At June 1, Nats may be a 98 win team.

An off day two months into the season is a good day to be retrospective.  First of all , the Nats are winning.  They may be the second best team in the baseball, and probably in the NL; the cubs are (right now) a much better team.  The Nats are 33-21; in past years on June 2, the record was:

   Year  Record      Finish

  2015  29-23        83-79 (2^nd)

  2014  28-28        96-66 (1^st)

  2013  28-29        86-76 (2^nd)

  2012  30-21        98-64 (1^st)

The Nat’s opponents, excluding games against the  Nationals have a winning record (0.508), which means that the team has not had an easy schedule.

The team is .500 or above against all but the Cubs.  The Cubs series was at the end of a long, tough, road trip, and frankly the Cubs are good; they swept the Nats.  The Nats play them soon in DC.  Should be an interesting series.  It is worth noting if you subtract the Cubs/Nats series, the Nats would have similar record (33-17) than the Cubs (32-15).  So, are the Cubs better than the Nats (Yes), and did they catch us at a lucky time (probably).

So the Nats Record against the really bad teams (Braves, Twins) is perfect.  Against the Cubs, 0-4; everyone else: 0.594; those teams have an overall record of 140-124 (.532). 

Assuming these trends continue, the Nats have 20 games left against terrible teams,   85 against decent teams, and 3 vs. the Cubs.   Current trends would mean the Nats end up with 33+20+85*.594 wins, or 103 wins.  That is not going to happen.

The lousy teams will win some games against us: luck was involved in at least one win:  the 16 inning game vs. the Twins….Lets assume a winning percentage of .7 against them.  And the Nats should take at least one from the Cubs.  That places the Nats at 98 wins. 

Interestingly, when I looked at the schedule at the beginning of the season, applying estimates of win probabilities for each game, I had the Nats at 96 wins.  I have been tracking that against actual performance, and the Nats are out performing my predictions by 2 games, or a 98 win season.

But, at some point, the season will not be successful unless someone (Nats, or WC winner – Mets/Pirates?) beats the Cubs. 

The Base Gods are smiling....

Two amazing things happened this week:  The Cubs are lucky and good.  Damn good.  And Bartolo Colon hit an HR.  I normally would not be happy for the Mets, but Colon is the *last* Expo out there.  And the Expo's are the Nat's.  Oh, and Dan Haren's Tweet:

Career accomplishments:
150 wins
2,000 strikeouts.
Bat .200
Didn't give up a homer to Bartolo.....

Second, Nats are good.  But not as good as the Cubs.  The Cubs are scary good.  They were good last year, and added Hayward and Zobrist:  they added 10 war to a 97 win team.  

Yesterday, we saw another example of the maturing of Bryce Harper:  He respected the bricks.  I would rather lose the game than Bryce of 2 months with a broken wrist/arm.  

As we go into the final game of the series and road trip, before the season began, I looked at this as a 4-6 road trip.  It will be better than that; probably 5-5, possibly 6-4.  The are 1 game ahead of my projection, which was for a 96 win season.

It is possible that the Nats fall out of first place today:  my expectations are they will lose to Arrietta and the Cubs, and the Mets are probably better than the Padres.  But, the Mets have the Dodgers next, followed by the Rockies.  We have the Tigers and the Marlins.  The Marlins are playing good ball right now.  

The next big series is Nats @ Mets starting 1 week from Tuesday.

My question is: what to wear to Wed's game?  Scherzer Jersey (he is pitching), Harper Jersey (MVP Bobblehead day), or JZim t-shirt (he will be pitching).  I am thinking Harper Jersey with Jzim t-shirt underneath.  

Finally, How about Harper's cleats today:

First Month....

It is May 1, 2016.  I am still trying to figure out the Nats.   They are clearly a good team, finishing April 16-7.  At times, the lineup was awesome, other times, not so awesome.  However, baseball is a streaky game.  At times, any team can look unbeatable, and any team can look awful.

In my second blog, I looked at the season projections, at least for the first 6 weeks.  I said:

However, I have looked through the first half of the season.  I see periods where the Nats will be very strong – we are playing weak opponents.  And there are really hard stretches.  For example, from April 29 – May 8, the Nats have a gut-check road drip:  St. Louis, KC, and Cubs.   

However, the first decent team the Nats play will be the April 22, with a two game series against the Twins, but they follow that with the Phillies.

At this point in the season, the Nats should be “favored” in all of the games.    The Nats are not going to be 22-0 , but they could be 15-7, or maybe 17-5.  (14-8 probably has them on a 95 win pace).

