If the Washington Nationals pitched to their FIP as their ERA, they would be in the postseason. The Nats finished the season with the 9th best FIP in baseball at 3.94 while turning in an horrific season as a defensive team. FIP is directly affected by defense, and the Nats were the 5th worst defensive team in baseball. Suffice it to say that all playoff teams this year had positive defense except for San Diego, and they were just a -4 runs while the Nats were -22 runs.
An analyst might tell you that the Nats don’t need new pitchers — they need better defense to make their pitchers better. Okay, a pitcher that has an ERA and FIP better than 3.50 would be a nice addition for the departing Patrick Corbin. One run given up by bad defense has a greater impact than one run not scored by your offense because bad defense also has tangible effects on pitch counts.
When you deep dive into the FIP numbers for starters, what we found was that the lefty starting pitchers for the Nationals were affected more by the defense than the right-handed starting pitchers. When you consider that opposing managers often stack their lineups with more right-handed batters against southpaws, the stats back-up the eye test — you see that the weakest fielders were all on the pull-side for those righty batters at shortstop, third base and left field in the season overall when you look at the OAA chart below.
MacKenzie Gore had a FIP of 3.53, DJ Herz at 3.71, and Mitchell Parker at 3.85. Coincidentally, George Kirby of Seattle had a 3.53 ERA and was ranked 25th in MLB for qualified ERA. If the Nats trio of lefties all had their FIPs as their ERA, they would all be Top-38 pitchers.
So again, improve the defense, and the pitching will improve organically. Add an ace to the top of the rotation, and that is the cherry on top. This could be a very good starting rotation in 2025.
There is good news for the 2025 roster in that Dylan Crews‘s stats, when extrapolated for a full season of defense, has him as a Gold Glove type of player. He would be about 10-11 defensive runs saved for a full season, and probably more when you consider as his first 31-games went through the acclimation period — Crews defense got better and better. Jacob Young is already getting fitted for a Gold Glove and led all of baseball in defensive runs saved and in OAA of all players and at every position. He made the difficult look easy.
The issues are the players highlighted in gray and blue. Most are off the team. There was a lot of addition by subtraction. Even though James Wood shows up as a poor defender, he was actually league average in his final 40-games of the season. The Nationals outfield will be a huge positive in 2025. And congrats to Luis Garcia Jr. who turned his defense around from being a poor defender in 2023 to a good defender in 2024. The issue is at catcher with Keibert Ruiz, third base with Trey Lipscomb and Jose Tena, first base (without Joey Gallo), and shortstop with CJ Abrams.
So the question is, can Abrams play third base? His shortstop defense had him as the worst defender in all of baseball. He was a negative defender in 2023, and somehow his defense worsened by nearly double in 2024. At times we said he was having issues focusing, staying up on his toes, and anticipating contact location. On the other hand, Nasim Nunez in what amounted to about 15 complete games in the field turned in a+2 OAA with 1 run saved. Extrapolate his numbers and he is a Gold Glove contender with numbers near Young. And truth be told, that if Nunez had a better first baseman, he’d have fewer errors and a higher OAA.
So what do you do with Ruiz and Abrams and the first base situation? First base needs a new replacement, and Christian Walker is a free agent and the best fielding first baseman in the NL. Can Juan Soto play a good defensive first base? We don’t know — we just know that he has been practicing at first base defense. Maybe shortstop gets fixed with Abrams getting a position change or other drastic changes to improve his defense. And Ruiz must be coached up. We know Ruiz can do better than what he is showing. Maybe some more rest days will keep him fresher too.
All in all, it doesn’t take a baseball savant to tell you that better defense will make your pitching better. That is fairly obvious. But baseball is all about having the proper balance between defense, pitching, offense, and baserunning — and of course the intangibles of team chemistry and leadership. The best team isn’t usually the team that wins the World Series — they’re just the team that wins the required games in each round of the postseason. In the longer regular season, it is usually about the better teams — and yes, coaching matters, analytics matters, better players matters, and winning matters the most. How you get there is a different path for each team.
