{"id":17492,"date":"2022-04-06T12:04:57","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T16:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=17492"},"modified":"2022-04-06T12:04:57","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T16:04:57","slug":"2022-nats-season-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=17492","title":{"rendered":"2022 Nats Season preview"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Soto-Juan-updatednats-pic-via-nj.com_.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Soto-Juan-updatednats-pic-via-nj.com_-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-17493\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Soto-Juan-updatednats-pic-via-nj.com_-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Soto-Juan-updatednats-pic-via-nj.com_-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Soto-Juan-updatednats-pic-via-nj.com_-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Soto-Juan-updatednats-pic-via-nj.com_.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Soto may be the sole bright spot for the 2022 season.  Photo via nj.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Short version of this post: we are going to be absolutely awful this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Longer Version&#8230;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the end of Spring Training, the 2022 Nats are heading into battle with a 28-man roster that breaks down like the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>4 NRIs signed to minor league deals this past off-season (as per the most recent post: (Sanchez, Arano, Franco, and Strange-Gordon)<\/li><li>2 Waiver claims (Fox, Murphy)<\/li><li>8 players who are essentially rookies: (Ruiz, Thomas, Adams, Grey, Adon, Thompson, Machado, Espino)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>And, despite playing this many brand new players &#8230; we&#8217;re NOT going to be playing either of our top two positional rookies (Garcia, demoted mid-spring, and Kieboom, who may miss the entire season with a blown UCL) or any of our top pitching prospects (Cavalli got lit up, Henry wasn&#8217;t even at Spring training, Rutledge was an NRI for some reason but, lest we forget, was in LowA last year, etc).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A huge chunk of our likely opening day lineup are guys signed to one-year deals, who have no history with the franchise and whom most fans couldn&#8217;t pick out of a lineup.  We know who <strong>Nelson Cruz<\/strong> is of course, but could you name our starting infield?  If i stood <strong>Cesar Hernandez, Alcides Escobar, Maikel Franco, Lucious Fox, <\/strong>and <strong>Ehire Adrianza<\/strong> in a row could you put the correct name with each face?  Every one of these guys seemingly was signed with the 2022 trade deadline in their minds &#8230; the likelihood of ANY of these guys finishing the  year with the Nats seems very slim.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our rotation includes an NRI (Sanchez), a guy who I thought was going to get non-tendered (Fedde), a Rookie with one MLB start to his name (Adon), a $30M\/year guy who looked completely lost the last two seasons (Corbin), and a promising prospect who has a career 5.48 ERA in 14 MLB games (Grey).  Strasburg may not pitch until July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If i&#8217;m reading the <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/186nm-v5F-zTCoR2Be7TFYM3e2cZ-gYi2WVqJLEkHdmc\/\">Big Board<\/a> correctly, just 6 of our opening day 28 man roster was originally drafted and developed by Washington (Robles, Soto, YHernandez, Fedde, Adon, and Voth).  A damning indictment of our last decade of drafting and player development, especially in the top 2 rounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/standings\/spring-training\">spring training records<\/a> matter &#8230; but we finished 4-11 and were outscored by 28 runs in the process (nearly 2 a game).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Its going to be a long season.  We have the defending WS champs, a Mets team that&#8217;s going to spend $300M on payroll this year, a Phillies team that had a softball beer league lineup of sluggers who might average 8 runs a game, and a Marlins team that, well who knows what they&#8217;ll do but it won&#8217;t matter because we&#8217;re likely losing 100+ games with this lineup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Discuss.  Is anyone out there really optimistic?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Short version of this post: we are going to be absolutely awful this year. Longer Version&#8230;. At the end of Spring Training, the 2022 Nats are heading into battle with a 28-man roster that breaks down like the following: 4 NRIs signed to minor league deals this past off-season (as per the most recent post: [&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-17492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17492","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=17492"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17495,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17492\/revisions\/17495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}