It's still too early to look at individual stats but we can start to look at team trends and see what underlying things look good and what, if any, look scary. Last year the Nats issues can be broken down like this :
Batting
2025
Home Runs - 161 - 24th in majors
Launch Angle - 9.9%
Walks - 443 - 28th
At the plate the Nats could make contact with the ball - they were middling in both average and strikeouts. That should help on the path to a middling overall offense, but you need to occasionally walk to get guys on base and hit homers to drive everyone in. The Nats were terrible at both of those.
2026
Home Runs - 20 - t 6th.
Launch Angle - 10.4 %
Walks -59 - 19th
Grain of salt on the counting stats since 1-2 games played difference can throw things out of whack but the Nats power and patience are both up. The launch angle is improved but in a general sense you want to be in the 12.5 to 15.5 range (there is "too high") so room to grow. James Wood especially is held back a bit by this because when he doesn't square a ball (which he does often) he slams it into the ground - he never misses under the pall. No pop-ups but no flares or with his power lazy fly balls that just keep carrying.
Pitching
2025
Home Runs - 214 - 26th in majors
BA - .268 - 29th
Hard Hit - 44.1 / Exit Velo - 90.1 - 30th
Walks - 566 - 27th
Last year it's easy to say the Nats pitching staff did nothing really right. The other team hit them and hit them hard and drove in all those guys the Nats put on base when they did it.
2026
Home Runs - 34 - 30th in majors
BA - .262 - 27th
Hard Hit - 46.3 / Exit Velo - 90.3 - 30th
Walks - 84 - 27th
I'd like to tell you thing have gotten better but they haven't. When basically all your good pitchers walk this will happen. Can the Nats improve? Yeah probably. Even just a minor improvement to "lower third" would keep them competitive if the offense finds it's way to average.
What would be my biggest concern? Well the Nats decent-ness so far is carried by their homers and there isn't a great stat telling me why they are doing ok hitting homers. They don't hit a lot of balls hard as a group or hit a lot of balls in the air. (in fact they hit a lot of balls on the ground) so you'd think they'd be much lower. Also it might be because cold bats are exaggerated early on in a way hot bats aren't. Teams can hit .200 as a team but they don't hit .300. The Nats just might be the hot team at the moment who will get passed by everyone else as they normalize (and pound the Nats' pitching).
But worries are for tomorrow. Today is for more .500ish baseball.
9 comments:
Still uneasy about trading away MacKenzie Gore. A team requires five starting pitchers. How many quality pitchers do the Nationals have? If the Nationals get lucky and their non pitching prospects bloom, how quickly can they assemble a quality starting staff?
No you make that trade every day. The thing to keep in mind is that a) the payroll is basically nothing right now and b) we're staring down the barrel of a strike. Pitchers are expensive and injury prone, now is the time to stockpile young players with the plan to buy your pitching after the next CBA. It's also why we see so many young players signing long term extensions, everyone is uneasy about the next CBA
Yes very dissapointed they traded their best pitcher especially given the fact that they did not receive one major league ready talent. You don't give up your ace for no major league ready talent no matter how many players you receive.
Otherwise the hitting is much improved even though ther pitching and defense is not. Wood and Abrams look like All Stars thus far and and Lile, House and suprisingly Young look better than average with only slighly more than 10% of the season in completed. Their pitching and defense are no better than 2025 which is to say horrendous. Foster Griffin has been very solid so far and Zack Littell has been solid along with Cavalli excluding his last start.
FWIW (not much), I think that the defense is significantly better than last season. My thumbnail stat for overall defense is Defensive Efficiency - the rate that balls in play are converted into outs. The previous couple of seasons the Nats were only saved from being DFL by Coors Field keeping the Rockies at #30. In the (very) early going this season the Nats (.702) are actually slightly better than league average (.700). They’re ranked #16 by that metric.
They haven’t been GOOD, mind you. But “mediocre” is so much better than “horrific.” I was happy to note that the aging Philthies’ defense has been really bad.
One other factor: baserunning. The Nats are terrible.
Poor baserunning and opening the season with a lousy bullpen have been the Nationals hallmarks for as long as I can remember.
I recall on several occasions during their window of competitiveness, Rizzo being forced to make in season trades to sure up their bullpen. One year they were so desperate they traded for Papelbon *snort*. In season bullpen trades were a factor in their minor league talent depletion.
I was so hoping things would be different with the change in management.
What's interesting is that my gut intuition agrees with you that the Nats are terrible on the bases (so many outs!), but the cold hard math has them mid-table (14th).
And what's even wilder is that the Nats haven't actually been terrible on the bases since 2022. They were 15th last year, 8th in 2024, and 17th in 2023. They were 29th in 2022, and I think we may all still be a bit anchored to that assessment. Also, we're a very fast team (2nd fastest by statcast) which means our mistakes are obvious and frustrating and not simply turning doubles into singles by being slow.
This is a good callout. A couple of the personnel changes are helping defensively (Nunez for Garcia most significantly), but for the most part it's just the same folks playing a little bit better.
Ruiz is putting up average catcher defense, showing improvement both blocking and framing. Lile has actually been above average after being terrible last year. And Wood has been a bit average when he plays in right, which seems to be the team's plan A going forward.
Our remaining defensive weaknesses (1B and SS) aren't any worse than last year. It adds up to pretty solid improvement across the board.
Baserunning is... fine. Well it's not good but the league is generally not good at baserunning so the Nats aren't falling behind because of it.
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