The Nationals were supposed to be the best team in baseball.
That was the consensus heading into the season, and for good reason. They had pretty much every key player back from 2014’s 96-win squad, and they added former Cy Young winner Max Scherzer to the rotation as a free agent. Bryce Harper was primed to become the superstar everyone expected.
MLB TRADE RUMORS: Carlos Gonzalez | Justin Upton | David Price
And even though Scherzer and Harper have been even better than anticipated, which is really saying something, the Nationals haven’t been baseball’s best team. Far from it.
Mostly, instead, they’ve been mediocre.
Veteran stars have been unproductive or injured. The bullpen outside of Drew Storen, who has a 1.73 ERA and is 29-of-31 in save opportunities, has been inconsistent. The defense has often been cringe-worthy. The rotation has been OK, at best, behind Scherzer.
They struggled out of the gate, but that didn’t shake their confidence. After a May 6 win put the Nationals at 14-15, Harper echoed comments made by Jayson Werth earlier in the day: “We’re the team to beat. Everybody knows that. We’re going to get hot. Everybody knows that too.”
They have gotten hot — Harper’s comments came in the middle of a 21-6 run — but those times have been followed by more of the same sloppy and inconsistent play — they lost 14 of the following 20 games after that stretch. They followed a 12-3 run that boosted them to a season-high 10 games over .500 at 46-36 with a 6-10 stretch.
Rinse, repeat.
The only reason they’re in first place at the moment, by a game over the Mets with a 52-46 record, is because they play in the worst division in baseball, the National League East.
Look at it this way: That record would place them 11 games out of first place in the NL Central, two-and-a-half back in the NL West, four-and-half back in the AL East, eight-and-a-half back in the AL Central and two-and-a-half back in the AL West. They’d be in third place in the NL Central, the NL West and the AL West.
If they played in the NL Central or West, in fact, they would be on the outside of the playoffs looking in, with a record that’s two games worse than the Giants, who currently own the second wild-card spot.
But, of course, they play in the NL East, so those hypothetical “if they played …” scenarios don’t really matter. The reality is, they play in the NL East, and they’re in good shape to make the playoffs out of that division.
Ninety-eight games into the season, they’re essentially starting with a clean slate, and reinforcements have arrived.
On Tuesday, veterans Werth and Ryan Zimmermann came back from long stretches on the disabled list (they went 3-for-7 combined). Anthony Rendon, who finished fifth in the NL MVP voting last year after compiling 21 homers and 17 stolen bases but has spent most of 2015 on the DL, returned to the lineup last Saturday.
On Tuesday, the Nationals completed a trade that brings Jonathan Papelbon to town as the team’s new closer. And though Storen isn't thrilled with losing his role as closer, the addition of Papelbon unquestionably makes Washington’s bullpen much stronger.
It’s time for the Nationals to show baseball what kind of team they really are.