First of all, the Nat's had one rainout.  So, the first 22 games became the first 21 games.  They finished is 14-7, but with a three game loosing streak (to the Evil Phillies who are looking surprisingly good).  Now, at 23 games, with two against an expected really good team has them at 16-7.  Swept by the Phillies (at home), followed by Scherzer pitching for a sweep of the Cardinals.

Here are my surprises after a month:

Joe Ross, Gio and Tanner are pitching much better than expected; Scherzer is currently the weak link.  The bullpen is solid.

Offense has not been outstanding.  Now, even Harper is cold.  But, JW is heating up...and Harper will find his swing again.

Defense has been outstanding.  The team is winning because of pitching and defense.  Pitching keeps you in games.

My favorite Nats moment so far this season:
I was at the 16 inning game.  First, everyone knew Harper would HR in the 9th.   In the 15th, when the Nats were down by one, two outs, and Espy followed by the pitcher were up, I left my seat.  I watched them walk Espy from the 300 level concourse.  Then, headed down stairs for Perez's AB.  I was in perfect position to see the bunt. Then, I looked at who was up in the 16th; all righties.  I thought that the ball was going to end up in the LF seats.  I went to Section 102.  I was two rows back from visiting bullpen.  Heisey's ball was heading right for me.  I though for a second it was mine, then I realized 1) it was left of me, and 2) it was not curving back.  However, if I had moved towards the ball, I might have had it:  it bounced towards me.  Now, that was a hell of a game. Oh, and Kurt Suzuki autographed my Suzuki Jersey*.

Oh, I am sticking with my 96-98 win projection....but unfortunately, the Nat's only have 13 more games against the Braves.

*Why I like Kurt Suzuki:  It starts on May 1, 2012, four years ago today; that was the day of Bryce's first game in DC; I had hoped to go.  But, I got sick overnight on the 30th of April; I was taken to the hospital where they did a CT scan.  The CT scan did not find the cause of the pain/illness, but did find a 6 cm tumor on my Rt. Kidney.  Later, they discovered it had metastasized to my lung.  I had Stage four cancer with an aggressive histology.  Prognosis was grim.  Horrible.  (spoiler...I am still alive).  read the following article about Kurt: Post Article on Suzuki, which included the following tidbit:

Suzuki does not like to complain. In 2007, doctors found cancer in Warren Suzuki’s left kidney and operated to remove it. A year later, the cancer came back, and Warren underwent another surgery to remove part of his left lung.  

“Knock on wood, I’m fine today,” Warren Suzuki said. “One of the things I constantly stress to Kurt is, you always have to maintain a positive attitude, because you never know what’s going to happen. I’m not sure that’s something he’s thought about. But I’ve always told him, ‘Maintain a good attitude.’ ” 

For me, this was someone with my disease that had a good outcome.  It has made a difference in my outlook. 

Only 3 un-earned runs so far -- that is good defense.

The Nat’s are playing good defense.  So far,  the Nat’s have given up 3 unearned runs; the unearned runs have not cost the team any games.  At this time last year, the team had something like 16 unearned runs, costing us 3.5 games (0.5 was given 1.5 times when without the unearned runs, the team would have ben tied).   Last year, on this day, the team was 7-9; without the unearned runs, they would have been 10.5-5.5, but having played a tougher schedule (series against the Mets, Red Sox, and Cardinals. 

I could make the case that without the errors, the team could have been better than this year’s team.   However, they had the errors; that was part of last year’s DNA.

Instead of 7-9 of April 23, the Nat’s are 13-4.

Last year, the best record vs.  .500 was 10 games up around the AllStar game.   This year, the team is 9 games above .500 at 17 games. 

However, baseball is a streaky game; last year they had a streak of 20-5,   But, I think they are a better team than last year. 

At this point, through basically three weeks of the season,  they remain in First Place.

Week 1 they were 2-1.  Week 2, they were 7-0; week three, 4-3.  Are they cooling off? I don’t know.  They have a total of 4 loses:  2 Roark losses, 1 bad start by Scherzer and a blown save.  Everyone else has been lights out.  ERA, Scherzer is 4.32, but mostly because of the last start. Roark is 2.63; Gio 1.42; Stras 1.25 and Ross 0.54.  (not bad for the #5 starter). 

The only other high ERA is from Papelbon, who has 3 ERs, two in one outing (BS).  So, I am not too worried about that.

How is the team relative to projections?  My preseason projections, which was 96 wins, had the Nats at 11-6 right now.  Instead, the Nats are 13-4.

Werth and Espinoza are both hitting better; Werth has a positive WAR and Espy has a zero WAR for the week.  If they can hit, they this lineup will be with only 1 hole: Michael A. Taylor.  Heck, the pitchers are doing better than him.

