“My Neck hurts.” “Oh yeah, something always frigging hurts with you, you snowflake.” — photo via WP
At some point, you have to stop performing CPR and just call it.
I wonder if we’re at that point. Today we learned that #2 starter Stephen “the Orchid” Strasburg is heading back to the D/L for what will be his 50th* career D/L trip (* estimated). I just don’t see how this team goes on the run it needs without one of its best starters.
Even given Tanner Roark‘s wonderful start yesterday, the team (as of this writing) sits at 50-51. They’re 7 games out of the Division lead, 5.5 games out of the WC, and face a massive uphill climb to make the playoffs.
To get to 90 wins (often regarded in the 2-wild card system as the minimum you’ll need) the team needs to go 40-21 in its remaining games. That’s a .622 W/L percentage. I suppose they could go on a 20-7 rampage like they did in May and make it up… but it seems less likely the longer this season goes along.
Of their remaining 61 games…
- 7 against Atlanta
- 9 against Philly
- 7 against the Cubs
- 7 against the Cardinals
- 3 more against Milwaukee
- 3 in Colorado to end the season
So that’s 36 of the remaining 61 games against teams that I think are patently better than us. And we’ll have to play .622 ball against them AND hold serve against the scrubs we’re playing too.
Oh, and now we’re doing it with, by my count, our #9 starter in Tommy Milone called up. Scherzer, Strasburg, Gio, Roark, Hellickson, Fedde, JRodriguez, Voth ahead of him in the pecking order. I’m sure things will go great; lest you forget, Milone’s ERA in 2017 was 8.56 in 27 innings. Actually, with an ERA like that, he’ll fit right into this team.
So yes, the Braves have scuffled recently and the Phillies are treading water. And yes our Pythag record shows we’re better than 50-51. All fair points. But we’re nearly to August and are still playing .500 ball, with no signs of getting better.
And, as become apparent this week, thanks to the Nats doing such a bang-up job with payroll management this year, they snuck over the luxury tax threshold so the comp pick they’ll get for a once-in-a-generation player leaving next year via FA in Bryce Harper will be … voila! A supplemental 4th rounder?? Are you frigging kidding me? That’s all we’ll get by offering him a Qualifying Offer?? Wow, that Matt Wieters contract just keeps looking better and better doesn’t it? I sure hope Scott Boras enjoys the boat he bought off of that commission that he screwed the Nats out of. Can someone change the Lerner’s cell phone number so Boras can’t go over Mike Rizzo‘s head to make bad deals any more?
Nats should trade Harper and hope to get a MLB top 100 pick for the rental. They should also shop around basically every other guy set to leave in FA. That means Murphy, Gio, Madsen, Wieters, Kelley, heck lets through in Benoit and Reynolds and Adams and all the one-year MLFAs we’ve got too. Its bargain basement shopping time in DC. First come, first served.
Will this leadership team admit defeat and make these trades? Probably not. They’ll probably do something dumb in the next few days like trade a top prospect for 2 months of a dead-arm starter or a catcher we can just go buy next off-season with the $80M of saved payroll. They’ll leverage the farm system yet again so they can be an 86 win team instead of an 81 win team.
But I could be wrong. We’ll see what happens.
ps: I managed to write this whole post without mentioning the manager. My stance is as clear now as it was the day they let Dusty Baker go, and nothing that Dave Martinez has done has made me think that he was in any way a better choice to manage this team and this set of players in the year 2018. Any argument about the manager is tough to quantify … i prefer arguments I can back up with stats frankly, so my opinion on his handling of veterans, of Ryan Zimmerman, of the bullpen, of baserunning strategy, of lineup-construction, and of his seeming inability to stand up to the veterans on this team will stay with me.