The Nationals’ season has gone from promising to precarious in a hurry, and the turning point is easy enough to spot. On July 26, the club was sitting two games over .500. Since the trade that sent Curtis Mead away after that game, Washington has gone 6-14 and dropped to a season-low 6.0 games under .500.
That move did more than subtract one player. It sent a clear message that the sell-off was underway even while the Nats were still hanging around the playoff race.
Nearly everyone who had been mentioned in trade chatter was moved, with CJ Abrams the lone holdout. Foster Griffin, the team’s best pitcher, was dealt.
So was first baseman Luis Garcia Jr.
Then came the hit that may have hurt the most. James Wood, Washington’s best player, injured his oblique on August 4, the day after the trade deadline ended.
The injury was originally described as a minor strain, but Wood still is not pain-free. With 36 games left, his return is very much up in the air.
The replacements have only gone so far. Abimelec Ortiz and Andres Chaparro have posted numbers that are at least in the neighborhood of what Garcia gave the club, and Brady House has been close to Mead’s production.
But there is no real stand-in for Griffin’s output, and nobody can duplicate what Wood was doing. Abrams, meanwhile, is in a skid of his own.
The bullpen hasn’t exactly stabilized after the deadline additions, either. Yovanny Cruz, Will Dion, and Jake Bird came in as part of the infusion of arms, but the group has not improved overall.
Dion has been a plus so far, while Cruz and Bird have been negatives, and they accounted for 50 percent of the return in the Garcia deal. The other half brought Jack Cebert and Ben Grable to Washington, with the hope that they turn out to be the jewels of that trade.
There has been constant movement on the pitching side all season. The Opening Day bullpen featured RHP Clayton Beeter, RHP Andre Granillo, RHP Cole Henry, RHP Brad Lord, LHP Cionel Pérez, LHP PJ Poulin, RHP Gus Varland, and LHP Ken Waldichuk.
Of that group, only Beeter remains in the bullpen today, since Lord was moved back into the starting rotation. On the rotation side, only Cade Cavalli and Jake Irvin are still there from Opening Day.
The churn has been extreme. Washington has already used 35 pitchers, a number that is expected to rise before the season ends. Last year, the Nats used 30 pitchers in total.
The offense tells a very different story. The hitting coaches led by Matt Borgschulte have clearly gotten through to this group.
The five returning starters from last year - Wood, Abrams, Garcia, Keibert Ruiz, and Jacob Young - have improved by more than 20.5 percent in OPS. House can be added to that conversation, too, even though he has not been with the big-league club all year; he has gone from a .574 OPS to .697, a 21.4 percent jump.
There have been other gains as well. Dylan Crews has improved by 10 points.
The only regulars who have gone backward are Daylen Lile and Nasim Nunez. Lile was at an .845 OPS in a 91-game sample last year and is at .705 now.
Nunez posted a .699 OPS in 39 games last season and sits at .578 this year. Chaparro has shown the biggest spike, though the sample size is small.
The contrast is hard to miss. Washington was 20th in runs scored last year and is first this season.
The offense has clearly taken a step forward, while the pitching staff has been stuck in a cycle of injuries, promotions, demotions, and DFA decisions. The result is a team that still has talent, but not enough stability on the mound to stay in the race.
That leaves the front office with a big problem to sort out. The organization has overhauled nearly everything around the pitching operation, from coaches to analytics staff to new technology, and the results have not matched the investment. It would not be surprising if changes come on the pitching and player development side after the season.
In Other News...
Nationals Decision Looks Tougher After Zack Littells Fast Start Elsewhere
The Nationals moved on from Zack Littell earlier this month, designating the right-hander for assignment as part of a roster shuffle that opened the door for younger arms and helped them manage service time with Miles Mikolas. It was the kind of transaction that can look ordinary in the moment, especially for a club trying to balance development, innings and the bigger picture over a long season.
Littell did not stay available for long. He landed with the Arizona Diamondbacks and wasted little time making an impression, throwing 4.2 shutout innings in a successful bullpen debut. For Washington, it is the sort of early return that can make a baseball decision feel sharper in hindsight, even when the original logic was sound. [Read more 🡒]
Abimelec Ortiz Is Forcing A Bigger Nationals First Base Debate
Abimelec Ortiz has wasted no time making himself part of the Nationals first-base conversation. In his first 14 major league games, he has already tied a franchise record with five home runs, and the early offensive production has come with a .300/.317/.700 slash line and nine RBIs. Just as important for a club trying to sort out its infield picture, Ortiz has also looked steady defensively at first base, giving Washington something it can build around while he settles in.
The bigger question now is how quickly the Nationals are willing to expand his role. For the moment, they have been using him in a platoon against right-handed pitching as he works to improve against lefties, but that arrangement may not hold for long if the bat keeps coming around. For a team looking for more certainty at first base, Ortizs start has turned what looked like a temporary test into a much more interesting decision. [Read more 🡒]
Ronny Cruz Is Becoming A Bigger Deal In The Nationals System
Ronny Cruzs rise through the Nationals system has already been brisk, and the organization has a reason to feel encouraged about the way he has handled the jump. After a strong start at Low A earned him a quick promotion to High A, the adjustment period was real, with plate discipline and strikeout issues showing up against better pitching.
August brought the sort of progress player development staffs love to see, though, as Cruzs offensive metrics moved in the right direction. His walk rate climbed and his strikeout rate dipped, and the overall production followed, giving the Nationals another young hitter whose trajectory is starting to look more and more like that of a legitimate top prospect in the farm system. [Read more 🡒]