{"id":19667,"date":"2026-06-17T11:50:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=19667"},"modified":"2026-06-17T11:50:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:50:19","slug":"nationals-surprise-performance-this-season-changing-the-plan-in-front-of-our-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=19667","title":{"rendered":"Nationals surprise performance this season changing “The Plan” in front of our eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Abrams can’t possibly be traded now, can he? Photo via Wikipedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

As I write this post on 6\/17\/26, the Washington Nationals baseball team sits at 39-35. Four games over .500 for the first time since the 2019 season, and if the season ended today they’ve be the last NL Wild Card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To say that I’m generally shocked the team is in this position is putting things lightly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the team cut bait on its pre-FA stars in July 2021 (Schwarber, Turner, Scherzer) and then again in Aug 2022 (Soto), I figured we were on another 5 year rebuilding path, not unlike the one we endured as fans starting in 2008. That rebuild plan ran into a bit of a snag though, as ownership turned over and the new group refused to spend money to augment the roster when injuries took out key planned contributors. A real gap in player development thanks to basically 5 straight blown drafts from 2016-2020 doomed the team from really having any chance to compete without those FAs, and we drifted for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new regime, marked by its openness to analytics and its youth, seemed like it was preparing the 2026 season to be a 60-win team, trading away its best arm for prospects, grabbing a half a dozen waiver claims throughout the beginning of the year, and starting the 2026 season with fully 1\/4 of its opening day roster<\/a> being comprised of Rule5, Waiver claims, or MLFAs while sending down a slew of guys who ended the 2025 season on the MLB roster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was convinced this was a “bottoming out” technique, just grabbing spare parts off the waiver wire to see who stuck at the expense of guys like Crews, or Hassell, or Parker. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, damned if it doesn’t look like its working. We’re nearly to the halfway point of the season and the team is at 39-35. How? Well, somehow this team leads the league in Runs scored, and they sit 3rd (behind only the LAD and NYY) in terms of total team wRC+. That’s patently amazing. Wood and Abrams of course, but Ruiz is crushing the ball all of a sudden, Garcia is holding his own, Lile continues to be productive, found-gold Mead is hitting for a ton of power, and even most of the fringe infielders are holding their own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The starters collectively aren’t great for the season… but after weathering the April storm, the starters have gone from dead last in multiple metrics to middle-of the road. The Relievers are still awful, but just less awful as the manager has used openers freely (a first for the organization), has not been afraid to call up guys to give innings, and we have a few guys who we can now count on when the chips are down. The team continues almost weekly to sign additional veteran MLFAs, who are waiting in the wings like army reinforcements, ready to come up and help out and see who can stick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s amazing really. They’ve won 10 of their last 11 series! How is that possible? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now for the big question; you can’t possibly sell at the trade deadline if you’re in playoff contention, can you?? The entire off-season was talking about flipping Gore and Abrams … you can’t possibly break this team up now, can you? Now, if they go on a swoon and go on a 10-20 stretch … sure. That’s probably be too big of a gap to overcome. but, again, they’ve won 10 of their last 11 series; they’re more likely to go 20-10 than 10-20 right now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway. It seems like I rarely write about the big league team since .. well, tracking prospects and dreaming on guys in Low-A is more fun than hyper analyzing a second division team, which they’ve been basically from the moment they won the 2019 World Series. But fair is fair; this rag tag team seems like it could absolutely be in the playoffs in October. Amazing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I write this post on 6\/17\/26, the Washington Nationals baseball team sits at 39-35. Four games over .500 for the first time since the 2019 season, and if the season ended today they’ve be the last NL Wild Card. To say that I’m generally shocked the team is in this position is putting things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19669,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19667\/revisions\/19669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}