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.
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I expect some 40 man roster turnover with the new regime. I'd like to see a full season from Cavalli too. But yeah, they will probably be about the same next year in terms of winning. That's fine, evaluate the organization through the deadline.
Unlucky: Ruiz's continued decline and season-ending injury.
Nah, after last year I think the decline was in the realm of possibility and that made the injury something that didn't hurt the team
Big improvements in the pen over the course of the season. If they'd spent just a bit more and started the season with the same "meh" quality they achieved by the end of the season, I think that's a few more wins there. And I do think a few more wins just from expected improvements in young players.
But yeah, fundamentally I agree either they need to spend a bunch of money or tear it all down unless they want to hang out in the mid-70s wins for the foreseeable future.
Unrelated, but I would say Garcia was a disappointment. I'm not sure it was "unlucky" -- I think you could see it happening -- but he was a lot less good this year than last.
Rosario is already in "Let's remember some guys" territory. Wait, who? That guy played for us? Oh, yeah, that's right.
For LUCKY you left out Kyle Finnegan, who was lucky enough to get traded away from this dumpster fire franchise and earn his first playoff-series-clinching win
I gotta say, I never believed in Young. I fully expected terrible.
My first impulse is to prioritize a front-line starting pitcher. However, the biggest force multiplier would be to get a slugger---Alonzo (ugh) or a Tucker or a Bellinger on someone from the next tier-- who can provide protection in the line-up for our young hitters. Of course, I am also looking forward to better coaching so they aren't so undisciplined at the plate and on the base paths.
They need a lot of help on the mound, at the corners, and behind the plate + another stride or two upward by Wood, Abrams and Gore. I'm not exactly sold on Daylen Lile, but I can imagine a Moises Alou style career path if the Nats get really lucky.
While I'm wishing for a full recovery and a resumption of Ruiz's career, TBH, Millas and Adams performed very well after Ruiz's injury when they were splitting time reasonably. I forget when Millas went down, but after the ASB to the end of August, the Nats catchers were 9th in fWAR. That season ending injury might give a clue as to how to address C.
https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2025&month=1000&season1=2025&ind=0&pos=c&startdate=2025-07-16&enddate=2025-08-31&team=0%2Cts
In terms of unlucky, at first glance, I'm kind of floored by how far the entire team performed below their statcast expected stats. .242 AVG vs .260 xBA, .390 SLG vs. .418 xSLG, .303 wOBA vs .323 xwOBA. Crews was a big offender but not an outlier. That said, something Boz pounded home in his article after the Toboni introduction was just how pathetic this team is on launch angles. (30th out of 30). Only team to be below a 10% launch angle if you don't round up. Maybe they deserved the underperformance?
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