It's time for my now annual review of where the team got lucky and unlucky in the past season. Understanding this can help figure out where 2027 could go, or where it should go, given return to forms are often seen for people way under or over performing.
LUCKY
Both Curtis Mead and Andres Chaparro well out performed expectations for their half-year of batting. They also got a great bit of hitting from Joey Weimer, even if the Nats were never fooled by it. And Garcia was putting together his best year before being traded
CJ Abrams had the kind of balanced year that you hoped he could have - it's likely not overly lucky but it needs to be mentioned. In here I'd put Cavalli blossoming as well.
In a different way Foster Griffin being that good was a run of luck but that's why you pick up a bunch of guys, to hope something like this happens
PJ Poulin had some solid stats despite the fancy stats saying he's not very good.
Can we say Ruiz is luck? After two horrendous years we certainly can't say we expected it.
UNLUCKY
Wood got hurt, luckily not for long but still at this point unlucky it happened.
Some of the cups of coffee at the end of the year - Ortiz, Ford, - may have had some bad luck hitting it where they ain't
Cole Henry didn't build on last year, and instead was so bad he ended up being released. Gus Varland gave them nothing.
DJ Herz had a slow return from Tommy John and suffered a setback before finally getting some innings in.
AS EXPECTED
Nasim Nunez can't hit. Sorry last year was a weird bit of home run magic unlike his career. This might be low but it's closer to who he is.
Guys like Lile, Young, House, Crews on the prospect side and Vivas and Tena on the vet side produced the "eh" results that would be most expected.
The rest of the pitching, starting and relief, was probably as bad as expected. No money or talent in, no production out.
So what does this tell us? The Nats were a touch lucky this year. They didn't have any major collapses at the plate or unexpected collapses on the mound. I wouldn't say the pitching was lucky, Foster Griffin is basically a quantity win, but the bats were much better than expected overall which jives with the team finding itself with the top offense in baseball for a while.
One thing that's hard to tell, given regime change, is how much of this is luck and how much is process. Did they id better hitters than the last group? Do they develop them better? It's a question that will be answered in 2027 and 2028, not now. Now, assuming all things equal, we should expect a more average offense in the upcoming year. What that means is a bat would be extremely helpful though where to put it is a question. Second would be the obvious choice but there are a couple SS kids you don't want to block the way for. Maybe a 1-2 year vet deal. The Nats might suffer from leaning too much into the House/Young/Lile direction that is probably going to offer nothing great outside of Young's D.
On the mound, it's pretty simple. They need to go out and spend to upgrade the pen and yes, likely add an arm. This doesn't have the caveats that the batting does despite some fans wanting to pencil in a 5-man rotation out of what's here and assume it's playoff worthy. They can use another dependable arm and if the army of choices forces an issue with too many good arms worry about that later. The Nats can't expect to grab 10 mediocre guys and hope it works out. This year shows you - it usually doesn't.
So the takeaway for 2027 is the hitting is likely to drop a bit. You can try to prop it up and hope the pitching surprises, or you can really add to the pitching to cover the expected offensive drop. Given the state of prospects the latter makes a lot more sense to me. Do nothing and you can't expect another surprisingly fun half-season from this squad. It would likely drearily march to 70-75 wins. SO do something. It doesn't have to be a lot but it has to be a 2-3 reliable guys.
