{"id":11324,"date":"2015-10-11T12:08:33","date_gmt":"2015-10-11T16:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11324"},"modified":"2015-10-11T12:08:33","modified_gmt":"2015-10-11T16:08:33","slug":"pre-season-dc-ibwaa-survey-howd-we-do-with-our-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11324","title":{"rendered":"Pre-Season DC-IBWAA survey; how’d we do with our Predictions?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nice<\/a>

Nice Hair bro. Photo via his instagram<\/p><\/div>\n

Every year, Dave Nichols<\/strong> over at DistrictSportsPage.com<\/a> runs a fun little pre-season survey, asking the various Nats bloggers to do predictions about various things.\u00a0 Here’s a navel-gazing look back at how my predictions turned out.<\/p>\n

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1) Question: Who will lead the Nats in home runs in 2015?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
My Prediction: Bryce Harper<\/strong>.\u00a0 Actual leader: Harper with 42.\u00a0 Not only did Harper lead the team, he tied for the league lead<\/a> in homers during his monster season.\u00a0 No one else on the team even had 20 homers; 2nd place<\/a> went to Ian Desmond<\/strong> with 19.<\/div>\n
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2) Question: Who will lead the Nats in RBI?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
My Prediction: Bryce Harper<\/strong>.\u00a0 Actual leader: Harper with 99, good for 5th in the NL. \u00a02nd place<\/a> went to Ryan Zimmerman <\/strong>with 73, no small feat considering that he only played in 95 games (that’s a 134 RBI pace for a full season … not that Zimmerman will ever play a full season again).<\/div>\n
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3) Who will lead the Nats in stolen bases?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
My Prediction: Denard Span<\/strong>.\u00a0 Actual leader: Michael Taylor<\/strong> with 16.\u00a0 Span ended up with 11 SBs in his 61 games and clearly would have led the team had he played a full season.\u00a0 The Nats were 14th out of 15 NL teams in total steals, an infrequently noted fact about the team.<\/div>\n
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4) Who will lead the staff in wins?<\/span><\/div>\n
My Prediction: Max Scherzer<\/strong>.\u00a0 Actual Leader: Scherzer with 14.\u00a0 I may have been right here, but not in the fashion I thought i’d be right.\u00a0 I figured Scherzer would have a monster season in his first taste of the NL, going 21-3 or something ridiculous.\u00a0 Instead he scuffled in the middle of the season, got poor run support and finished the year with a 14-12 record.<\/div>\n
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5) More plate appearances: Ryan Zimmerman, Jayson Werth or Denard Span?<\/span><\/div>\n
My Prediction: Jayson Werth<\/strong>.\u00a0 Actual Leader: Ryan Zimmerman<\/strong>, who got 390 PAs to Werth’s 378.\u00a0 Span finished with 275.\u00a0 Three important hitters to this team and none of them played much more than a half a season.<\/div>\n
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6) Who\u00a0has more appearances: Craig Stammen, Tanner Roark,\u00a0Blake Treinen, Casey Janssen or Aaron Barrett?<\/span><\/div>\n
My Prediction: Casey Janssen<\/strong>.\u00a0 Actual Leader: Blake Treinen<\/strong> with 60, tying for the team lead with Matt Thornton<\/strong>.\u00a0 Stammen made just 5 appearances before season-ending surgery, Barrett made 40 before the same issue befell him.\u00a0 Janssen ended up being 5th in appearances, posting an ugly 4.95 ERA for the season.\u00a0 Roark spent the entire season flip-flopping between roles, even being sent back to A-Ball at one point (not on merit but to stretch him out a bit); not exactly what you’d expect of a guy who posted a 5 win season the year before.<\/div>\n
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7) Who has more appearances: Jerry Blevins, Matt Grace, Xavier Cedeno or Matt Thornton?<\/span><\/div>\n
My Prediction: Jerry Blevins<\/strong>.\u00a0 Actual Leader: Matt Thornton<\/strong>: the battle of the loogies.\u00a0 I wrote Blevins before he got angry-traded and gave the Nats zero appearances. Cedeno was run out 5 times before being summarily DFA’d; he was the only guy outrighted off the 40-man roster this entire season.\u00a0 Grace was so-so in 26 appearances while Thornton earned his contract, putting up a sterling 2.18 ERA in 41IP across his 60 appearances.\u00a0 Why exactly did\u00a0 New York waive him?\u00a0 He’s a FA and I hope he signs on for another tour of duty.\u00a0 The real revelation of lefty relievers this year was Felipe Rivero<\/strong>, who i’d be clamoring for in the rotation if he had anything resembling a third pitch.<\/div>\n
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8) More plate appearances: Danny Espinosa, Dan Uggla or Yunel Escobar?<\/span><\/div>\n
My Prediction: Yunel Escobar<\/strong>.\u00a0 Actual Leader: Escobar by a large margin; Escobar became the team’s 2nd best hitter and played nearly every day he was able.\u00a0 Uggla proved to be what a lot of people thought he’d be; an aging slugger no longer able to hit, but somehow he stuck on the roster *the entire season* thanks to the constant injury parade.\u00a0 Espinosa ended up getting 412 PAs thanks to Rendon’s injury issues and may have bought himself another year with the organization.<\/div>\n
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9) Over\/under for number of games for Wilson Ramos at 85 1\/2.<\/span><\/div>\n
My Prediction: Over.\u00a0 Actual answer: indeed it was the Over; Wilson Ramos<\/strong> was healthy for the entire season (a first) and played in 128 games.\u00a0 Unfortunately he was badly, badly exposed at the plate, putting up an awful slash line of .229\/.258\/.358.\u00a0 His backup was even worse; I have a feeling this team is going shopping for catcher depth this off-season.<\/div>\n
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10) Which single minor leaguer are you most interested in keeping tabs on this season?<\/span><\/div>\n
My Answer: Trea Turner<\/strong>.\u00a0 Actual Results: its probably safe to say Turner (and his trade-mate Joe Ross<\/strong>) made the most waves of any minor leaguer this season.\u00a0 However, Lucas Giolito<\/strong> is clearly set to make some serious waves in this game by virtue of his lofty status as the best pitching prospect on practically everyone’s list.<\/div>\n
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11) How many all-stars will the Nats have? Who?<\/span><\/div>\n
My answer: 3: Scherzer, Zimmermann, Harper.\u00a0 Actual Result: Harper and Scherzer.\u00a0 As discussed here<\/a>, it was an odd year for the Nats, with only two players really making any sort of case for inclusion thanks to injury and downturn.<\/div>\n
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12) Total wins and what place in the division?<\/span><\/div>\n
My Prediction: 94 wins, 1st place.\u00a0 Actual: 83 wins and 2nd place.\u00a0 I feel like we may have talked about this a bit.<\/div>\n
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Essay: What should be the single most important development for the Nats this season?<\/span><\/div>\n

