The Nats have scored 5.4 runs per game in the first quarter of the season. That just isn't good - it's second best in baseball good. But to Nats fans this feels very weird. Sure they could be better than average if the pieces came through but second best in baseball? If you told me that last year I would have had at least some Dylan Crews fighting for ROY expectations.
What do the stats say?
BASE
Average - .244 t10th
OBP - .325 t9th
SLG - .411 t6th
HR - 50 t9th
SB - 42 4th
BB - 155 14th
OPS+ 111 - t5th
These all say the Nats are a little bit overperforming but nothing crazy because they don't really have any holes in their offensive game. Like maybe they shouldn't be 2nd best but Top 5 is reasonable.
Except for SB this is a huge change from last season. What happened? Well - Luis Garcia is still Luis Garcia but he's putting up better numbers at 1B than baseball's least favorite canine Nathaniel Lowe. Brady House is rounding into at least an average bat after struggling mightily last year. Lyle is better than Dylan Crews. Jose Tena et all are at least matching Josh Bell. But mainly Wood and Abrams are hitting like MVP candidates when last year they were solid and above average respectively. Outside of Nunez replacing Garcia at 2B everything is better.
FANCY
Their launch angle as a team is improved (it could hardly be worse) but other than that there isn't much outside of some minor improvements that would suggest getting to average.
Some of this is likely the Nats just getting better because they have young players and that's what young players do. Hit it a little harder, a little better, swing at fewer bad pitchers.
RELATIVENESS
But here's probably the kicker. The usual way a baseball season works is April is the worst month for hitting then teams heat up until the end of the season when a combination of not trying, resting for playoffs, and kids brought up bring down the stats again. There are vagaries that can affect this but this is the general way of a season.
In May 2026 the Nats have been hot in the first third of the season jumping up from .718 to .799 in OPS. The league as a whole? Down from .715 to .688. I can't say this is unprecedented but we haven't seen it in recent years. So while the Nats have gone on a hot streak baseball itself has gone dead cold and a team that was about average in April now finds itself in front with a good chunk of the reason being other teams flubbing their expectations.
WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN
For the Nats and their offense - it's still early (remember our Memorial Day pledge for when stats count) but it looks like they are better and the terrible offense of 2025 is at least average thanks to some bounce backs and growth. Expect them to land where you'd expect an average offense to be over the past few seasons.
For MLB I don't know. Like I said - we haven't seen this. In April the average OPS was .715. In May that would rank 9th. That itself undersells what's going on as the gap between 9th and 10th is over 20 pts. That's big. Teams are just not hitting. If that's a real thing and there's a new normal, well then the Nats would seemingly benefit from just getting a better from awful. It's not about being some universal best, it's all about relative best.
My guess is though the season will find the Nats drifting down to around the 10th+ range, both as Abrams and Wood settle, as their runs scored match their stats, and as other teams shake off this weird early funk. But still Top 10 ish is better than expected and lends some hope to what 60 days ago looked pretty hopeless.
13 comments:
Is the Nats lineup good? Probably not. Despite the hot streak, Fangraphs has them projected as the worst offense (by Runs Scored per Game) for the Rest of Season 2026:
https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/projected-standings
Expect serious regression
How much does the new regime matter? They brought in better equipment, a different approach to stats, and a different offensive philosophy. I think it’s a big enough difference to warrant at least a mention.
I'm hoping it's Fangraphs that's regressing.
Concur: Daylen Lile (the Louisville Slugger) is better than Dylan Crews.
If you look at all the "plus" stats, at a team level they're slightly above average (somewhere in the 100-110 range). And it definitely doesn't seem like batted ball luck because the BABIP+ is 100 exactly and they don't hit a ton of flyballs (and when they do it tends to leave the park more than average). On the aggregate, that tells me this team is probably a top 10 offense even if they seem to be overperforming a little right now. That's pretty damn good considering expectations coming into the year. I'm surprised fangraphs is still so negative of the rest of season projections, but like Harper says maybe they're waiting until Memorial Day too
Abrams and Wood are driving the production. Abrams is a streaky hitter, and likely to regress to the mean. And an injury to either Abrams or Wood would be devastating to the lineup.
too early to say, but likely had SOME effect.
It's a bunch of young players / players with limited experience doing better than expected so it's going to be hard on them. I'll eat my hat if their the worst offense for the rest of 2026
Don't look now but he's been hot for the past couple weeks. LIke .300 with 52B, 3 homers, 11 RBI
This is pretty true. There was a short stretch when they both went cold and it was like a faucet shut off
I'm with Harper and would happily take "not last rest-of-season" even giving some pretty serious odds.
Wood and Abrams very probably aren't quite this good and obviously Wiemer will be more like he's been the last 35 games than he was the first week but everyone else is pretty much in the right ballpark. Maybe you lose a little from Mead and Tena, though also maybe this is what platooning can do for them. In any case, there's no reason to expect it to crater.
I do think we lose Abrams in July, so I think we're probably worse than average ROS. But that's a long long way from last. (And it would probably leave us like 10th for the whole year. Which is, I'll admit, better than I expected on opening day.)
And Wiemer is soooo useful when multi-tasking as a mop-up relief pitcher.
Coaching and new tech. This is a completely new franchise that made fundamental major changes to its operation. A quick look at how the hitters in our top 30 prospects list are performing tell that story better than the MLB team does.
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