We have rounded the crest of the season are are heading into the dog days where seasons for all but the worst teams are won or lost. The Nationals have shown themselves clearly not to be one of the worst teams so what does the next month have in store for them? Well it boils down to the two answers above.
Are the Nationals for real? Yes. They have finally been caught for the most R/G in baseball (by the Pirates! Someone go back so I can make that bet) but they have a very healthy lead on most of the other teams in baseball. Sixth is the Twins nearly a half-run back. The questions from earlier in the season remain, Can Wood keep this up for an entire season? Does CJ have an extended slump in him? Is Ruiz really this good? But 95 games in it looks like the answers are Yes, No, and good enough. Add to that Luis Garcia developing a power swing and Curtis Mead being a perfectly decent Joey Meneses, Mike Morse "found this guy who can only hit for 1-3 years of help" and you have a Top 5 in the Nats lineup that can literally hang with any teams. The bottom four isn't as fun but Lile and Vivas are livable and Nunez and Young have made themselves not terrible in exchange for their plus defense. Is the bench pretty much a horror show? Yeah, but that's the understandable cost of not actually building the team for this year. Your main set-up can be solid but there's nothing behind it.
When you have the best offense in baseball you can challenge for .500 even if you have the worst pitching and that's a good thing because the Nats might have the worst pitching. While they are only 3rd they are behind two bad teams playing in weird situations (Rockies and Athletics) that effect their results. The Nats "weird situation" is that they don't want to put anything toward getting better. On the mound the Nats are hanging on by their fingernails. Cavalli looks fine, not an ace, but likely able to be relied on in a #2/#3 role. Foster Griffin's great results are living on borrowed time but he should also be rotation worthy. The rest of the pack is a group of "let's see what we get from this guy tonight" guys. You can't rely on these guys but the alternatives are worse. Almost every team throws one of these guys out there, most two. Three is a little much but this rotation is still enough to get into the playoffs with that offense. We all know the starting pitching isn't the issue.
The Nats relief pitching is among the worst in baseball and the ERA has been pushing 6.00 for the past couple months. You don't necessarily need a deep pen with this offense, just a reliable 3 man set that can hold leads late. The Nats don't have even that. Andrew Alvarez is possibly the best arm, but he's been forced into game start duties leaving his innings high and making him unavailable for late relief. That literally left Orlando Ribalta and Brad Lord as your go to guys, two arms best suited to be the 3rd man in that reliable 3rd man set. Poulin might be decent enough against lefties and right now that's it. Your "three man set" is two guys who might occasionally be able to do it and a guy you can sort of trust against lefties. And if these guys are tired or hurt (Lord is currently out) or otherwise unavailable? You have absolute trash. Like the Nats offensive bench this is the cost of not trying for the year but why the initial pen was so bad? That was a choice.
And worse for Nats fans, it's a choice that we haven't heard word one of changing from the men in charge. The Nats aren't really trying and they aren't going to start. The powerful offense is a great thing to see making this season interesting but it's only applicable in respects of the decisions made for upcoming years or this year's trade deadline.
To answer the questions from the title - Yes the Nationals are for real but no they can't make a run for the playoffs. And the reason for the no is because the front office doesn't have interest in doing that this year.
What does that mean for next year? It depends on the decisions they make particularly with Abrams and Garcia. Abrams is likely to be kind of this good going forward (and also a continued liability at SS). Garcia is still young enough that this power burst could be for real, but it also just might be a career year for a guy that's more an average bat. Still they are two bats you'd want for a team looking at 2027. At the same time the Nats have a solid top of bats in the minors. Willits, King, Fitz-Gerald, Cruz are all solid prospects with Willits being one of the top ones in baseball. The quantity is there to potentially trade Abrams and/or Garcia away to bolster the Nats future pitching depth which currently relies on Jarlin Susana and the TJ recovery of Travis Sykora. But if they do deal these guys away what it means for next year is that there isn't a next year, or at least there won't be a real challenge for the playoffs then either. 2027 will be moving guys up and seeing what they got and figuring out how to put that playoff team together for 2028.
Agreed that the Nats aren't going to spend any money to get better this year. And they certainly won't trade prospects. Unfortunately, the Nats will probably get worse. Foster Griffin will be traded, and might not bring much in return. (I would try to sign him. He's not a #1, but he could be a perfectly suitable #3). Littell and Mikolas will be traded if anyone wants them, and will bring almost nothing in return. I'm not averse to trading Garcia, sell high, buy low. Garcia isn't going to get better than he is now, and remember, he's a platoon first baseman. I'm completely opposed to trading CJ Abrams. He's an everyday player with a terrific bat, offsetting his poor fielding. You just don't find guys like that. He needs to be signed long-term. For next year, the Nats need to buy some free agent pitchers, both starters and more importantly, competent relievers. The Nats would be in a playoff spot now if they had even an average bullpen. Losing three in a row in the 9th to Philly, and three more in a row to the Yankees in the 8th or 9th is a stunning indictment of a terrible bullpen.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with buying low and selling high is the that the game is played in public. The other teams pretty much know what you know, and they're also trying to buy low and sell high.
DeleteWhich isn't to say that those trades never happen, but they can't be a strategic goal because you can't assume there's some fool you can trick.
