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.
3 comments:
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.
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