{"id":16085,"date":"2019-07-02T12:54:24","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T16:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16085"},"modified":"2019-07-02T12:54:24","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T16:54:24","slug":"nats-at-the-halfway-point-amazingly-theyre-at-500","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16085","title":{"rendered":"Nats at the Halfway point: amazingly, they&#8217;re at .500"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5583\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ZimmermanRyan-nats-official.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5583\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5583\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5583\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ZimmermanRyan-nats-official-300x219.jpg\" alt=\"Can Zimmerman be effective upon his return? Photo team official\" width=\"300\" height=\"219\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ZimmermanRyan-nats-official-300x219.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ZimmermanRyan-nats-official.jpg 594w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5583\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Can Zimmerman be effective upon his return? Photo team official<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Two arbitrary (well, not really arbitrary) endpoints for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/teams\/WSN\/2019-schedule-scores.shtml\">Nats season so far<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Nats from opening day to the end of the 4-game sweep in NY on 5\/23\/19: 19-31<\/li>\n<li>Nats from that series\u00a0 until Friday 6\/28\/19 (the halfway point exactly on the season: 22-9<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I wrote the team off in this space at the end of May.\u00a0 I&#8217;m honestly amazed the same team that went 19-31 suddenly was capable of going 22-9.\u00a0 Did I speak too soon?\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 Fangraphs has drastically improved their playoff <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fangraphs.com\/standings\/playoff-odds\">https:\/\/www.fangraphs.com\/standings\/playoff-odds<\/a>\u00a0oddsprojections for this team, from the 20% range back then to nearly 60% now.\u00a0 Primarily this seems to be due to their simultaneously being bearish on the primary wild card competitors Philly, Colorado and Milwaukee.<\/p>\n<p>Cynic&#8217;s view: they&#8217;ve gotten healthy thanks to lots of games against awful teams (Miami, Detroit) and mediocre-to-bad teams (Chicago WS, Cincinnati).\u00a0 They also swept a divisional rival in a funk (Philly) and\u00a0treaded water against\u00a0 San Diego and Arizona.\u00a0 Their toughest games in this entire stretch were 5 against Atlanta (going 3-2), so you have to acknowledge that.<\/p>\n<p>They also get 6 straight games this week against the dregs of the league, and may very well go 5-1 or 6-0 in those games.\u00a0 \u00a0Which will really\u00a0 make their first half suddenly look amazing.<\/p>\n<p>The question is this: even if this team goes 6-0 and gets to the all star break at 48-41 &#8230; likely in the lead for or close to the WC lead &#8230; we need to remember to withhold judgement until the end of July.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because this Nats season is hinging on the brutal 3-city post-all star trip they will be playing:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>3 in Philly<\/li>\n<li>2 in Baltimore<\/li>\n<li>4 in Atlanta.<\/li>\n<li>4 home to Colorado<\/li>\n<li>3 home to LA<\/li>\n<li>3 home to Atlanta<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Those are\u00a0some difficult series.\u00a0 \u00a0Yes Philly has been struggling but they&#8217;re still a division rival that just swept 4 games from the Mets.\u00a0 \u00a0Yes the Orioles are in last place, but they&#8217;re still an AL team that we&#8217;ve historically struggled to beat in interleague play year over year.\u00a0 And then the big one: 4 straight in Atlanta.\u00a0 That series takes us to basically the trade deadline.\u00a0 \u00a0After that the team returns home &#8230; for three of the toughest opponents they&#8217;ll face all year, and 10 games that they&#8217;ll be lucky to go .500 in.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s my concern; I am skeptical the team can keep this pace up, for obvious reasons.\u00a0 I&#8217;m also worried about them getting shellacked once they play good teams.\u00a0 What happens if this team gets waxed in early August and is suddenly back below .500, after the trade deadline has passed?\u00a0 An opportunity will be lost to flip our trade-able assets for prospects, with little chance of getting to the post season.<\/p>\n<p>Of course &#8230; its worth saying that even if the team &#8220;only&#8221; gets a Wild Card &#8230; i like our odds throwing\u00a0<strong>Max Scherzer<\/strong> in a winner-take-all game, even if it makes it that much harder to win the divisional series.<\/p>\n<p>So what does the group think?\u00a0 Are you back on the bandwagon now?\u00a0 We&#8217;ve never seen this team go through so much turmoil in a season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two arbitrary (well, not really arbitrary) endpoints for the Nats season so far: Nats from opening day to the end of the 4-game sweep in NY on 5\/23\/19: 19-31 Nats from that series\u00a0 until Friday 6\/28\/19 (the halfway point exactly on the season: 22-9 I wrote the team off in this space at the end [&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":[],"class_list":["post-16085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16085","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=16085"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16089,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16085\/revisions\/16089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}