The Washington Nationals season was projected by the experts to be worse than last year. But the team was built to be better than those projections. The starting pitching took an early blow when Josiah Gray‘s season was really over before it began. He was pitching on a damaged ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his right pitching elbow and made just two starts — two horrific starts with a 14.04 ERA.
What looked like a death-knell blow in the first couple weeks of the season turned out to be just one of many bumps in the road. The 2023 All-Star pitcher would later have Tommy John surgery to repair the UCL and will be lost for 2025 also. Mitchell Parker came up on April 15 and pitched admirably for the team, and later when Trevor Williams went down for three months with a forearm strain, DJ Herz stepped up in his place. In actuality, the young starting pitching turned out to be a bright spot on this 2024 season.
Each time the team took a punch to the gut, the team seemed to counter-punch. They were fortunate to have their minor league system producing some good replacements. The early season looked promising, and that the phoenix was going to rise from the ashes. But four bad stretches sent the team back into the ashes like a cruel tease of what could have been.
Four Bad Stretches
The season is not over yet, and the Washington Nationals are mired in a 1-9 awful stretch that started last week when Jake Irvin had a 1-0 lead against the Mets and was sent out for the 8th inning. You know the rest and how the team has been in a funk ever since.
There have been four really bad stretches in this season. The first one was started by the Fedde Flu. The team was facing the worst team in baseball history with the 120+ loss Chicago White Sox team, and former Nats starter, Erick Fedde, just put the Nats in a funk. The Nats entered that game at .500 with a 20-20 record. The Nats went 1-7 in that stretch and found themselves at 21-27 when the dust settled.
The team picked themselves off of the mat and clawed back to 26-29, and then the Nats went 1-6 and fell apart again to fall into a 27-35 hole — and rose back up, and went on a great 11-4 stretch over the next 15-games to get them to San Diego on June 24 at 38-39.
This was the point in the season that manager Dave Martinez was pushing hard on the back of his bullpen with Kyle Finnegan and Hunter Harvey carrying too much workload while relievers like Tanner Rainey, Jacob Barnes and Jordan Weems were rarely pitching in that previous 15-game stretch. Harvey had to close the game in San Diego with a 3-run lead, and he crumbled. If the Nats won, they would have returned to .500 at 39-39 and taken the third spot in the Wild Card race a few days before the true mathematical halfway point in the season.
There was so much optimism going into that San Diego series that we were actually discussing being partial buyers at the trade deadline. Now that all seems laughable. The team went big addition by subtraction and called up James Wood for his MLB debut on July 1, and finally DFA’d Eddie Rosario who was some kind of awful in more ways than one. A few days later, Joey Meneses was optioned to Triple-A. But the Nats went 4-13 in that stretch from San Diego and forward, and were practically crawling to the All-Star break at 42-52. At that point, the Nats would go through another fire sale, and the first shoe dropped on July 14 when Harvey was traded.
Take these four bad stretches and add them together and you have a 7-35 record over those spans, and that means the rest of the season, the Washington Nationals were 62-55. Yes, losing funks happen to all teams. But good teams don’t go through four long funks like this. So yes, clearly, the Nats are not a good team. But they sure had some great stretches. What could have been with a better bullpen early in the season, and better bullpen management? Also, the offense just lacked that ability to score that one extra run that was needed so many times. You all know the record in one-run and extra-innings games — and it is awful.
Leadership
This Nationals team has really missed a sense of veteran leadership. Sure, on the pitching side, the team had Patrick Corbin, and the de facto leader on position side was Jesse Winker who was only with the team for four months before he was traded. For several seasons, the position player roster has been a revolving door since Ryan Zimmerman retired. There was no Jayson Werth walking through the clubhouse doors except when he was in town for a visit.
We had to learn about swirling rumors of late nights and stories of gambling that sounded like a tabloid story of some out-of-control rock star. But this was real life happenings with the team’s 2024 All-Star, CJ Abrams. On the weekend he was named to the All-Star team, he fell into a slump that would follow him to a few days before he joined the 20HR/30SB exclusive club. His great first three months of the season were overshadowed by off-the-field problems that spiraled out of control figuratively and literally. From Abrams’ 50-games from July 8 to Sept 10th, he batted just .160 with a .222 OBP and a pathetic .495 OPS and some equally bad defense.
Maybe a true clubhouse leader, or a coach, or Abrams’ manager, or someone could have helped this 23-year-old through what was going on. There seemed to be a culture formed that whatever you did wrong, it didn’t matter. How many times did Rosario jog after a flyball on defense, or jog to first base or not run at all? What message did that send to a dugout of impressionable young men? Where were the repercussions for not hustling? There were not any unless you were Victor Robles who was released on June 1. But Rosario remained for another month? Yes, Robles was part of the oil and water that did not mix on this team, but why?
The Adult in the Room
The leadership issues point to: “Who is the adult in the room?” A major flaw, when in a rebuild, is that someone(s) has to take on that task or you get what you got. With better leadership, maybe Robles finds his star like he did almost immediately going to Seattle. He’s batting .327 with an .859 OPS and looks like an All-Star there.
A while ago, the Nationals needed to sign a Jayson Werth to be that clubhouse leader. Someone has to be the adult in the room. That is why there are adult chaperones at the school dance. Come on people, what are we doing here? How did this ball get dropped. On top of that, who made the horrific decision to extend the entire coach staff on August 14? That is a rhetorical question because we know Dave Martinez initiated that action, and President of Baseball Operations, Mike Rizzo, greenlit this decision.
