Max Scherzer warms in the bullpen as the World Series flag blows in the wind; Photo by Steve Mears for TalkNats
Baseball fans in Washington D.C. were 95-years in waiting for a World Series championship. You had to go back to 1924 to Walter Johnson‘s Senators for the only D.C. baseball championship. That all changed in 2019, and next year — Johnson’s championship turns 100. Can you believe it has been exactly four years since the Washington Nationals won the World Series! Savor it, enjoy it. They do not happen often — even when you spend so much money that you blow through the CBT cap to win. It took a good team with incredible chemistry and veteran leadership along with some youthful exuberance and some divine intervention from the baseball gods. The “CLANG” heard ’round the world was courtesy of Howie Kendrick, and that put the final clang exclamation mark on it.
Max earned his 175th career win in a Nats’ uniform in 2020, Photo by Sol Tucker for TalkNats
Once upon a time, there were two Washington Senators teams. The original Senators team of Walter Johnson went to Minnesota, while Frank Howard‘s Senators landed in Texas as the Rangers in 1972. Ted Williams was their manager, Howard their first baseman, and Dick Bosman their ace pitcher. They lost 100 games that year. Former owner Bob Short didn’t rip our team from Washington to take them to Texas to win championships — rather just to make more money. He sold control just two years later for a huge profit. Short totally stepped away in 1980, and just two years later and upon his death the Washington Post wrote, “Mr. Short became one of the most reviled sports figures in Washington’s history … [Short] said he had trouble making a profit [in Washington] with his new team and angered fans by trading or selling top players.” WaPo couldn’t even find anything nice to say on the man’s death.
The Washington Nationals knew they were not going to be a contender this year short of a miracle. With a 16-game win improvement over last year, there are reasons for optimism — even in a season where the Nats finished in last place in the NL East — but nowhere close to the bottom in baseball.
Optimism can be found in this year’s two World Series teams: Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers. They lost 110 and 102 games respectively just two seasons ago. Their unique paths to this World Series had different strategies. The Diamondbacks are more of the old-school story of building from the farm system while the Rangers took the more modern method of spending big on up-the-middle talent and starting pitching — but when former Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom was lost for the entire season — they looked like a fail before the season began. Texas had a player payroll at $195,869,490 to begin the season.
Free agency opens in less than two weeks — and will really get going at the Winter Meetings in Nashville on December 4. That is just 42 days from now. Washington Nationals owner Mark Lerner said that he will leave the decision to spend with his general manager Mike Rizzo. With that said, it looks like the onus is on Rizzo to do what he needs to do to improve the team and sign free agents.
De Jon Watson sat with owner Mark Lerner and GM Mike Rizzo in a suite (Photo by Sol Tucker)
When news broke of De Jon Watson getting fired by the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2016, it was Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo who had a spot as an Assistant GM for Watson. A couple of years later, Watson took Mark Scialabba‘s spot as the VP of Player Development. Scialabba moved to another front office spot and Watson moved in. It raised some eyebrows then as a typical Rizzo people shuffle internally or bringing in someone from his past. Probably not a fair portrayal — but that has been an ongoing criticism of Rizzo that he usually hires front office people he personally knows. That really is not true, but labels and narratives are hard to change.
In sweeping changes at the end of September and the beginning of October, the scouting and player development heads are all gone on both the international and US sides, except Kris Kline who was reassigned. Nobody saw that coming with Johnny DiPuglia and Watson gone, and Kline moved to another spot.
June 19, 2023 Victor Robles positioned himself near the warning track. The next day would be his final game of the season (Photo by Andrew Lang for TalkNats)
There has been a strange dynamic between manager Dave Martinez and center fielder Victor Robles for a couple of seasons. The Nats’ manager had no issue with publicly criticizing Robles — and honestly, the criticism had been warranted….but don’t you do that in private? Robles pulled a stunt where he missed a catch at the wall and was not playing as deep as he was instructed. The following inning he moved to within 15 feet of the warning track to stick it to his manager. The next day would be his last of the season on June 20. Things got so contentious in his final days that pitcher, MacKenzie Gore, yelled at Robles for missing a routine flyball.
