It's still too early to look at individual stats but we can start to look at team trends and see what underlying things look good and what, if any, look scary. Last year the Nats issues can be broken down like this :
Batting
2025
Home Runs - 161 - 24th in majors
Launch Angle - 9.9%
Walks - 443 - 28th
At the plate the Nats could make contact with the ball - they were middling in both average and strikeouts. That should help on the path to a middling overall offense, but you need to occasionally walk to get guys on base and hit homers to drive everyone in. The Nats were terrible at both of those.
2026
Home Runs - 20 - t 6th.
Launch Angle - 10.4 %
Walks -59 - 19th
Grain of salt on the counting stats since 1-2 games played difference can throw things out of whack but the Nats power and patience are both up. The launch angle is improved but in a general sense you want to be in the 12.5 to 15.5 range (there is "too high") so room to grow. James Wood especially is held back a bit by this because when he doesn't square a ball (which he does often) he slams it into the ground - he never misses under the pall. No pop-ups but no flares or with his power lazy fly balls that just keep carrying.
Pitching
2025
Home Runs - 214 - 26th in majors
BA - .268 - 29th
Hard Hit - 44.1 / Exit Velo - 90.1 - 30th
Walks - 566 - 27th
Last year it's easy to say the Nats pitching staff did nothing really right. The other team hit them and hit them hard and drove in all those guys the Nats put on base when they did it.
2026
Home Runs - 34 - 30th in majors
BA - .262 - 27th
Hard Hit - 46.3 / Exit Velo - 90.3 - 30th
Walks - 84 - 27th
I'd like to tell you thing have gotten better but they haven't. When basically all your good pitchers walk this will happen. Can the Nats improve? Yeah probably. Even just a minor improvement to "lower third" would keep them competitive if the offense finds it's way to average.
What would be my biggest concern? Well the Nats decent-ness so far is carried by their homers and there isn't a great stat telling me why they are doing ok hitting homers. They don't hit a lot of balls hard as a group or hit a lot of balls in the air. (in fact they hit a lot of balls on the ground) so you'd think they'd be much lower. Also it might be because cold bats are exaggerated early on in a way hot bats aren't. Teams can hit .200 as a team but they don't hit .300. The Nats just might be the hot team at the moment who will get passed by everyone else as they normalize (and pound the Nats' pitching).
But worries are for tomorrow. Today is for more .500ish baseball.
3 comments:
Still uneasy about trading away MacKenzie Gore. A team requires five starting pitchers. How many quality pitchers do the Nationals have? If the Nationals get lucky and their non pitching prospects bloom, how quickly can they assemble a quality starting staff?
No you make that trade every day. The thing to keep in mind is that a) the payroll is basically nothing right now and b) we're staring down the barrel of a strike. Pitchers are expensive and injury prone, now is the time to stockpile young players with the plan to buy your pitching after the next CBA. It's also why we see so many young players signing long term extensions, everyone is uneasy about the next CBA
Yes very dissapointed they traded their best pitcher especially given the fact that they did not receive one major league ready talent. You don't give up your ace for no major league ready talent no matter how many players you receive.
Otherwise the hitting is much improved even though ther pitching and defense is not. Wood and Abrams look like All Stars thus far and and Lile, House and suprisingly Young look better than average with only slighly more than 10% of the season in completed. Their pitching and defense are no better than 2025 which is to say horrendous. Foster Griffin has been very solid so far and Zack Littell has been solid along with Cavalli excluding his last start.
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