My answer in March: Simple: World Series or bust.\u00a0 The team has been way, way too good to have *just* two weak NLDS “3-and-outs” to show for it the last few years.\u00a0 With the (ridiculously expensive) Scherzer signing and a significant personnel shift coming this off-season, this is the year.\u00a0 Anything less than a WS appearance will be a disappointment.<\/p>\n

Actual: yup; disappointment is an understatement for what happened to the 2015 nats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year, Dave Nichols over at DistrictSportsPage.com runs a fun little pre-season survey, asking the various Nats bloggers to do predictions about various things.\u00a0 Here’s a navel-gazing look back at how my predictions turned out. ___________________ 1) Question: Who will lead the Nats in home runs in 2015? My Prediction: Bryce Harper.\u00a0 Actual leader: Harper […]<\/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":[916,1693,164,1217,1005,135,846,482,2237,114,115,2123,2691,43,2239,852,1228,2589,1037,708,36,77,2426,147,1786,1569],"class_list":["post-11324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-aaron-barrett","tag-blake-treinen","tag-bryce-harper","tag-casey-janssen","tag-dan-uggla","tag-danny-espinosa","tag-dave-nichols","tag-denard-span","tag-felipe-rivero","tag-ian-desmond","tag-jayson-werth","tag-jerry-blevins","tag-joe-ross","tag-jordan-zimmermann","tag-jose-lobaton","tag-lucas-giolito","tag-matt-grace","tag-matt-thornton","tag-max-scherzer","tag-michael-taylor","tag-ryan-zimmerman","tag-tanner-roark","tag-trea-turner","tag-wilson-ramos","tag-xavier-cedeno","tag-yunel-escobar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11324"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11333,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11324\/revisions\/11333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}