Every year we do this - checking in where the team got lucky (or not) and maybe how that factored into this season and following ones. This isn't to say a player if "lucky" can't continue on the same path, or if "unlucky" will bounce back. It's really just about expectations into this year and how those played out. Reasonably expect a guy to hit .280 with 20 homers and he goes from .310 35 or .250 10. That's what I'm talking about.
Lucky
Before 2024 Trevor Williams recently peaked as a pitcher when the Mets moved him to the pen and he put up a 3.00+ ERA pitching in relief. As a starter he had one good year back in 2018 but otherwise had been bad at the role for half a decade. Yet, he was Cy Young worthy for the third of a season he was healthy. Yes, he did get hurt but his value for those 13 starts were well above what he had done in any full season since 2018.
When you throw three young guys with at best mild expectations
into your staff the expectation would be one would flame out, if not
two. But Jake Irvin, Mitchell Parker, and DJ Herz all performed well
enough to hold down spots for the whole year. Like getting three
straight scratch-off come up as winners. Only like $5 or $20 but that's
still lucky.
Derek Law is a guy in a pen. That sounds like faint praise because it is. He just hasn't been special since his rookie year. In 2023 he had value but the numbers behind it suggested he wouldn't be good. But he was! Better than any year since 2016!
Some bench players will out perform when seen in small doses but Alex Call hitting .343 / .425 / .525 was crazy even if for ~100 PA.
Unlucky
While last year's mediocrity tempered expectations, there really wasn't any reason to think Keibert Ruiz would continue to regress and become a flat out bad offensive player.
The flip side of Alex Call is Eddie Rosario .186 / .226 / .329 is surprisingly bad after an average 2023. They caught the last year of his career. It happens. It's bad luck.
Your #2 and #3 relievers both catching the low end of things (Harvey is having his ERA not match his in a vacuum performance thanks to some untimely balls getting through, Rainey really struggling to come back from injury) is low end bad luck but should be mentioned.
As Expected
Some free agents hit (Winker) some don't (Gallo) some are worth trying into their mid 30s because they are probably still good (Floro) some aren't even under 30 because they are probably never going to be good (Senzel). Sunrise Sunset.
Young players can vary. Luis Garcia Jr seemed to have this in him. Trey Lipscomb may simply barely be org depth. Wood can come in and pretty much immediately be good. Crews can come in and look like he needs some more experience. Some variation is standard.
CJ Abrams had a wild ride but ended up kind of where you thought. Well not in AAA that was not expected but we're talking about season performance.
Pretty much everyone else. Scour the team and it's hard to find anything unusual. This was the team that was built and it mostly
Similar to last year the Nats weren't trying to be good. Similar to last year the Nats caught more breaks than they didn't. Some BIG breaks pitching wise with Williams and the no downside kids, that lead to a lot of decent innings on the mound and a few wins more than the team was built for. Add in some aggressive baserunning and a bounce or two of game luck and here we are.
DISsimilar to last year there is expected to be some improvements next year because the talent here is now real major league level talent. How good can Wood be? Will Crews step up next year? Who is CJ Abrams really? Can those young arms keep being decent? Just sticking with what the Nats have isn't a recipe for success. It's a recipe for a couple more wins with a lot of variance. Say expect 73 wins but 81 or 65 being possible. What's going to set expectations is what kind of FA moves they make. Make the right ones and that variation becomes enough to get the Nats into the playoff hunt if things break right for them. But you have to expect SOMETHING right? Like so mid to upeer 70s is the floor of likely expectations unless like Gore needs TJ and Wood breaks his leg in an off-season ATV accident.
Yeah pretty much makes sense but I guess the lucky/unlucky should be more like titled expected/unexpected.
ReplyDeleteI think next year tells a lot, for some reason we are bringing back Coles while other teams are getting a new hitting coach (more Phillies talking about it too) while we’ve made positive moves in pitching development wise in the minors and in the majors with the coaching staff. If we don’t start really getting results with hitters developing (especially in the MLB…Crews the headliner) Then a change is required there.
As I see it this is a give or take 75ish win team next year based on expected improvements/regressions.
unexpected good, unexpected bad I guess to keep those separate
ReplyDeleteLet's get some FA in here so Nats fans can start to think about playoffs without "if this goes right, and this goes right, and this goes right, and this doesn't go wrong..." having to be a caveat
I did not expect Gray to lose an entire year to injury, so mark it as unlucky in my book. Based on what you've written about him in the past, though, he might not have contributed too much if he'd been there the whole time, especially since the replacement guys were better than expected.
