Winter Is Leaving: Washington Nationals

Few big-league teams were as putrid as the Washington Nationals in 2008 and 2009. The Nats lost a combined a 205 games, christening a new stadium and the rebirth of baseball in Washington with consecutive last place finishes. Odalis Perez drew an opening day start. Anderson Hernandez was allowed to bat 350 times. The club had to hire a Special Assistant of Player Concerns just to keep their right fielder out of jail. Bleak times.

But the draft has offered a silver lining to any stretch of terrible baseball played after 1964, and boy did the Nationals time their futility well. After not-quite-but-kinda-still bottoming out in 2008—with an assist from the Mariners, who took their last three games to steal the second-worst record in the circuit—Washington won the Stephen Strasburg derby. Terms like “once-in-a-generation arm” are thrown around haphazardly in some quarters, but the moniker suited Strasburg at the time. Most pitchers simply can’t sit 98 while snapping off plus curves with good command. After striking out every single batter he faced (look it up) for San Diego State, the Nats popped Strasburg with the first pick of the draft, paid him handsomely, and summoned him to the capital of our fledging republic less than a year later.

While the Nationals masqueraded as a competent baseball team every fifth day, the club’s executives worked furiously to hammer out a deal with Bryce Harper—the spoil of their collective ineptitude in 2009. Like with Strasburg, Harper’s amateur feats were legendary. Five-hundred foot home runs. Eleven homers in 12 at-bats during a tournament as a 12-year-old. Slugging over .900 as a 17-year-old college freshman. A no-brainer selection at the top of the 2010 draft, the Nats signed Harper and moved him to the outfield to accelerate his minor league development. After only 139 games of minor league seasoning, he too repaired to Washington.

Armed with arguably the most talented hitter and pitcher on the planet, the Nationals posted the best record in baseball in 2012, breezing to the NL East title. Controversially though, the club shut Strasburg down before the postseason to limit his innings. Deprived of their ace, the Nats were bounced from the playoffs in a heartbreaking divisional series. While most analysts panned the decision to rest Strasburg, there was an underlying logic to Washington’s strategy. With Harper, Strasburg, a number of other talented regulars, and minor league help on the way, the Nats were well-positioned for sustained success. You couldn’t blame Mike Rizzo for wanting to protect his team’s very bright future.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Cooperstown. In 2013, Strasburg and Harper played well, if not to the capability their potential suggested, and the surrounding core struggled. The Nats won just 86 games and missed the playoffs. In 2014 they led the NL in wins and again looked like the deepest team in baseball. Unfortunately, three bad days in October spelled the end of their season. 2015 stung even worse: While Harper established himself as baseball’s premier offensive force, the consensus best team in baseball collapsed around him. Part of the problem, at least initially, was Strasburg, who had a 5.16 ERA when he hit the shelf with an oblique strain on Independence Day.

Looking to 2016, it’s easy to sympathize with any Nationals fan starting to panic. Strasburg is a year away from free agency, and Harper is only three years behind him. The Nats have been the most disappointing team in the league in two of the last three seasons. Their core, while still solid, is suddenly looking old and quite a bit shallower than before. Max Scherzer and Gio Gonzalez are in their 30’s. So are Ryan Zimmerman and Daniel Murphy, and let’s not dwell on Jonathan Papelbon or Jayson Werth. Doug Fister, Jordan Zimmermann, Denard Span, and Ian Desmond are gone. Realistically, Washington needs the unproven—Joe Ross and Trea Turner—or the oft-injured—Werth and Anthony Rendon—to play well. PECOTA projects the Mets to win the division.

All of that is uncomfortable, because the expectations in Washington are sky-high in 2016. The Nationals, tremendous and tragic disappointments in 2015, are the player on tilt at the poker table, and they’re all-in. They’re desperate, sweating, fidgeting with their cards, shifting uncomfortably in their chair as they await the river. And yet, they’re holding a pretty decent hand.

Much of that optimism stems from Harper and Strasburg. Harper requires little explanation here. He pulverized the National League last season, slashing .330/.460/.649, topping the circuit in homers while reducing his strikeout rate and posting the best walk rate of his career. He’s the best hitter in baseball and the odds-on favorite to win his second NL MVP.

The case for Strasburg is slightly less obvious. He has been good for Washington—it’s hard to believe that a guy with a career 3.09 ERA, 2.83 FIP, and 2.69 xFIP could be considered a disappointment—but he hasn’t consistently replicated his tantalizing form from 2010 and 2011, when he dazzled sellout crowds with a rare blend of moxie and stuff. It’s only natural to feel underwhelmed that Strasburg turned into a No. 2 instead of the ace his arsenal teased us with.

Very quietly though, amidst Washington’s second-half disintegration last season, peak-Strasburg returned to the mound. He pitched well in his final three outings before the oblique injury, and really caught fire down the stretch. He struck out 12 Rockies in his August return, allowing just three hits in seven innings. From there, nobody hit him well. He posted a 1.90 ERA with 92 strikeouts and eight walks across his final 66 innings, limiting opponents to a .190/.206/.306 line in that time. (By contrast, Stephen Strasburg himself hit .227/.292/.227.) In consecutive September outings, he struck out 14, 13, 10, and 13 hitters, allowing just five runs in those four starts. Just as importantly, his pitches looked explosive. He was comfortably reaching the upper-90’s, his curve had its vintage plus-plus bite, and plenty of hitters looked silly guessing fastball before succumbing to the change. Pitchers are fickle, but there’s good reason to hope that the Nationals will see the best of Strasburg in 2016.

Yet in some ways, it may have been easier for Nats supporters if 2015 was the last stand. Instead, they’ll watch their team play the 2016 season with two of the most talented players the game has ever seen, knowing all too well that their generational talents are firing on all cylinders together for the first and, in all likelihood, only time. The playoffs remain a crapshoot, which means that the club’s ultimate goal remains more dream than reality. Even so, fans will surely spend the season wondering “if we can’t win with these guys around, when can we?” The question casts a grotesque pall over Washington’s otherwise promising campaign.