The Nats have lost two of three so far to the Mets with the final game coming today. In a match-up of disappointing lefties Patrick Corbin takes on David Peterson. Corbin has been doing ok as of late and the Mets are a mess so a decent chance for him to continue that. For the Nats Abrams has had an ok series but no one is knocking the cover off the ball, while some guys are failing. Hey Jake Alu might not be good! Who might have guessed other than dozens of evaluators over half a decade?
One of the weirder things is how the Nats bats have streaked one way and another to all end up in the same place :
- Garcia OPS+ 98
- Garrett 96
- Abrams 95
- Call 94
- Meneses 92
- Ruiz 92
- Smith 90
This is where problems happens because while "just below average" isn't a good place, it's not terrible and getting to a sure "above average" is going to cost you. What you want is some guys doing really well and some guys doing horribly that you can easily upgrade to "just below average" because you pay those guys nothing (see: Nats payroll 2023). The Nats don't have anyone doing really well - Thomas and Vargas are both a bit above average. And in a repeat of 2022 the only player currently hitting poorly is the FA signing Jeimer Candelario, who's been awful for nearly a month now.
The Nats have upped their power... well at least to the point a single player isn't going to be ahead of them, but they have dropped their walk rate and are rapidly approaching the bottom of that. Trying to skate by on batting average just isn't working as 2 3 and 2 runs in the past 3 games attest to. Not that they are likely to get shutdown completely - they get the bat on the ball and if you do that 2 or 3 times in a row good things can happen, but explosive scoring will mostly elude them. They need top notch pitching and they don't have that. They have averagish pitching.
I sound down on them but I'm not really at least in a 2023 sense. There is very little that's very bad and that makes the team middling instead of terrible and ok to watch. It's just I still get a sense of "good feeling" and I'm trying to judiciously warn you it's still likely to be a long summer.
Some random notes
Games are still much quicker. There's no way around the fact that the clock is doing it's job. It almost had to but you still wanted to see it. Auto strikes and balls caused by pitch clock violations are steady so nothing is being learned. By the way the Nats are up there for both auto strikes and balls as batters and are not up there as pitchers. Not sure what that means, probably nothing the numbers are so small.
Stolen bases attempts are still way up compared to 2022 and highest since 2012 but the success percentage is down to almost the break even point. That means we likely won't see more and more SBs.
Batting average is up a tick and the GB and LD averages are up accross the board, so the shift is working in a sense. But guys are still mainly trying to homer and are ok if they strikeout while doing it so it'll take a team willing to show they can win through contact to change minds. Can the Nats be that team? Maybe but they need to walk and steal more bases. Singles aren't going to do it.
3 comments:
You only trust small sample sizes when it's bad news!
Alu isn't likely to be good enough that you're happy he's starting on a contending team and he might not even be good enough to fill in for a spell and not cost us wins, but you shouldn't write him off after starting 1 for 9 with a walk any more than you'd pencil him in as a future star had he started 3-8 with 2 BBs and a HR.
Another example -- "Abrams has had an ok series but no one is knocking the cover off the ball". Abrams is 4 for 12 with a double and a HR. If that were his true talent level, even with error prone defense, he's in the MVP discussion.
The main reason folks are generally happy is pretty obvious to me. We thought this team would win 60-65 games and now it's looking more like 70-75. We won't be satisfied with that forever but nothing wrong with enjoying it until expectations reset.
To me the most disappointing thing about our lineup is that our relative success has happened in a way that doesn't really create any tradable value (and I think you were getting at this your point when you talked about the non-linear value of production). It's not a huge loss versus preseason expectations -- the batters we would like to trade (Candelario, Smith, and Meneses) weren't slam dunks to be targets and didn't have high ceilings, but the chances of us getting a decent relief prospect or two out that group has fallen from ~30% to basically nothing.
The one wild card is Robles. Assuming he comes back from the IL next week and has another 200 PAs of league average or better hitting, do any contending GMs believe in him enough to give us something? I'm skeptical and think he won't get traded until next summer, if at all, but he's by far the most valuable position player on this team who isn't a cornerstone of our next window of contention.
The Nats' offensive anemia is a fairly likely result from putting together a lineup of nine fairly cromulent 7-8-9 hitters.
Maybe I'm living my user name, but I think the reason fans are generally happy is because the baseball we are playing (mostly) isn't embarrassing. We saw what embarrassing and non-competitive looked like last year, and we see it right now every time we watch the A's. The team is clearly trying, working together, having a bit of fun, and being generally competitive with even the best clubs.
For me, personally, it's very satisfying to see the record very close to that of the Phillies and Mets who are spending orders of magnitude more money. It's fun to see young pitchers learning how to challenge batters, wriggle out of jams and get rewarded with wins and close losses. It's fun to watch Keibert have 12 pitch at bats and work a walk or a single. And it's fun to watch the young players come up and fight to get over the hump to consistent productivity.
It's not hard to see how a new owner and a fair MASN deal could free up the cash for 2-3 (or maybe 4) proven high-production players. Get those players and a better manager and see us compete within this window.
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