I don't see the Nats as a .500 team on talent.
BUT here they are. Which begs the question for me - maybe this is a season where this level of talent gets you to .500. And there are seasons where .500 ish can get you to the playoffs. Does this seem like a good fit for 2026?
Currently the Nats are a game out of the Wild Card, behind two teams and slightly ahead of... well most of the NL. What do the adjusted standings (trying to take luck out of what happened so far) tell us? You can choose which one you like but looking at the various projectsion the Nats are where they are supposed to be. Maybe a touch more 33-34 than 34-33 but let's not quibble. We talked about why I think they'll end up a little below that but what about the other teams. Is the NL East weirdly underperforming? The NL in general? I can't really say that as you'd expect with groups that big it looks like a mixed bag. So there's not a good reason to think luck will swing for the Nats opponents.
What about though the ones that matter - the ones in the playoffs? The idea here is the Nats look to be pretty stable. If someone ahead of them has a worse projected record than the Nats they might fall past them. On the other hand someone chasing the Nats could catch them if the numbers say they've been unlucky.
The Braves, Dodgers, Brewers are all out of reach as expected. Things can change but right now they are better than the Nats and have a better record. The gap should grow, not shrink.
The Cardinals and Phillies are in and based on these numbers are catchable. The Cardinals aren't better than the Nats, but aren't worse. Their advantage is simply being where they are right now. The Nats have to catch them. The Phillies are more in danger, powered to their record by a 14-5 one-run game record as opposed to the stats. The Nats have a good shot of catching Philly if they play like they have this year. The question there is do you take the year as a whole or ignore the terrible start? If you put that behind the Phillies, they probably are in the Cardinals area - not great but good enough to hold that advantage.
Arizona and San Diego, tied for the 3rd spot right now. Both look worse than the Nats for the season. Not a bad chance to catch them at all. They do get to feast on the Rockies though.
Just ahead of the Nats are the Cubs and Pirates. This may be where the problem lies for the Nats. These two look like teams that should do much better. So while the Phillies, D-Backs, and Padres might flub the last two WC spots, it's the Cubs and Pirates who'd the numbers say you should bet on.
Behind the Nats are Cincy and the Marlins. Cincy appears to be a mirage even at this modest record. The Marlins though... are kind of real? This is weird. I don't know. I can believe in James Wood / CJ Abrams MVP pair a lot easier than Xavier Edwards / Otto Lopez. But I think the Marlins, real or not, are in the same sort of fragile boat the Nats are. There isn't obvious depth. If one key guy goes down it could get ugly. There's a lot of variance here, too much for me to say, yeah they'll catch the Nats.
Finally there's the Mets, not buried far enough to be out of it, but they haven't been good and something would have to change for this team to catch the Nats. It certainly could but the numbers so far suggest lots of other possibilities first.
So looking at the way the season has gone so far. The Nats have been a .500 team and if they can keep that up they COULD make the playoffs but it's likely they'd be the first or second team out. It's not out of the realm of possibility though. We'll see how this all changes around the All-Star break.
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My friends have been texting/msging me about this team for over a month now and I've been shutting them down and not getting excited. Now Harper posts they COULD make the postseason so I'll definitely be disappointed when they don't. Just wish Mr. Crews would figure it out :(
This may be the most optimistic that I've seen you, Harper.
I think it's important context that preseason projections from Zips, Steamer etc are more predictive of 2nd half results than first half results.
Which to say, yes, our baseruns record is close to .500. We aren't here on sequencing or batted ball luck. But our players, lots of them, are over-performing their projections. At least 2, and probably all three, of Abrams, Ruiz and Mead are going to be worse ROS. Maybe Lile and/or Crews can to mitigate that, but that isn't the most likely path.
We're in a giant scrum for the WC, we're currently on the outside looking in and we're not projected to be affirmatively better than any of our competitors. Nothing wrong with getting our hopes up, I suppose, but I doubt the FO sees it that way. Which means they'll be sellers unless we're sitting in a playoff spot or, less likely, there's a ton more separation and we're only competing with 1 or 2 teams for WC3.
Yeah "optimistic" here is "I guess it COULD happen". Am I wagering money on it? You'd have to be giving me some GREAT odds.
Right now, according to FG, if every game is a coin-flip the Nats have 30% shot at the playoffs. If you use any of their 5 projection systems, the chances fall to between 2% and 5%. I wouldn't go that low, but I'm much closer to 5% than 30%.
I'd probably start thinking about it around 12-1, and might be interested at 15-1.
“Playoffs???” - Jim Mora
The Nats are on a positive trajectory. Even if they are over-performing, the team is improving based on the implementation and uptake of a new system and the natural growth of young MLB players.
