{"id":15266,"date":"2018-07-05T11:18:25","date_gmt":"2018-07-05T15:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=15266"},"modified":"2018-07-05T11:19:33","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T15:19:33","slug":"panic-time-for-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=15266","title":{"rendered":"Panic time for 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_15269\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Harper-striking-out-via-ftw-usatoday.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15269\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15269\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-15269\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Harper-striking-out-via-ftw-usatoday-300x231.jpg\" alt=\"The time has come to officially panic, both about Harper and this team. Photo via ftw\/usatoday\" width=\"300\" height=\"231\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Harper-striking-out-via-ftw-usatoday-300x231.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Harper-striking-out-via-ftw-usatoday-768x592.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Harper-striking-out-via-ftw-usatoday-1024x789.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Harper-striking-out-via-ftw-usatoday.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-15269\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The time has come to officially panic, both about Harper and this team. Photo via ftw\/usatoday<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;ve certainly been among those making excuses for this team, and for players on the team, for a while now.\u00a0 \u00a0These points are true:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/leagues\/NL\/2018-standings.shtml\">better than their pythagorean record<\/a>; by runs scored versus runs against, they should be 45-39, in 2nd place ahead of the luckier Phillies but still 5 games back of the surprising Braves.<\/li>\n<li>They&#8217;ve been incredibly unlucky in one run and extra inning games.\u00a0 This is a direct input to the pythag record; they&#8217;re 8-16 in one run games and 2-4 in extra innings.\u00a0 Both the teams ahead of them in the NL east have wildly better one-run records (13-6 and 18-7 respectively)<\/li>\n<li>They&#8217;ve been just slaughtered with injury, at various times this year <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spotrac.com\/mlb\/disabled-list\/cumulative-team\/\">leading the NL in total players on the D\/L and total man-games lost<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>They&#8217;ve experienced a complete gutting of last year&#8217;s middle of the order, with\u00a0<strong>Ryan Zimmerman<\/strong> disappearing for weeks on end with little-to-no idea when he&#8217;d come back,\u00a0<strong>Daniel Murphy<\/strong> taking nearly half a season to recover from his surprise off-season knee injury, and\u00a0<strong>Bryce Harper<\/strong> putting up one of his worst seasons &#8230; clearly pressing, expanding his zone and being amazingly unlucky in terms of BABIP thus far this season.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To add insult to injury, #2 starter\u00a0<strong>Stephen Strasburg<\/strong> threw his annual arm injury into play early this year, our mid-rotation guys have struggled, and our #5 starters keep going down with injury.<\/p>\n<p>What else is true?\u00a0 This is a team that&#8217;s kinda old; average age 29.1 (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/stats\/rosters\/_\/sort\/average_age\/order\/true\">which is only 10th<\/a>), but which is helped greatly by the presence of youngest-guy-in-the-league\u00a0<strong>Juan Soto.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>And Old teams get hurt, a lot.\u00a0 Meanwhile\u00a0 young teams (like Atlanta at 5th youngest and Philly who are the absolute youngest teams) don&#8217;t get hurt a lot.<\/p>\n<p>This season is starting to remind me of a couple of past seasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>2012, when the Nats were significantly improved from 2011 and took the league by storm, frankly, a year before they thought they would.\u00a0 To me, this is the 2018 Braves.\u00a0 \u00a0The Braves only won 72 games last year; now they&#8217;re on a pace to win 94 games.\u00a0 That&#8217;s a massive difference year over year and they&#8217;re doing it with almost\u00a0 no off-season moves; all internal.<\/li>\n<li>2015, when the Nats themselves showed similar season-long malaise and only came to life at the end of the season when it was too late and all they managed to do was cost themselves draft position the next year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So what now?\u00a0 They just finished a relatively brutal section of the schedule, playing a ton of AL East teams.\u00a0 AL teams are bad match-ups for any NL team thanks to the DH&#8217;s impact on roster construction &#8230; even if they&#8217;re playing a crummy AL team like Tampa or Baltimore.\u00a0 But to face off against the likes of Boston and New York, who are juggernauts, with a sputtering offense and missing a couple of key arms &#8230; well its no surprise to me they got swept.<\/p>\n<p>The next 3 weeks will be the season.\u00a0 They have 3 series against poor teams where they should be able to go 8-3 or 9-2 if they&#8217;re a legit team.\u00a0 The should get at least one arm back in\u00a0<strong>Hellickson<\/strong> and maybe\u00a0<strong>Fedde<\/strong> can be replaced like for like with the surprising\u00a0<strong>Jefry Rodriguez<\/strong> until Strasburg shows back up.\u00a0 \u00a0Then we have to hope for a post-all star game bump and take it to Atlanta in the first season post ASG to make up some ground.<\/p>\n<p>Now, what does this team have going for it?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Harper just cannot continue to hit this badly; at some point he should have a solid month.<\/li>\n<li>This team was dominant in May; it can play .600 ball when it needs to<\/li>\n<li>Strasburg returns likely after the ASG<\/li>\n<li>The Nats have <a href=\"https:\/\/legacy.baseballprospectus.com\/sortable\/extras\/strength_of_schedule.php\">one of the easiest remaining schedules<\/a> in baseball; slightly easer than Philly and significantly easier than Atlanta.\u00a0 \u00a0The Nats have no more interleague games either.<\/li>\n<li>Furthermore, the Nats have already done all their West Coast trips; their worst remaining road trip is to Colorado the last series of the season.\u00a0 \u00a0Both their NL East competitors still have big west coast trips to make.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So the big question is this: can this team get it together a little now, a little in August and put themselves in a position to take back the division?\u00a0 \u00a0If they scuffle and go just .500 between now and the ASG &#8230; then no way.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve certainly been among those making excuses for this team, and for players on the team, for a while now.\u00a0 \u00a0These points are true: They are better than their pythagorean record; by runs scored versus runs against, they should be 45-39, in 2nd place ahead of the luckier Phillies but still 5 games back of [&hellip;]<\/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":[164,1859,2425,1876,239,3314,36,38],"class_list":["post-15266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-bryce-harper","tag-daniel-murphy","tag-erick-fedde","tag-jefry-rodriguez","tag-jeremy-hellickson","tag-juan-soto","tag-ryan-zimmerman","tag-stephen-strasburg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15266","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=15266"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15270,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15266\/revisions\/15270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}