This afternoon, Rawlings Sporting Goods announced Lane Thomas as one of the three finalists for the Gold Glove Award for right fielders in the National League. The Washington Nationals right fielder is going up against Mookie Betts and Fernando Tatis, Jr. for the award. While it will be a long-shot to win the award over, Betts who is the reigning Gold Glove winner, some might not like the fact that Betts only started 77-games in right field. While Betts spent than half the season starting in right field, he played the rest of the games in the middle infield in his 151 games this season.
Since the Washington Nationals have not officially said a word about their coaching changes and front office hires, we have to rely on sourced reports for now. Last week, news broke that bench coach Tim Bogar, third base coach/infield coach Gary DiSarcina, first base coach/baserunning coach Eric Young Jr., and assistant hitting coach Pat Roessler were all out.
Fans were prepared for changes, after manager Dave Martinez was asked about the future of his coaching staff at the end of the season, and he responded that he will discuss that with general manager Mike Rizzo. That led many to believe that pitching coach Jim Hickey and hitting coach Darnell Coles were goners — yet, they appear to have survived the round of cuts. The news on front office departures were known back in September, and in October, Rizzo and his new scouting director, Danny Haas, have been busy building out a staff built on “quality” over “quantity” as it was described to us.
The Washington Nationals finished the season with a much-improved 71-91 record. That also means that collectively the pitching staff finished 20-games under .500. Wins and losses for pitchers often are a factor of when runs are scored. The starters finished 25-games under .500 and the relievers at 5-games over .500. Seven walk-off wins and 6-2 in extra inning games will help those reliever W/L stats. The fact is that both the starting pitching staff and bullpen as a whole were not good. There were individuals that were good. But there was plenty of good, bad, and ugly rolled into the Nats’ season.
In Part I we covered the position players and piggybacked on the great piece that Sao Magnifico wrote. We do the same here for the pitchers. The starting pitchers finished at a poor 5.02 ERA which actually was a sizeable improvement over the 5.97 ERA of 2022. Much of that was better defense helping the pitching and individually Josiah Gray led the staff with a 3.91 and a huge improvement over his 5.02 last year. Gray started strong and finished strong but the middle got ugly for the team’s lone All-Star. Even Patrick Corbin improved, but in his case, it appears that you could chalk up most or all of it to the improvement in team defense.
Remember, general manager Mike Rizzo made an impassioned pledge to season ticket holders that an emphasis before the 2023 season would be to improve the defense, and overall he did.
The Nats starters and relievers finished with identical 5.02 ERAs as combined groups. Overall, the Nats had the fourth worst bullpen. The starters were the sixth worst in the MLB, but at the halfway point of the season, the Nats were actually the 15th best. The second half slide was felt in the team going 8-18 in September.
Thaddeus Ward lasted the full season on the roster as a Rule 5 draft pick, but how did he perform? (Photo by Sol Tucker for TalkNats.com)
The season is over, and the report card is due for the players who appeared in 2023 for the Washington Nationals.
Grades here are presented relative to what I’ll call “reasonable expectations”. For instance, no one expected Amos Willingham to become the Nats’ ninth-inning guy when he was called up; but did he do reasonably well for himself, relative to what the Nats brought him up to do? What about Robert Garcia, who was claimed off waivers? Jackson Rutledge, who was called up to plug a rotation hole late in the season?
While these grades are conducted on a curve, all assume the baseline expectation for a player was that they succeed in the role to which they were assigned — whether that of an ace, a back-end starter, a long man, a late-inning reliever, or anything in between. A passing grade (C range or higher) means someone at least did enough to justify keeping him around, although a C might not augur well for a player in 2024 or beyond. Grades in the A range are assigned sparingly, showing where a player exceeded reasonable expectations and contributed in a strongly positive way. B’s, as you would thus expect, fall somewhere in the middle. And failing grades (D’s and F’s) pretty well speak for themselves.