Trades made before the deadline will give some teams the edge they need to get that WC spot. Not sure Toboni wants to trade prospects for a 2026 lottery ticket -- and I'd be happy to see them play out 26 neither as buyers or sellers.
Improving the performance of the existing team seems to be the priority. Its working. Nats may surprise us and stay in the race.
The Brewers, Barves, and Dodgers are gobbling up all the wins. This pushes the rest of the league further below .500. Since most of these other teams are meh, they all stand a chance. But none of them would really deserve it, unless one of them takes off. So I really don't care, at least until the end of August.
I'm more concerned about the development of the kids, the possibility that Cavalli will be ToR, and how many decent ##4-8 starters are really on the roster.
It doesn't look like they're winning with lucky bounces; they're really getting a lot more production out of these guys than their pre-2026 track records would suggest. The thing is - I think they're going to get at least better a little better during the season. One of these years they'll give Yoyo a chance, some of the injured pitchers will get healthy, and if Crews/House get good, that's enticing. OTOH, a few guys could get hurt and that'll be it.
Then, when they don't make th playoffs we can quote Coach Dennis Green: "They are who we thought they were!" LOL
ESPN Today has their odds of making postseason up to 12.2pct (up from 0.1!) and their odds of winning it all up to 0.1 (up from 0.0!). :)
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/49001952/2026-mlb-trade-deadline-stock-watch-30-teams-dodgers-yankees-braves-brewers
I wonder if being sellers as with an eye towards to near-term is possible way to look at this? Say we trade Abrams/Abrams+ for a front-end SP with multiple years of control. Not a Gore-type btw, I'm talking about a legit ACE (if those exist anymore). Nats have a ton of trade capital to buy some MLB pieces either at the deadline or during the upcoming offseason (lockout notwithstanding). We'll see...
@Ole PBN: why would a team want to trade a front end SP with multiple years of control for CJ Abrams? Presumably, a team in the playoff hunt would want to get CJ Abrams. But why would that team give up a front line starter?
"If the season ended today, the Nationals would be in the playoffs" is not a sentence I imagined that I could be writing on June 10th. This is the most fun I've had as a Nats fan in five years, especially since the farm system now is looking like a source of future hope rather than a dry hole full of chirping crickets.
That said, I can't see any likelihood of the playoffs being real because, as Nattydread and SMS point out, competitors like the Cubs or Phillies are likely to make deadline "buy" moves and the Nats will probably be sellers. While I can't see them moving Abrams, I expect that Toboni will try to move as many expiring contracts as he can. Ironically, the better Luis Garcia plays (and thus the more helps the Nats win), the more likely they are to trade him, because a Garcia with a 120 wRC+ is worth something while a 95 produces a big shrug. Likewise the veteran pitcher trio of Griffin, Littell, and Mikolas; Griffin at least seems very likely to be on his way to eat some contender's innings and Littell has been pitching his way into that category as well.
This seems to have been all part of the plan: use vets on 1-year contracts to eat innings in the field and on the mound, then replace them with whatever prospects separate themselves from the pack. Abi Ortiz, for example, is almost certain to be given a long look after the break, as he's both already on the 40-man (so no risk to his playtime if there are games lost next year in the labor dispute) and is hitting well at Rochester, but there needs to be a space at 1B or DH to play him. He could replace Chapparo or Tena (and both of their roles), but I think the FO will want him to get full-time play, which means replacing either Garcia or Crews. Similarly, I think the hope was that Alvarez, Lara, Perales, etc. would distinguish themselves enough to win trial rotation spots once the vets were traded. How much of all that will actually happen, who can say, but I think that's definitely more likely than trying to make acquisitions for a playoff push.
(I suppose one possibility is that with the farm system in a much healthier state, Toboni might see fit to trade from some of its depth in order to obtain a *controllable* MLB asset in the vein of the trade for Gio Gonzalez, but I think that's unlikely at this stage of things as well.)
While rare, it has happened before. The Pablo Lopez for Luis Arraez trade comes to mind. Miami was coming off a bad 2022 season. They trade Lopez, get the reigning NL batting champ in return, and make the playoffs the following season. In 2022, Minnesota led their division for a good chunk of the season until the wheels came off and they finished under .500. After getting López to lead their rotation, the also made the playoffs in 2023.
Perhaps there is a team with a surplus of starting pitchers that is looking for a bat to anchor their lineup?
And anytime I think “why would a team do X” I just remember AJ Preller is still around.
There shouldn't be three wildcard teams. Honestly, i wasn't a fan of adding a second.
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