Nationals Baseball: Merciful Ending

Thursday, October 06, 2022

Merciful Ending

The Nats season ended with a non competitive loss, the last in a string of beatdowns only mercifully stopped by there being no more games tomorrow. They lost their last 5 games by scores of 8-2, 8-1, 4-2, 8-0 and 9-2.  That feeling of the past week in general and the last game specifically, that the Nats were never in it, best conveys the feeling of the season. It was a season that began with Alcides Escobar starting at SS, had Joan Adon starting Game 3, and ended with 4/9 of the offense manned by guys 27 or older that hadn't been good enough to start the season with a team. 

The season was never going to be a good one. The only question was how bad would it be? If Strasburg could be healthy, if Corbin could be ok, if Bell was for real, if Cruz had one more year in him, if more guys stepped up than stepped back ... it could have been passably bad.  High 60s in wins with most of the attention toward watching Gray, Garcia, and Ruiz and the young pitching hopefully develop and how that would effect re-signing Soto in the offseason. But very few of those things worked out and the season collapsed on itself. They were 6-15 before the end of April, 18-33 on Memorial Day. A looming unexpected sale put a tighter timeline on the Soto decision and with no clear path forward with the limited youngsters on hand, Soto went out the door to bring in a truck load more. The season and the next few, were officially given up on. 

The Nats were this bad. There was no real unluckiness to be found. The numbers pegged them at 56-106. They were blown-out regularly while their wins tended to be squeakers.  They couldn't hit - their best full season hitter was Lance Thomas, a decidely average bat who hit .240 with 17 homers. They couldn't pitch - their best full season starter was Josiah Gray who succumbed to fatigue and fell back into his pattern of giving up multiple homers every game, ending the year with an ERA over 5.  They couldn't field - 2nd in errors, 2nd to last in defensive runs saved. They couldn't run - in the lower third in SB and SB%, #3 in getting picked off, 3rd worst in extra bases taken, tied for 4th most times thrown out at home. They did nothing well. 

This includes being managed as Davey spent the year, his 4th in 5 leading a team to well under the pre-season expectation of wins, shifting blame away from himself and ending it explicitly saying that it's not the always the coaches fault.  And it includes building a roster, as guys brought in by Rizzo to be possible late season trade pieces all performed poorly leaving the Nats with nothing anyone wanted. 

The Nats were a bad team that played worse, whose most important moment of the season was dealing away a likely future Hall of Famer. 

This wasn't a forgettable season. This was a season you don't want to remember.

12 comments:

Chas R said...

Amen

Anonymous said...

This is a correct post-mortem.

There are reasons for optimism, though. The 2023 rotation - headed by Cavalli, Gore, and Gray - will likely be a lot better. The defense won't be as bad with Garcia playing hopefully zero innings at SS. You can squint and see a decent (and extremely cheap!) infield, with Ruiz at C, Abrams at SS, Garcia at 2B, Menseses at 1B, and Kieboom at 3B for his last chance (we need a large MLB sample for Kieboom to decide whether to fish or cut bait; he ought to play every day next year even if you're not that confident he'll be good). The MLB OF is in shambles, though

Nattydread said...

Painful.

As we search for anything to hold on to, its somewhat gratifying that Scherzer gave up HRs to Atlanta when the Mets title was on the line. If things continue to play out, they continue to collapse in the playoffs meaning that his Hall of Fame garb will be a Nats jersey. Hate to root against the man, but at least we'll have that for posterity while we wait for the reboot.

SM said...

You know what singular moment
defined the Nats' 2022 season?
When Keibert Ruiz took that foul ball in the cobblers. And wasn't even wearing a cup (never mind half-full or half-empty)!

As a reminder: No team this century has ever won a World Series after a 100-loss season in fewer than 4 years. It was Houston, after razing the team, plowing it over, and salting the soil. And even then, the 4-year recovery was faster by 4 years than any other 100-loss team.

This ain't gonna be pretty for the next few years.

Steven Grossman said...

Okay.Maximum of a day for doom and gloom, then let's start focusing on the default team for next year and where/how it needs to be replaced or reinforced.

