets are a team that doesn't do anything good, but doesn't do anything bad.  In baseball though that doesn't add up to average. You need to do something good to win games. They stay in games, but lose. The Nats HAD been a good pitching team that didn't score. You saw that kept them close to .500.  That pitching has been missing for a while. 

Anyway give me James Wood. I'm guessing Jun 14th. That actually coincides with the end of my original stretch here right after the away series with Detroit so that's good. It all lines up.

7 comments:

G Cracka X said...

Sadly, James Wood is hurt. Hopefully nothing too bad, and he could still debut in mid-June as you hope

billyhacker said...

Ruiz looked a little different and better today not the HR, the patience. If he could go from bad to below average it might help keep the Nats's on base machine rolling.

G Cracka X said...

Raise your hand if you thought Trevor Williams would be undefeated at this point of the season, or that Dylan Floro would break the National's record for most consecutive scoreless innings.

I certainly would never have predicted either....

G Cracka X said...

And, there goes the scoreless streak

Harper said...

Way to go. Everyone (who bets) put your money on Williams taking the L next game

G Cracka X said...

Random question: what do the dots mean in the 'Level' column on the MLB Prospect Rankings?

https://www.mlb.com/prospects/nationals/

kubla said...

@GCX

I could be missing something, but it looks like those dots also indicate the level, going from one for rookie ball to six for the majors. They seem redundant since the page also spells the level out, but maybe MLB expected nerds like us to demand data visualizations for everything.