The Nats season is over. They finished 71-91 which is the same record they had last year, but while the numbers are the same, forward progress was clearly made. Last year, they were arguably a low 60s win team by various measures that somehow found itself over 70. This year they were the low 70s win team that they ended up as.
Results like 2023, where the W/L don't match the stats can be caused by "coin flip luck". You happen to get a few more dribblers through with men on base. The opponent hits a few more fly balls to the deepest part of the park. Results like 2024 can also be caused by luck though. Several players finding themselves having years that might be the best of their career, or that one late career bounce back, all at the same time gets you deserved wins but wins you can't count on continuing on*. Trevor Williams pitching like a Cy Young contender for 1/3 of the season can only be described as shocking, but nothing else felt out of order. Rather it felt like the Nats having one of those season where more works out than doesn't and when it's mostly with kids rather than vets beating expectations, you can't dismiss that. Maybe you also can't count on it, but you can certainly get interested in what the future can hold.
Offensively this season was quietly a bit worse. The Nats made a few bets on veteran bats, some good some inexplicable (hey it's Nick Senzel's music! Which, by the way, is a sad trombone). Like Candelario last year, one really paid off in Jesse Winker. You had a couple guys do well last year it was Thomas and Garrett this year Wood and Garcia Jr. But whereas last year the rest of the lineup was mostly guys below average with one or two stinkers, this year the Nats had a lot of the latter. Last year only Alex Call got more than 200 PA (439) and put up a OPS+ under 85. This year Keibert Ruiz did it (485), Joey Meneses did it (313), Vargas (303), Gallo (260), Rosario (235), and Lipscomb (211). That's a lot of stink!
But you can certainly argue that outside of Ruiz none of these results were all that important, and while Thomas and Garrett doing well last year was nice, Wood and Garcia Jr doing well this year was important. So the offense was worse but in a way you feel better about where it can go.
On the mound the Nats improved across the board. Last year the pen was a solid three guys and then a bunch of terrible choices. This year their FA signings worked out well and they watched as almost a full pen of guys threw... well mostly just ok. But a 4.50 ERA is world's better than a 6.50 ERA. All in all this helped elevate the Nats from "really bad after the top" to "below average mix". That kind of improvement matters but probably only would have balanced the lack of hitting by itself.
No the huge difference was in the starting pitching. The Nats were bad last year with a lot of bad starters being bad. This year they were still not good but resembled the "rest of the lineup" from the 2023 Nats. A lot of below average guys being below average. Irvin, Parker, and Herz didn't have good results, but they were good enough to keep the team in the game and that slight difference was big enough to matter. And much like with Wood and Garcia, the fact that it was two younger pitchers doing that in Parker and Herz makes you think maybe the Nats can get lucky and one will make the next step.
We'd be remiss if we didn't talk about the baserunning. The Nats lead the majors in SB and while their success rate dropped it still managed to be around 75% which is about what it needs to be to be a positive. Add in the general disruptiveness of that game plan and it's another new plus.
Defense? They were worse. You might think Jacob Young would have made an impact but him and Call (another excellent fielder) only played like 16% more innings this year. Meanwhile you lost all of Candelario's contribution at 3B and he was very good. While Garcia looks better guys like Abrams and Thomas took big steps back from already not great positions. This is one place for concern moving forward as while Crews does appear to be good, Wood does not. The defense will likely be bad with a couple of bright spots, rather than the preferred, good covering a couple of holes.
But look at the scoreboard and see how much that matters. The defense didn't stop the Nats from being much better and that will likely be the case again next year. Of course now we get to the main point.
The Nats season wasn't good in a vacuum but it was good for the future. You have the pieces for the potential next run either here (Ruiz, Garcia, Abrams, Wood, Crews, maybe Young or one of the late season guys, Gore, Brzykcy, maybe Irvin, Parker, Herz or Ferrar) or coming soon (House, Yohandy, Lara, Grissom Jr, maybe Lile). The team is ready to try to make the next step. But the next step is big.
The Phillies, Braves and Mets may be at various stages of their competitive cycles but the simple truth is in 2024 they were all at least 15 games better than the Nats and it wasn't by luck. They are that much better. The Braves and the Mets are the teams fighting for the playoffs. That's the first goal line. High 80s in wins.
If the Nats want to simply get better they can probably follow a similar plan to this year with maybe grabbing a more reliable FA SP to at least take up an inning eating role. Do that, watch the kids improve (or not) and come up (or not) and probably win 5+ more games. But that's only 75-80 wins, still a good bit from the playoffs. No, if they want to feel like they are really making a push they need to be serious actors in the FA market. They have been before, so we can have some hope, but times change. Already they have started this run differently by not grabbing that Werth-like big FA in assumption that the team would come together. What else might be different?
2024 was not exactly what you wanted as a Nats fan but it was probably what you could reasonably expect a positive year to be. You didn't have a lucky run to .500, the Nats weren't really ever playoff relevant, beginning their slide well in advance of when playoff spots are thought about, and they didn't have a breakout star. But more happened good than bad and the kids got to the majors on time. The team became a team you could watch and expect a competitive, if not exactly winning, baseball game.
Now what you can reasonably expect for 2025 in my mind, is a couple big FA signings and a team that looks like a good bet for .500 while it watches the kids and figures out where the last couple pieces need to be to make the playoffs. Will we get that? Let's find out.