Every player should be available for trades if some team is offering significantly more than the org believes they're worth - even Wood. But our baseline assumption should be that trades are fair, or even slightly at a deadweight loss to account for deal friction, and that they are primarily used to change the shape of surplus value positionally and temporally and not to create additional surplus value.
Griffin needs to be traded or signed. The Nats are not a contender this year, so letting him play out his contract would be a poor move. Abrams--I'm not so sure. He will be very expensive to sign, and the Nationals have quite a number of very promising MIFs in the minor leagues. They won't be ready until 2029, but Abrams is good through 2028, and arbitration produces reasonable salaries and a QO at the end. Garcia would be good to trade if some other team needs him. My mega-deal would be for Wood, if he's amenable. And yes, moar pitching is essential. Some of it will soon be returning from the IL, but some decent free agent pitchers are necessary.
DeleteI'm hoping for a genuine chance at a wild card team in 2027, and a real competitor in 2028.
THANK YOU for writing out my thoughts. I find the 2026 Nats to be fun to watch, but lately the pitching (mis)management makes most games 7-inning affairs. After that the bullpen comes in to gack up any lead they might have.
ReplyDeleteIt's quite clear that ownership doesn't really give a crap and a half about the fans. At least a thinly veiled statement that they'll try "maybe next year" to contend would be better than the usual "BUY MOAR TICKETS!!11!"
But at least the conversion of Tyson's Corner I & II to data centers should shore up their revenue streams.
The analysis is truthful but perhaps a bit misleading. If you go back to March, prospects for the offense were not really much higher than for pitching. Our leaders were Abrams and Wood--neither of whom had proven that they could maintain their success through a full year (still haven't). Who was betting Ruiz would revert to above average, Mead was the real deal, or that Garcia would blossom from a possible candidate for release to an RBI leader? Or that the bottom four would be contributing on offense at all.
ReplyDeleteWithout that unexpected offense, we wouldn't have leads to blow....just a really bad bullpen making 5-2 losses into 8-2 losses. The 3 runs that were pivotal in our blown saves are meaningless if we were already behind. No one would be noticing. Trade-deadline implications, yes...cause for regret, no.
I think this is the right frame for the team, Harper. They aren't a fluke but they aren't good enough. Becoming good enough at the deadline is not a realistic option and we aren't positioned well enough where we could luck into the playoffs despite not being good enough. All that means that the "smart" thing to do is to sell at least the rentals, and this FO is certainly "smart".
ReplyDeleteMore broadly, the most important question is: does the team intend to spend next season, the season after that or never?
I agree with Harper that we've had enough negative tea leaves that "never" is the most likely of the three, but I'm uncertain enough that I'm not quite as pessimistic as he is. Even if privately the FO and the Lerners recognize what a missed opportunity this season was and are determined not to let that happen again, they'd have very good reasons not to say so publicly.
Oh well, watching Wood hit sure is fun, no?
I agree that the team is not really good enough to make a playoff run. But using that as reason to diss the team is pretty silly. Exactly how many of us (Harper, myself, you, whomever) thought going in to 2026 that this team was 2-3 bullpen arms away from being a true playoff contender?
ReplyDeleteFor that matter, while I think with 20/20 hindsight that the team really *should* have signed a couple of bullpen arms...for those short of memory, recall how many of us were torching Rizzo and the Lerners for setting some $50M of spending *just last year* on players who turned out not to be worth close to that. As many summed up, pouring millions of dollars into Sims, Poche and the like turned out to be basically "setting money on fire."
For that matter, remember coming out of Spring Training when based on their track record in Florida the pitching (including bullpen) looked okay but the offense looked like a serious weakness?
As it turns out, the Toboni/Butera plan to use analytics and better coaching to improve the defense turned out GREAT. The plan for using analytics and development to improve the pitching...didn't.
Fair enough, not all plans will work. It's up to the team to figure out how to fix the dumpster fire of a bullpen. But jumping from "the plan worked for the hitters, for the pitchers not so much" to "The Nats have no intention to ever field a winning team because they hate their fans!" seems...a bit much.
To be clear, the Lerners are on probation with me (I like their complete clean house and revamping of the team; they still need to spend more). My take is that the Nats are more or less showing "2026 = 2011." While I don't expect 98 wins in 2027 (*), I do think that if the team commits $50-60M in player payroll to next year (both extensions, if they can find a taker, and free agents) that the Nats will in fact be legit playoff contenders.
(*) Assuming we have baseball in 2027. Separate rabbit hole.
Which means trade off the rentals, but not CJ and LG Jr unless you get a great offer (I'm more open to trading LG Jr because I'm not sure he's more than 2025 Daylen Lile). The aim is to compete in 2027 and beyond, so players who can add value (like, say, All-Star game starting SS) to a playoff team you don't trade away.
In the meantime, I will enjoy and groan at the "no lead is safe for anyone!" 2026 Nationals as a team that is not only better than I expected but one that looks like it's established a foundation for a team that can win sooner rather than later.
I'll park my torches and pitchforks and see if the Lerners can revamp their spending on the team like they revamped the team's drafting, development and analytics. If they don't? Well, then it's time to light the torches and march.
Excuse me, the plan to use pitching and analytics to improve the OFFENSE turned out GREAT. Wish there was a way to edit these posts...
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