I just perused some team splits for 2019. Your Washington Nationals offense is, as of this writing, (per Fangraphs):
- 20th in fWAR; a *combined* 3.7.
- 20th in wRC+, a paltry 91
- 22nd in Batting Average, hitting .243 as a team
- 9th in K% .. sitting at exactly 25% , but…
- sitting 21st in ISO, meaning they’re striking out a ton but not getting the added benefit of the power.
How about the defense? The team is
- 27th in Fangraphs’ total Defense stat
- 29th in UZR/150
- 28th in DRS, a combined -27 of runs “saved” (interestingly …their run differential sits at 32 right now, almost entirely on the defense)
And then there’s the bullpen:
- 30th in bullpen ERA
- 30th in LOB%
- 25th in bullpen FIP
- 21st in K/9
- 24th in bullpen fWAR .. somehow grading out as a group to exactly neutral 0.0 fWAR. In other words … completely replaceable across the board as a whole.
At least we have the starters:
- #1 in fWAR
- 13th in ERA, but
- 4th in FIP (Fangraph’s fWAR for pitchers is heavy on the FIP … and the Nats starters are doing this with a .306 BABIP.
- #2 in K/9.
Anyway … point is; the hitters are bad, the bullpen is awful, and the defense is atrocious.
How exactly did we get here? Well, Mike Rizzo was incredibly active over the winter. But, amazingly, practically all of his moves have turned out bad. Here’s a list of all his major transactions in the off-season:
- Kyle Barraclough: 4.67 ERA
- Trevor Rosenthal: complete train wreck
- Yan Gomes; hitting .228
- Tanner Rainey: walked 12 in 18 innings in AAA.
- Meanwhile Tanner Roark has a 3.51 ERA and a 127 ERA+ in 10 starts for Cincy this year.
- Matt Adams: 89 OPS+ as our big “bench bat”
- Anibal Sanchez: 5.10 ERA in 9 starts
- Brian Dozier: hitting .205
- Jeremy Hellickson: 6.23 ERA in 8 starts.
- Tony Sipp: 5.79 ERA.
- He cut loose Trevor Gott in February but kept a slew of other minor league arms: here’s Gott’s SF line so far this year: 21 innings, 2.11 ERA, 193 ERA+
- He cut loose Austin Adams, who had a ridiculous 24/3 K/BB ratio in 12.1 Fresno innings, who then got picked up by Seattle and has punched out 7 of the first 11 batter’s hes faced. But was he good enough for our bullpen? Nope.
- He brought in Dan Jennings: 13.50 ERA in 8 appearances. Why exactly did he get the last 3-4 outings?
Even his AAA MLFA moves to provide veteran pitcher backup have been suspect:
- Henderson Alvarez: 8.01 ERA in Fresno
- Scott Copeland: 6.33 ERA in Fresno
- Vidal Nuno; also a 6.33 ERA in Fresno
- J.J. Hoover: 5.70 ERA in Fresno
- Brady Dragmire: 11.48 ERA in Fresno, now mercifully on the DL.
- Logan Ondrusek: had an ERA north of 5.00 in AA (as a 34-yr old).
In fact, really only a couple of his moves have actually worked out:
- Kurt Suzuki: 108 OPS+ in a backup catcher role.
- Patrick Corbin: 3.25 ERA in 10 starts … well heck for $140M i sure hope he’s working out.
Look back at the performance of his roster moves. Its absolutely astounding how badly he’s judged the talent he’s traded away versus the performance of what he acquired.
Look, this is not hindsight is 20/20 analysis. I was totally on-board with a ton of these moves. I really thought that Dozier and Rosenthal were good bounce back candidates and that Sanchez was a sneaky good signing. And i’m genuinely dumbfounded that basically every off-season veteran gamble has failed to pay off. Some of the moves I questioned at the time and continue to question (Gott, Roark, Adams). You have to wonder how much of an indictment of the pitching staff it is when guys like Gott (to say nothing of someone like Blake Treinen) depart here and succeed elsewhere. Even Lucas Giolito is starting to round into form with another organization, after clearly being dumped as being “unfixable” by this org.
The question is, now what? What can this team really do? If suddenly every guy with a sub 100 OPS+/ERA+ turned it around and succeeded, can this team run off a 20-8 month and get back into this race? With this manager?