{"id":11204,"date":"2015-08-17T14:59:19","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T18:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11204"},"modified":"2015-08-17T15:00:31","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T19:00:31","slug":"its-make-or-break-time-even-more-so-than-a-week-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11204","title":{"rendered":"Its make or break time; even more so than a week ago."},"content":{"rendered":"

A week ago, at the beginning of this west coast trip, I thought the team might end up going 2-5<\/a> between LA and SF.\u00a0 They faced two good teams on the road against good pitching.<\/p>\n

I was wrong.\u00a0 They went 1-6.\u00a0 What a Disaster.\u00a0 Scherzer<\/strong> and Gonzalez<\/strong> both laid massive eggs in games where the Nats held a rare and clear SP advantage (over Vogelsong<\/strong> and Cain<\/strong> respectively) and the team squandered games where the offense uncharacteristically scored more than 1 run (5 and 6 respectively in consecutive losses).\u00a0 It was no surprise they got shut out by Kershaw, Greinke and Bumgarner … but they had no excuse to lose to these other stiffs.<\/p>\n

Amazingly, we’re mid-August and this team has gone 10 and 20 since the all-star break.\u00a0 10 and 20.\u00a0 Yes they’ve faced some tough pitching, but a playoff team should at least go .500 against a good team throwing good arms.\u00a0 This team has not; it has completely folded.<\/p>\n

Dave Cameron<\/strong> at fangraphs.com summed up things<\/a> a lot better than I could.\u00a0 He has a table of 2014 and 2015 WAR figures that’s pretty amazing.\u00a0 He also has the playoff odds for both Washington and New York and what they’ve done over the past few weeks and that’s pretty amazing too.<\/p>\n

The Nats are 58-59.\u00a0 Amazingly despite a 6 game losing streak the Mets also fell on their faces this weekend and the Nats didn’t lose much ground in the race.\u00a0 But they’re 4.5 back with 6 weeks to go and need to step it up.<\/p>\n

They now have 6 straight games against two bad teams (Colorado and Milwaukee).\u00a0\u00a0 Can they salvage their season and actually win some of these games?<\/p>\n

What is wrong with this team?\u00a0 Is it just everyone unluckily under performing all at once?\u00a0 Is it the Manager?\u00a0 Is it the frigging Papelbon<\/strong> trade? I don’ t mean to find some “arbitrary endpoints” but consider:<\/p>\n