NL East Review: Nationals

Written by Akshay on July 1, 2008 – 2:22 pm

So, here we are at the halfway point of the season. About the time when you can almost judge what will happen down the stretch (no one could have seen the Mets major collapse this early last year, but there will be random cases). If the season ended after 81 games, the Phillies, Cubs, Diamondbacks and Cardinals (wildcard, WC) would be off to the playoffs in the National League. The Rays, White Sox, Angels and Boston (WC) would be the teams in the American League. Yes, the first name on the AL side was the Rays and in Tampa Bay, formerly the Devil Rays. The team has a great nucleus of young players, young pitchers and veterans. Almost reminiscent of some of the early Braves teams of the ‘90s…but not quite.But I’m not really here to talk about the AL; I wanted to talk about the NL East this week, starting from the bottom up. So today we’ll talk about everyone’s favorite bottom feeder: The Washington Nationals. Remember in 2005 when they were the only team with 50 wins by the all-star break? Well, they were living on the edge much like last season’s Diamondbacks and winning a lot of one run games with Cordero as their designated closer. Of course, all the Braves did was calmly go to Washington in the first series after the all-star break to take the lead in the division and never looked back. The Nats ended up finishing last at 81-81 (the NL East was the only division without a losing record that year) and haven’t really seen much more than the bottom of the division.

Since that time, former manager and hall-of-famer Frank Robinson retired and Manny Acta took over. Guys like Ryan Zimmerman, Lastings Milledge and Cristian Guzman have been the go-to guys on that team. Not saying much? Seriously, those are probably their best hitters. This season, Zimmerman leads the team with eight home runs, Milledge leads the team with just 32 RBIs and Guzman leads the team with a .314 (respectable) average and 48 runs scored at the top of the order.

To see how they fare against other teams, you pretty much have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the NL in the stats page to find them. They rank dead last in:

  • Runs scored (305, Braves are seventh with 375).
  • Hits (675, Braves are third with 769).
  • Total bases (1014, Braves are sixth with 1193).
  • RBI (285, Braves are sixth at 359).
  • Batting Average (.239, Braves are third at .270).
  • OPS (.673, Braves are fourth at .765).

Obviously, that’s the result of not winning a lot of games and not getting any production out of guys they would have thought were guys that would give them a lot. Austin Kearns (.187, 42 games) and Felipe Lopez (.242, .318 OBP, 72 games) are hitting well below their averages in Cincinnati and has been the status quo for what the Nats are going through. Guzman is, in fact, the only guy with respectable stats on the entire offense. He is hitting .314 with a .776 OPS and 24 doubles in 82 games.

Sadly, the pitching stats do not get much better with this team. They rank 14 in ERA (4.55, Braves are tops with a 3.69 team ERA), 11 in the NL in walks (308, Braves are ninth with 287) and 14 in batting average against (.288, Braves are again tops with a .246).

So what will the Nats have to do to get better? This team looks so similar to our teams of the ‘80s that there are no quick fixes. The fans and the players will have to ride it out until they can get some solid young talent in, enough to fill up their minor league system and who knows, maybe one year it will just click and send them to the top of the division.

This year, there’s probably little to no chance of them making a run. The Nats currently sit at 33-51. They have shown little to no efforts to get better and are not getting healthier. Chad Cordero was placed on the disabled list today and was never fully healthy this season. Because of this, I doubt the Nats will win that many more games than they won in the first half.

Prediction: 63 – 99, 5 in NL East.

- Akshay

 


Tags:
Posted in League Analysis | 3 Comments »

This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.


3 Responses to “NL East Review: Nationals”

  1. By Colin on Jul 1, 2008 | Reply

    Great look at the Nats, Akshay. Can’t wait to see the rest of this series as the week goes on.

  2. By Colin on Feb 2, 2009 | Reply

    Great look at the Nats, Akshay. Can't wait to see the rest of this series as the week goes on.

  1. 1 Trackback(s)

  2. Jul 1, 2008: Catcher’s Blog » Let’s kick ‘em while they’re down.

Post a Comment


BravesBlast.com is not affiliated with or sponsored by the Atlanta Braves organization. Views expressed on this site do not reflect the views of the Atlanta Braves organization.