Struggles of the Nationals

If your reading this you’re a listener to the Turducken is Tasty podcast.  For a quick introduction my name is Josh Biesiada and I’m a baseball fan, I big one.  So for today I wanted to talk about a team that was considered to be a contender for the NL League Championships and even a World Series team but so far has fallen on some hard times.  Today I’m going to look at the Washington Nationals.

            The Nationals are a good team, even though their record of 11-11 doesn’t show that.  Seriously they are one of the most talented teams I’ve seen in years.  Under General Manager Mike Rizzo’s watch they’ve gone from a team that was the joke of a league to a team that is very formidable.  With players like Bryce Harper and Stephen Strausburg they have not just a team ready for the majors now but they have a bright future for years to come.  So after saying all these glowing praises what’s wrong with the team so far?  Lets take a look at the stats and some interesting trends that are starting to show themselves.

            First thing you look at is how bad the lineup itself is struggling out the gate.  They have a team batting average of .235, which puts them 23^rd overall in batting average.  Worse than the bad batting avg. is the teams miserable On-Base Percentage of .299, 25^th overall.  This isn’t exactly what I was expecting them to be doing when I ranked them the WS champs honestly but what happened?  Well let’s look at the OBP first; the teams combined walk rate (BB%) currently sitting at 8%, which is incredibly low, and a K rate of 21% of the time, which is incredibly high!  Right here we can see a major problem with the team, they go up to the plate looking for a hit nothing else and it’s showing with all the K’s.  This is a trend we stats geeks are noticing with young players now and day and with a team as young as this I guess it makes sense.

This isn’t to say that all hope is lost for the team; it is early enough that the vets of the team can turn themselves around and get back to what we know they can do (guys like Adam LaRouche and Jason Werth).  Also the team has one person that is shining through all this, Bryce Harper.  He is currently batting .351 and his Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP), which measures what his Avg. is when he puts the ball in play the luck factor basically, is currently .352.  Basically saying that he’s not hitting into luck he’s hitting exactly what he’s supposed to do, with an impressive OBP of .429 and a very impressive Slugging Percentage (SLG) of .689.  What’s Harper’s secret?  The K% at 15.5% and BB% at 12% this is helping him get better pitches to hit.  He gets more hitters counts the more patient he gets.  Harper is really proving why he was considered the number one prospect in all of baseball last year.

There are two sides of every story and there are two sides of a team.  Pitching was a strength for the team last year and this year was improved upon this off season.  So lets take a look and see if there is an area where the team is weak.  The teams Earned Run Average (ERA) is 3.99, 19^th overall, so the team lets about 4 runs score a game which is a high total for any offense to overcome.  Though lets separate this shall we and look at the ERA of both the Starting Pitching and Relief Pitching.  The starting pitching ERA is sitting at a 2.50, very respectable and shows that the starters are doing their jobs in keeping them in the game.  It also helps that the team in 8^th overall in quality starts, this means they go at least 6 innings with giving up 3 or less runs.  They have 12 QS so they go deep and keep the team in the game.  As for the relief pitching they site at a ERA at 2.06 which is doing good for a relief staff but the fact that they give up 2 runs a game means they are going to lose games in those final innings where giving up just 1 run is bad.  Combine the two ERA’s and you get the 3.99 overall ERA, again this means the team is doomed in fact if any team can turn this around its going to be this staff.  With a high K/9 (innings) at about 7 K’s per 9 and a BB rate of 2.62 this is a team that can improve on the poor start.

I decided to write about the Nationals because I picked them to win the World Series and I stand by my word.  In the end they are a young team lead by some very good veterans.  If you’re a Nationals fan I wouldn’t worry at all and give them some time to fix their problems.