*Wanted to note with Zaidi out in SF this is EXACTLY how SF won 107 games a few years ago. Buster Posey, Evan Longoria and Alex Wood had their last good seasons. Belt, Crawford, Ruf, Duggar, Gausman, and DeScalfini all had their best years ever (ok best 2year block for Belt). No one basically underperformed. It was what happens when EVERYTHING goes right for a team that should win like 80-85 games. All those +1 WARs add up into something crazy.
8 comments:
Another big asset the Nationals have is a fair number of attractive lottery tickets in their minor league system--Liles and Moraleses and the like. I doubt that it makes sense to trade them this winter, but who knows about August?
@Harper - Agree with everything here, but want to really underline how devastating it would be for the team to fail to engage on quality FAs. I know you can't make a player sign - look at SF's troubles last offseason - but this team needs to be in the market for some very serious talent. I've been largely a Lerner and Rizzo defender, but I'm out of patience. Spending this offseason makes strategic sense given placement on the win-curve, there are obvious holes that aren't likely to be filled internally and the budget is sitting like $70M below league average. It's time.
It's important to note that the terrible hitting performances this year occupied 1B and DH, two positions that are theoretically much easier to improve upon "terrible" than other positions. A 100 WRC+ DH is basically an AAAA player, whereas the AAAA version of SS or C is like 80 WRC+ (I made both of those numbers up but I bet they're directionally reasonable).
Another thing not mentioned about this year's progress: Susana and Sykora had outstanding years and ought to be close to if not on Top 100 lists. If Sykora has a similar year next year at A+/AA (obviously a big "if"), he will be a top-10 MLB prospect. Those developments would make me shift my 2024-25 free agent spending away from starting pitchers and towards hitters.
And +1 to SMS: the Nats need to be making nine-figure free agent offers this offseason. If they aren't in Juan Soto's "final three" or whatever, I will be irate.
As a fan, what was most important to me for this year is that — for probably 3/4ths of the season — it was just a fun team to watch. They were competitive and entertaining. It got tough by the end as fatigue and trades started to be felt more, but for huge chunks of the season, it was actually worth watching or listening to. That’s a huge improvement over last year, where the results were similar but it felt pointless to watch.
I hope they start trying to build momentum towards a competitive roster, but aside from Soto, not sure it’s a free agent class worth getting too excited about.
1. I'm quite concerned that if the Nationals don't sign at least one free agent who is an established power hitter (Teoscar Hernandez?), and a quality pitcher, that we could be looking at another 71 - 91 performance next year. I'm also not confident that all of Irvin, Herz and Parker will pan out to be 4.00 / 1.4 WHIP pitchers. (I feel pretty good about Gore.) The Nats defense is pretty terrible, they obviously don't hit for power, and they don't have a bullpen. 2. I love the talk about prospects. Let's be honest: most teams have equally good prospects, so it's not like the Nats are the only team in baseball with good prospects. Without knowing anything, I'll bet the Braves and the Dodgers have lots of great prospects (and the Mets don't:).
Agreed both should be top 100 going into next year and Sykora honestly top 50 or at least darn near close to it based on his numbers last year and upside. Susana maybe lower in the hundreds (numbers improved throughout last year, but mostly based on upside shown)
It would be great if we could upgrade the corner positions enough so that Nunez could play shortstop. I was critical of Rizzo for drafting him then sittingt him all year, but he was amazing filling in for Abrams at year end. Not sure where Abrams should play.
It was very weird looking at a Nats team where the starting pitching was actually...adequate? Gore was worth 3.2 fWAR. Parker, somehow, 2.4. Herz 1.7 in only 19 starts. Irvin ate innings like an average pitcher. Even Corbin, somehow, was more "meh with the occasional implosion" than "nightmarishly awful." It hasn't really been like this since 2019.
I absolutely have to agree that the Nats need to make a move in FA. The kids are here. Garcia, Abrams, Wood, and Crews are all on the major league team. Young can field and run the bases well enough to be part of a high-end-team if there are bats elsewhere (see, eg. 2019 Victor Robles), or he can be a very good OF4. Milias looks like a sufficiently adequate backup C. Tena and Chaparro tailed off hard, but they showed some flashes and between them and Yepez there might be someone who can cover somewhere on the diamond. House is still in the pipeline. It's time to actually lay down some cash and make the equivalent of the Werth signing.
Obviously, signing Juan Soto would be the coup of the offseason, but apart from him the one FA I'd like to see them more reasonably go after would be Christian Walker on a 2-3-year contract. He's a solid power hitter, which this lineup needs, and he's also an excellent defensive first baseman, which can help with the fact that while Garcia is adequate, the rest of the infield is...honestly, they kind of stink. Teoscar Hernandez and Anthony Santander are other options, but it's not ideal that they're outfielders as it would push Wood to DH or Young out of the lineup, which is a problem I'm happy to confront with a transcendent hitter in his mid-20s like Soto, but less so for a solidly-above-average hitter in his 30s.
Starting pitching won't be easy to acquire, either. Burnes is still an ace, but he's had (slightly) declining performance for two years and he'll definitely demand a Scherzeresque megacontract. Snell is erratic, Flaherty and Fried have definite injury concerns, and after that the question marks just get worse. Perhaps this is an area where Rizzo tries to work some of his trade magic...
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