ReplyDeleteyeah gray losing the whole year was unlucky but whether or not that would have been better than what they got using the kids makes it hard to include here in a performance sense. It's more unlucky for him, and for the evaluation of him.
Deletenot sure losing Gray was unlucky; on balance team may have been better off seeing the new guys. Not sure Gray was ever going to amount to much. That was one trade that turned out very badly for Nats.
DeleteAs much as I want the Nats to bring in some legitimate FAs, making the playoffs next year still seems like a stretch. It took 89 wins this year, and I don’t see the Mets, Phillies or Braves falling off much next year. 2025 might still be a year of trying the young kids out. If they do bring in quality FAs, I hope it’s on multi year contracts, though.
ReplyDeleteI recognize that fans can disagree about this, but I would be thrilled with a season that ended with 85 wins and the team in the wildcard mix until the last week of the year. That's 6 months of interesting and often enjoyable baseball.
DeleteI also think it's pretty important to understand these win totals as median estimates, with a typical standard deviation of like 8 or 10 wins. 85 win true talent isn't what I want the team to aiming at long term but, for next year, that would be a huge improvement and make it more likely they can put together a 90+ win team in 2026 and beyond, not less.
Everything here sounds right to me, though I think it's also useful to split luck into things that drove the 2024 W/L record and things that portend good or ill fortune for the future.
ReplyDeleteLike Williams pitching really good but getting injured, was certainly a net positive in terms of wins. But the timing and nature of his injury meant that we weren't able to trade him. If he'd remained healthy, but ran a full run worse on ERA and FIP, we'd still have been able to trade him for a decent prospect and it would have only delayed Herz's debut 8 starts. I'd go back and make that trade off, if we could.
Still, that's pretty small potatoes, and I certainly agree that the starting pitchers are the big topline. Because of Gray's injury, as Kubla mentions, and Cavalli's stilted rehab, I'd say the team had "pretty good luck" and not "incredible luck". But if you had said in March that we'd have full healthy seasons with promising development steps for 6 of Gore, Gray, Irvin, Parker, Cavalli, Herz, Susana and Sykora, I'd have signed up for that in a second. I guess in preseason, I'd have included Rutledge in that list, so it's really 6 of 9, but that's still not bad.
Pretty good summary of the luck, though as SMS says, timing is also relevant.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Harper that the team is at the point where it's right to add veterans via FA or trade. Unfortunately, this year's FA class is pretty weak. I don't want to, for example, see the Nats spend $12M on Kyle Gibson to get a reliable innings-eater; I'd rather them let Gray, Cavalli, Rutledge, etc. fight over that spot and see if one of them can become a real pitcher. If they're going to grab a pitcher, I'd prefer it to be a genuine difference-maker, like when Rizzo traded for Gio or Fister and signed Scherzer or Corbin (...yes, the Corbin signing ended badly, but also, World Series win, and ALL pitchers can break at any time; why sign the guy who you don't expect to be good in the first place). I mean, Jake Irvin basically *is* Kyle Gibson at this point, anyway. We have innings-eating rotation fill; we need guys at the front end.
1B/DH seems to be the place where a genuinely good player could be had for reasonable cost (the 3B market sucks, and our OF is somewhere I wouldn't want to add anyone to unless it was Soto or unless they're 100% convinced Wood needs to move to DH).
There's also the bullpen, but Rizzo's not going to sign high-end relievers in the offseason.
(The pipe dream is that we get Soto, Walker, and Burnes. That isn't happening. Getting any one of the three (or one of Snell, Flaherty, or Fried) as our Werth signing would make me genuinely happy with the FA moves.)
I agree with all of this, though I've been increasingly thinking that Bieber is the best SP fit for the Nats He offers SP1 upside and he should be available at a steep discount. And, because 2025 is a just borderline year for our window, the Nats are less harmed by the innings limit than other teams would be. We also have good depth arms to step up if his recovery hits a snag. I just think it's a risk profile that fits our situation well.
DeleteMy preference would be to give him to a high AAV 2 year deal, and include a team friendly 5 year option after that. Like $70M/2 and then a $100M/5 team option with a $15M buyout. Would he really rather bet on himself by taking the QO or a $30M/2 deal? I think that guarantee would be hard to turn down coming back from TJ. (But, also, even if he does want the $30M/2 - I'd happily offer him that.)
I like Bieber, but he probably isnt going to be ready to pitch MLB innings until mid-June of next season. That seems awful steep for half a season.
DeleteWouldn't a two year guarantee get him for a season and a half? TJ was last April. 14 months to be back in the rotation would be June next year.
DeleteOr did you mean that Cleveland isn't likely to give him a QO?