Per KW’s comment suggestion, here’s a “State of the Nats” at the halfway point of 2015.<\/p>\n
Salient key phrase: “Holding On<\/strong><\/span>.”\u00a0 Lets look at some component parts.<\/p>\n Offense<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Here’s the full-strength outfield lineup the Nats would optimally like to deploy: Span, Rendon, Harper, Zimmerman, Werth, Desmond, Ramos, Escobar<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Here’s what they lined-up<\/a> against Red’s ace Johnny Cueto<\/strong> a few days ago: Taylor<\/strong>, Espinosa<\/strong>, Harper, Ramos, Robinson<\/strong>, Uggla<\/strong>, Desmond, den Dekker<\/strong>.\u00a0 Yeah, its no wonder they wimpered into the night as Cueto threw a 2-hit shutout.\u00a0 If you’re Cueto, you pitch around Harper (who got a hit and a walk), you attack the rest of the lineup (strike-out prone lead-off hitter Taylor took a hat-trick), and you laugh as you blow through the rest of the lineup (11Ks on the night).<\/p>\n That’s five regulars out, but not just any regulars; the D\/L includes your expected #1, #2 #4, and #5 hitters.\u00a0 Instead they are replaced by a rookie (Taylor), a career minor-leaguer (Robinson), a cast-off veteran failure (Uggla), a career .230 hitter who the team has spent the last 3 years trying to replace (Espinosa) and a 4th\/5th outfielder with just a couple hundred MLB at-bats prior to this year (den Dekker).<\/p>\n Frankly, its a miracle the team is in first place.\u00a0 Only by the grace of Harper’s incredible season does this team manage to stay in games.\u00a0 For the record, at the halfway point Harper leads the league<\/a> in bWAR (6.1), OBP, Slugging, OPS and OPS+.\u00a0 After having a 3-1 K\/BB ratio last year, this year he basically has as many walks as strike-outs, one of the primary reasons his average is 60 points higher and his OBP is 130 points higher than it was last year.\u00a0 Hold your breath that Harper doesn’t crash out and miss a month with some injury like he’s done in the previous seasons.\u00a0 If he ends the season with this level of an adjusted OPS+, it’ll be one of the 10-12 best offensive seasons in the history of baseball.<\/p>\n Ironically, even given all these injuries the Nats aren’t even close to what some other teams are dealing with; per mangameslost.com<\/a>, we’re not even close to what the Mets, Rangers, Rays or Oakland has had to deal with.\u00a0 Though I’d venture to say that perhaps the games lost by Nats players are slightly more “important” than the cumulative games lost by some of these other teams.\u00a0 I don’t care who you are; if you remove four of the top five batters from any team’s lineup, they’d be lucky to be out of the cellar.<\/p>\n The team has gotten absolutely nothing from presumed bench players McLouth<\/strong> and Johnson<\/strong> (Do you think Rizzo<\/strong> will *ever* buy a 4th outfielder for 8-figures again in his life?).\u00a0 Guys who should be in AAA are getting starts and (at least in the case of Robinson) holding their own.\u00a0 We talked before the season about where Taylor should be (on the MLB bench or in AAA getting starts) … well he’s getting playing time, for better or worse.\u00a0 Instead of worrying about whether Moore<\/strong> was going to get DFA’d to make room, we’re *adding* guys to the 40-man like Burriss<\/strong> to help out.<\/p>\n Rotation<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n We know about Scherzer<\/strong>.\u00a0 He’s been amazing, should start the NL All-Star game (of course, he’s scheduled to throw the series ender in Baltimore so we’ll see) and he leads all NL pitchers in bWAR.<\/p>\n What about the rest of the rotation?\u00a0 Both Fister<\/strong> and Strasburg<\/strong> have missed a\u00a0 handful of starts, and the Nats have tried a whole AAA-rotation worth of replacements to varying results.\u00a0 With apologies to “short sample size judgements” I’ll say that Ross<\/strong> was good, Hill<\/strong> has been ok, Cole<\/strong> has been bad, and Jordan<\/strong> has been worse.\u00a0 Of course, both Cole and Jordan’s delta between ERA and FIP is massive, so their poor ERAs are unlucky to a certain extent.\u00a0 In the meantime, Ross has a 23\/2 K\/BB ratio and a FIP of 1.11 in his three starts.\u00a0 Its safe to say that this person is excited to see what he can do next, and for me he’s at the head of the line for 2016 rotation candidates.<\/p>\n Clearly we know Strasburg has had an off season.\u00a0 But so has Fister.\u00a0 And Gonzalez<\/strong>‘ ERA is in the 4’s.\u00a0\u00a0 Just how bad is this rotation?\u00a0 Not as bad as you think; they’re ranked 8th in the league in starter ERA<\/a> but are 1st in FIP and fWAR.\u00a0\u00a0 Last\u00a0 year they were 1st in all of these categories.\u00a0 So perhaps we can expect some “progression” in the 2nd half as (hopefully) guys like Strasburg clean up their act and pitch closer to their FIPs than their ERAs.<\/p>\n Bullpen<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n We knew Rizzo had weakened the bullpen from 2015, which could have been fine had the injury bug not hit.\u00a0 But the turnover of this bullpen has caught up to the team in some ways.<\/p>\n That’s a lot of turnover.\u00a0 Yes Storen has been typically excellent (as long as its not the post-season, he seems to be one of the most reliable closers in the game).\u00a0 As we speak, the bullpen is 11th in ERA<\/a>; last year they were 4th as a bullpen.\u00a0 Janssen’s injury did not help, as it pushed guys into the 8th inning role they weren’t ready for.\u00a0 And we saw Treinen and Barrett struggle (3.69 and 5.06 ERA’s respectively).\u00a0 Granted their FIP shows that those ERAs are unlucky … but those are still runs on the board, blown leads, blown saves.\u00a0 Roark (predictably) has regressed as he’s pitched in practically every role a pitching staff has (long-man, mop-up, spot-starter, rotation guy, middle reliever, setup guy and even a closer).\u00a0 Luckily the gambler Rizzo has gotten pretty good performance out of scrap heap guys like Thornton and Carpenter, both of whom have given the team good innings.<\/p>\n Will this last?\u00a0 It better: there’s practically nothing left in the farm system for reinforcements.\u00a0 Barrett<\/strong> is set to return soon (probably pushing Carpenter to AAA), but the other options in the minors do not inspire confidence.\u00a0 Martin<\/strong> got shelled (unfortunately; we were all cheering him on after his call-up and his fantastic start).\u00a0 Grace<\/strong> and Solis<\/strong> were both mediocre in their auditions, and I can’t quite figure out why Erik Davis<\/strong> is even still on the roster.\u00a0 Maybe the team will try some more waiver claims or trades (Neftali Felix<\/strong> just got DFA’d…) to shore up middle relief.<\/p>\n Streaks<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Lets talk about streaks.\u00a0 As of the time of this posting, the Nats season can neatly be fit into these four periods, and then talk about what spurred the beginning\/ending of each streak.<\/p>\n Definitely a streaky team so far.\u00a0 At 7-13, they were 8 games back.\u00a0 At the end of their 21-6 streak, they were 1.5 games up in the division.\u00a0 Despite their 6-13 stretch the only lost 3 games in the standings as the Mets faltered equally, and as of 7\/9\/15 they’re still 3 games up despite getting dominated at home by the Reds.<\/p>\n\n
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