Lucky or Unlucky : 2025

I like to do this annually - figuring where the team got lucky and unlucky and seeing how that factored into this season and what might be read into 2026, given return to forms are often seen for people way under or over performing. 

 LUCKY 

Prospects can surprise but Daylen Lile hitting well enough to win player of the month of September and setting himself up for a starting role in 2026 was well above and beyond expectations. 

It was way more likely that Amed Rosario was at the end of his career than he would have the best season of his career at the plate but he did the latter. 

Uh... that's it

UNLUCKY 

Nathaniel Lowe was consistently good for his career. After being traded to Red Sox he was good again. He just was a dog for the going nowhere Nats. Who can know a man's heart? 

Neither Irvin and Parker were over their heads last year and could reasonably be expected to maintain their average performances but instead they were both flat out bad. Roll one snake eyes sure, but two? Unlucky. 

At 25 with a full season behind him, Jacob Young was more likely to get better this year but instead he crashed out of the Nats plans. 

No one expected Trevor Williams to be the pitcher he was for 13 games last year but going straight back to terrible was also a surprise. 

AS EXPECTED

This teams was built to be bad except for a few players. Wood, Abrams, and Gore were talented and they performed. Garcia, Bell, and a few arms in the pen were ok before and ok this year. The rest was a collection of mediocre to terrible players who performed mediocre to terribly and kids who could not and did not break out. 

 

So what does this tell us? The Nats were slightly unlucky this year which explains the slightly low win total in comparison to what we thought it might be. They weren't a good team but if everything with expectations broke even they should have gone over 70 wins. 

What can get better in 2026 just by running the same guys out there?  Well Williams/Irvin/Parker should end up with 2 averageish pitchers I guess. And... 

Well then that's it and really you are just looking at hoping kids like Crews and House and Cavalli do a lot better with a year under their belts.  Simply put there isn't much here to expect anything interesting from the same group run out again. Let's hope they don't do that.