Overall, if the team continues to play as is, 100 wins is a reasonable target.  (They will not continue to win at a 123 win pace, though). Baring significant injuries, we will have October Baseball (at least with the Marlins on Oct 1 & 2).

I love it when things start HOT

In the first ten games, almost everything has gone right.  In my early posts, I talked about how easy the schedule is at the beginning.  But, even with easy schedules, expectations were through 10.  Six of the ten where against the Braves.  But, the Braves are .500 against other teams; the Phillies are .500 against everyone else.  The Nats have won with come from behind in the 7^th, 8^th and 9^th; they have won in extra innings; they won with big leads early.   They won with strong starts, (6/10 games were what I considered strong starts).  They won with the bullpen.  They won with long ball and small ball.   Like the squirrel, things are looking up:

So, how good are the Nats?  It is too early to predict, but that never stopped me. I looked at the numbers:  WAR, adjusted for in year performance, coupled with uncertainty.  Right now, the Nats are looking like a 99 win team.  And that is without significant production from CF, LF or SS positions (though the outfields are starting to heat up).   In the minors, Turner is eating up the International League, hitting .500 with a 1.34 OPS.  Only negative is two errors.  Giolito does not have enough numbers to project.  Turner will improve the SS offense, but will degrade the defense. 

How are the former Nats doing? 

Player                 WAR        Replacement   WAR

Desi                    -0.6           Espy                  -0.3

Span                    0.0           Revere               0.0 (hurt opening day)

Zimmermann      0.3           Roark                 0.1

Fister                   0.0           Ross                  0.4

Escobar               0.7           Murphy             0.9

Storen                 -0.1           Kelley               \0.2

Net: +1.0 improvement over 10 games!  The changes were like adding another Bryce Harper to the team, while reducing the payroll.  Rizzo knows what he is doing!

Here is my season projections:  Upped the win total to 93-105 games (90% confidence);  Mets look like 80-92 games right now (90% confidence)….or graphically:

How good are we (at 7-1)?

The National's are 7-1; best start in franchise history; three games up and heading north to play the second place Phillies...that is a phrase I did not expect to write.

Thing is, we can say with confidence, that the Nat's are better than the Braves.  6 of the 7 wins are over the Braves.  The Nat's will almost certainly win the season series over the braves:  they need to go 4-9 against them for the rest of the season.

The Mets lost series to the Marlins and Phillies, and split with the Royals.  I *think* the Nationals are better than the Phillies, I expect the Nat's to win 2 of 3 in Philly, then split with the Marlins, though it would not surprise me to beat them three games to one; four game sweeps are unusual.

We have now seen each pitcher.  For the starters, Strasburg is a stud, throwing 100 pitches in 6 2/3 innings while *sick*, only giving up 2 runs.  Scherzer is Scherzer.  Ross was most surprising; based on spring training, I was dreading his start, but he was wonderful.  He pitches tonight.  We can see if it is a fluke.  Roark?  Well, in his two games, he was similar in pitching but with different results.  He is not a strike out kind of guy; rather, he is pitch to contact.  In Game on, balls found gaps whereas in game 2 for him, they did not.  Gio showed something I had never seen from him:  mental toughness.   I like the rotation; it seems to be better than expected (though it could be Braves hitters are bad).

As for the lineup:

1. MAT is lost as a leadoff hitter.  He needs to learn to recognize and layoff off speed junk;  
2. Rendon is hitting hard, but at people.  "Tony 2 Bags" will be producing soon.  
3. Harper?  He has a flair for the dramatic.  100th home run an stadium breaking Grand Slam.  We     all knew it was coming.
4. Zimmerman offers great protection for Harper.  He is hitting the ball hard, but not getting lucky
5. Murphy has been a pleasant surprise.  Right now he is our MVP (sorry Bryce).  
6. Werth is finding is swing.  He is getting better at bats, which means he is seeing the ball.  
7. Ramos is now the poster child for LASIK.  
8. Espy is there for defense
9. Pitchers have gotten on base; Gio is batting 1.000.

Defense:
Well, 2 errors in 8 games is good.  Much improved.  One error was trying to throw out a stolen base, the other was SS booting a ball.  One SS error in the first 8 games; last year at this time the Nationals had 6 errors.  Opposing teams have stolen three bases and been caught 4 times.  Defense has been SOLID.

Outlook:  They are out-performing my estimates:  I had them at 5-3 right now, not 7-1.   The Nats would dominate if we could play the Braves for 162 games.

The real test begins in about two weeks when the Nats head out to Saint Louis, KC and Chicago.