How about this for a starting point (recognizing that it could easily be the worst line-up in basebal in 2023l):
C: Ruiz 1B/DH: Menseses/Voit 2: Garcia SS: Abrahms 3rd Kieboom (Vargas)
LF Call??? CF Robles RF Thomas
SP (at least 7 given injuries): Strasburg, Corbin, Gray, Gore, Cavelli, Fedde, ?

Is anybody due from the minors to help this mess? Assuming some mid-level investment (2/$15 type contracts), where do you concentrate the dollars? Its probably a year early for a long-term, expensive signing....but if you did one, who do you go after?

Anonymous said...

SM: why is "win the world series" the correct standard and not "make the playoffs"? I get that the whole point is to win the world series, but making the playoffs is surely a better measure in that it reflects how a team has done over 162 games as opposed to how a team fares during the haphazard - and some might say random - MLB postseason. Surely several teams have gone from 100 losses to playoffs in less than four years (not to mention the fact that "100 losses" is just an arbitrary number). The Orioles improved by 33 wins from '21 to '22. Big improvements in short timeframes are possible (though probably not for the 2023 Nats).

SG: I doubt the FO will spend much money, but if they do, it should be in the OF or for starting pitchers. I could also see buying one or more broken down (or poor performing in '22) relief pitchers with the idea that they could be flipped at the deadline. I would not sign any starting pitcher for more than two years (and probably only on a one year deal) because SPs generally get worse as time goes on, so the Nats would be paying for higher quality '22 performance that they don't need. I'd consider a longer team deal for an OF like Nimmo, but it will almost certainly cost too much for the Nats. I'll be disappointed if the Nats don't try to make a free agent splash in the '23-4 offseason, but I don't expect much during this one.

Cautiously Pessimistic said...

I suspect there will be 2 FA SP signings for middling guys on the verge of retiring anyway (like a Smyly/Cueto combo). I don't think they'll want full seasons out of Gore and Cavalli, and I doubt Stras will be pitching before the ASB anyway.

And then likely a 3B/OF type player like Longoria (unless the Giants pick up his option). Again, older, not very good, but better than an Adrianza or Hernandez

Until the player development org is properly razed, though, I really just don't see the Nats getting to a competitive level again. To see all these players fail to develop over the last few years is really disheartening

G Cracka X said...

True or false?

Nats 2022 regular season bullpen > Nats 2019 regular season bullpen

kubla said...

@GCX

I haven't checked the numbers (embarrassing for this blog comments section I know), but the 2019 bullpen sure felt worse. That could be because there were competent starters and saves to blow in the later innings. In 2022 there were few leads to protect and the record got so bad so quickly that there weren't enough opportunities for memorably brutal bullpen meltdowns. If there had been the best bullpen ever out there in 2022, would it have mattered when opponents were dropping 4-6 runs on the starter and nobody who had a qualifying number of ABs with the team had over .800 OPS?

The Ghost of Ole Cole Henry (JDBrew) said...

@SH
Evan Lee for the rotation maybe?? Plus some rebound FA’s to flip at the deadline.

Outfield, I’d play the Robles and Thomas hoping that they do something. And try to catch lightning in a bottle with some dart throws or rebounding FA’s to flip.

The Ghost of Ole Cole Henry (JDBrew) said...

@SG I meant

DezoPenguin said...

@GCX:

2022 Nats relievers: 2.1 fWAR

2019 Nats relievers: 0.7 fWAR

In 2019 our best reliever by fWAR (and the only one who put up more than one win) was Suero, whose results were notably worse than the numbers. The fourth-best was the corpse of Fernando Rodney. The basic strategy was Doolittle, Hudson, and the power of prayer. There's a reason why Patrick Corbin will always be firmly on my "remember him fondly" list for his three innings of Game 7 pitching heroics--it's not just because he was great in the clutch moment, but because I cannot conceive of the actual relief pitchers holding Houston scoreless for three innings.

(2017 was the last time the Nats bullpen was actually good; this year (22nd in the majors in fWAR, but tied with #21 Cincinnati) is the highest the 'pen has ranked since then.)

So yeah...this year, the SP sucked, the batting sucked, and the defense sucked, but the 'pen was...kind of okay?