“I thought to be consistent, and keep the consistency in the coaches’ room, was important. I watch, Davey watches, how these guys interact and work throughout the season, and believe me, these guys are as hard-working, as communicative, they teach as much as any group that we’ve had.”
— Rizzo’s rationale to extend the Nats’ entire MLB coaching staff when he met with the media this week. He had an opportunity to say that they would revisit the decision, and instead he double-downed on the decision.
“To keep that cohesion going, and for the players to go into the offseason knowing who their coaches are going to be, so they can lean on [the coaches] during the offseason, was important to me.”
“I believe every one of those guys have earned the right to come back next year.”
Just read our article on August 15 titled, “What was the rush on the coaching staff?” Seriously, what was the rush with the season not even 75 percent complete at that point? The stats in the article tell you so much of the story — especially with the offense that was 22nd in baseball in OPS at that moment, so why would you extend head hitting coach Darnell Coles in particular? Sure, we understood the need to extend the two pitching coaches with Sean Doolittle and Jim Hickey given the rise of the pitching. But the offense was a mess. The Nationals have dropped to 25th in baseball. Worse than that, on August 15 the Nats were 17th best in scoring runs and have dropped 8-spots to 25th in runs scored.
So who is going to be the adult in the room and do what needs to happen? You know, admit you made a mistake in extending the coaching staff. That looks like it won’t happen given Rizzo’s comments this week.
The mistake was really made years ago when Nats’ former hitting coach, Kevin Long, decided to take another job with the rival Phillies in the same position. But the decision to hire Coles was a mistake from the onset. He was fired from Arizona for the same issues we see here. He was fired mid-season in 2021. Two years later, Arizona went to the World Series.
“I’m not pinning it on one person or one group because we’re all in this together. But we’ve seen 40 days of the type of offensive production that wasn’t meeting our standards — and obviously well below average. We’ve seen that trend before, and I felt like I needed to address that trend.”
— Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said at the time that Coles was fired
Someone needs to utter those words now. Martinez made a mistake — and Rizzo let it happen. Maybe more than just Coles needs to go. Some want Martinez fired — but personally I do not think that is the right move at this point. What I want to see from Martinez is that he can change and evolve to improve as a manager. That starts by stepping up a firing Coles as the first item on the agenda. Sometimes you need some friction to start a fire. Yes, too much friction isn’t good for an engine which is why you want a well-oiled machine.
But on a coaching staff, you don’t want all “yes men” and an echo chamber. A little bit of friction is good. [Read this one page that will give you a glimpse into the problem.] You had some good friction between Martinez and Chip Hale in the World Series season. Complacency, stagnation, and mistakes set in too often when you are surrounded by “yes men” in the Groupthink system. There are many articles on just this situation. Whether it is a C-Suite of a corporation or the dugout, you want strong voices that will speak up if they see an issue. Sometimes you get to that point by having honest discussion — especially late in games. “Should I send Jake Irvin out for the 8th inning? Should I insert Joey Gallo as a defensive upgrade at this point. Should I pull Patrick Corbin at this point?” There should be a constant discussion.
Speaking of strong voices, did you hear the Royals dugout chirping at the homeplate ump in the game on Tuesday when Hunter Renfroe was called for a low strike? Martinez or someone has to get on these umpires in a respectful way — especially when your young stars like Wood and Dylan Crews are getting constantly screwed on calls like some rookie indoctrination. You have to stand up for your employees. Have you ever seen the sign at the McDonalds that says they won’t tolerate bad behavior toward employees. Yes, that does go both ways.
While Martinez has addressed this before that he just doesn’t ride umpires, sorry, the Nats are last in baseball for bad umpiring for a reason. The umps know they can get away with it. Nobody on the Royals got thrown out for jawing at the ump, but it might have bought the Royals some favor on a few close calls. You don’t have to go Aaron Boone all over the umpires. Nobody is asking for that — but stick up for your players.
Martinez just turned 60 yesterday. Can a 60 year old change his ways? Rizzo has a few years on Davey. Can he change his ways? Again, the best executives evolve. The best executives right a wrong and sometimes have to admit they were wrong — even if they don’t do it publicly.
Moving Forward
Without change, you are destined towards the same outcomes. The best sailors know how to circumnavigate around a storm. But sometimes even the experienced captain has to take on the elements and weather the storm. Martinez at times has been dealt a vessel that was taking on water. That was by design in a rebuild. Injuries are like cracks in your boat. You patch them up the best you can and move forward. But you inevitably come up to those hard decisions of which way to turn. The best sailors learn from their previous mistakes. Those who don’t learn have gone down with their ship. You don’t want to be the Titanic.
After the World Series, it has felt like the Titanic is playing on a loop. Same mistakes just repeated over and over. But at some point you know you are not going to finish in win, place or show at the finish line. You know what you have in a rebuild. But 2024 could have been much better. That is part of the process to look at where you went wrong, and how you will improve.
This season will end this weekend. There are inevitably some tough decision coming up. The decisions on spending — and spending wisely will help. Will we see a non-tender or two, and a surpise DFA or two? Based on prior years, expect it. More so, expect 2025 to be more defined by acquisitions.
The patch job process doesn’t work well. This is the time to ensure that true leaders are brought in, and some stars are part of the new team going forward. This is the time to open up the checkbook. But most of all, embrace change and evolve as executives. What happens moving forward will tell so much of the future.
