Baseball will start this week but will it? The Nats are a team in limbo in every way. They have no home station. They have no home coverage. Under new leadership they have no direction (yet). They have an ownership as stable as the next rumor that they are trying to sell. They are a baseball team this year because they were a baseball team last year and baseball teams just don't go away.
This Spring will be an exercise in finding the bright spots. In again looking for what might be part of the next great Nats team and evaluating them. In again scouring the minors for any unexpected bright spot that can make you think tomorrow will be better than today because today should be very bad. In again trying to figure what the Nats can get for their tradeable assets.
It'll be about staying out of the league cellar, the division cellar, and maybe sneaking into 4th. It'll be about being a feeder team in August and playing spoiler in September. It'll be about the baseball happening around the Nationals more than the baseball happening within.
It'll be about Cade Cavalli and James Wood and Dylan Crews and Brad Lord and Daylen Lile and Brady House and a lot of other names of kids in their early to mid 20s and a lot of prayers that things go right.
It'll be about dives in the hole and long throws and ninth inning comebacks and moonshot homers. It'll be about getting too excited about a 4 game winning streak. It'll be about reading too much into stats on April 24th even though every year we tell ourselves not to do that. It will likely be bad and inconsequential most of the time but it will be baseball. Baseball will start this week. Even for the Nats.
14 comments:
Harper, your uncomfortable ambivalence makes you the true "every man" of Nats fandom. We are all looking for the sliver of hope that keeps eluding us.
For the first time in 20+ years, I may skip the home opener; still have the season tickets tho.
I can't recall a worst time in Nats' franchise history. At least even in the dark days of 2006 - 2010 there was a plan and hope for the future. We have nothing to appreciate but the simple things now as Harper notes
That almost got me fired up. I don’t believe in the new staff particularly. At least I don’t believe they can make chicken salad with this roster… but maybe we won’t have to watch the dumbest approach to at bats in history? Maybe we won’t run into outs with our pitiably thin “good” portion of our line up? Maybe this will be less offensive to follow.
My problem with the Nats is that I can see a lot of young players who may develop into cromulent Major Leaguers. But an all-cromulent team is not quite a .500 team. I'm not sure I see many possible stars, apart from Wood.
Zuckerman has started an Instagram account at markzuckerman12 called Nats Journal
More than that - he's got a substack (natsjournal.com) and is crowdsourcing his way to West Palm!
Looks like he's trying to go independent full-time. He's got my full support.
Crowdsourcing? This really is 2010 all over again
I remember the dark days of 2006-2010, but I don't remember any sense that there "was a plan and hope for the future." At least beyond "just keep losing, and maybe someday they will start winning?" Honestly I feel more hope for the future with this very young roster than I did with Zim + retreads, has-beens, and never-weres that the team had in those days. At least now they are young and there are a couple of potential center pieces on the roster, and the minor league system is better than it was in those days, too.
Eh, I can't speak for everyone, but my dominant emotional response back in those days was: "We have a team! Yes, yes, we suck, but we have a team!" And then, with the Strasburg and Harper drafts, I began to think "Maybe we won't always suck." And that was very nice.
Even better was the near-decade where we didn't suck. And that went on long enough that I was pretty willing to view the rebuild through rose colored glasses (though admittedly not as willing as John C always is).
But the between not signing any decent FAs last offseason and not signing any decent FAs this offseason - basically announcing that they're OK with fielding a terrible on-field product indefinitely - well, my mood is certainly the darkest it's ever been as a Nats fan.
Honestly, I'm reconsidering whether I want to spend my time this way.
I fall kind of halfway between SMS and John on this. As an Expos fan since 1979 who didn't abandon his team just because they moved to a different country and changed their name (which, I mean, it's not like I ever lived in Montreal; I was a Navy brat growing up so the idea of my favorite team being the local home team was absurd), 2006-10 was on some level just more of the same misery since 1994 ruined all my hopes. Yet there was also the hope that with the move to Washington, there might actually be an attempt to have a winning baseball team, unlike under the ownership of Jeffrey Loria or the stewardship of MLB. Then came 2011, with the Werth signing, the team flirting with .500, and Strasburg's emergence (plus Harper just around the corner), and real hope... Let's just hope I'm not looking at another 15 years wandering in the baseball desert before we get our next 2011!
And, yeah, maybe some of the raw talent on the roster can actually turn into actual baseball players? Or at least ones who know when to take the extra base and can field the ball?
I think I’m less naive, largely thanks to this blog, than I was in 2006-2010. Back then, I viewed the Nats as a plucky underdog doing its best. Now I see cheap owners that don’t care. And I’m embittered that they took away the passion I had for random games on a June weeknight. Or that annoying day game in the middle of the week, watching pitches on the espn tracker at work and wondering what to do that night at 7. The excitement of going to see an ace on a Saturday. How it felt to watch good baseball players step into the box with their walk up music blaring knowing the opposing pitcher was nervous.
I remember how it felt while I screamed angry/joyous obscenities at the Dodgers as Howie’s homer flew out to center and we finally vanquished our first round woes. How I felt when I learned I was going to be a dad after game 4 of the World Series, and for the only time in my life in any sport, I KNEW we were going to win it all. There wasn’t space in my heart for doubt. We even beat a bunch of cheating-perhaps-worse-than-others jerks to do it.
That’s a lot to lose, unfortunately. I’m not sure I’ll really care about the Nats under this ownership again.
I understand the unhappiness at money spent on tickets and concessions; living out of town, I haven't spent money on the team in person in well over a decade. I don't share the pessimism, though - maybe what I am is "guardedly optimistic", which I was not last season. Before the firings and the offseason, it felt to me as if the team and the front office was directionless, just hoping that a player hit in the way that Harper or Strasburg had. All the offseason changes feel like an acknowledgment that things had to change and, now, a move with direction towards a very different approach. I don't know if there will be immediate results from this approach but I think in the next few years there could be some very positive one. It's entirely possible ownership will never spend (although this revamp had to have cost money, it's nothing like what a few vets on long-term deals will cost, or a long-term deal for, say, Wood) but I'm willing to reserve judgment at least a little longer on that as we see what this group will do with these players and the others that will cycle through this year.
I just know the Nats are gonna wind up signing Castellanos........
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