No celebrations set this offseason
A bleak campaign done, but questions are just beginning
TheWashington Nationals woke up in a bunch of different places Monday. Most players were in D.C., having just finished a 60-game season that, in a few words, was bleak and disappointing. Others, though, already had gone home to rehab injuries that piled up before the team was basically out of it, then totally cooked. The rules of this pandemic season kept them from sticking it out to the end.
So in the same way the Nationals never had a true World Series celebration, they also never traded goodbyes. They couldn’t unpack a tough year with beers at their lockers. They will now do so alone, as it happens in 2020, left to answer a few inverted questions about this baseball season: Howshould a bad team be judged in such a short time? How many asterisks are there to go around?
“We didn’t play verywell this year, I think it’s pretty evident,” Nationals reliever DanielHudson said.“We didn’t reach our goals. Even though it’s only 60 games, all of us wanted to win. We’re all competitors. We wanted to get in the playoffs, we wanted to try to defend theWorld Series and we just didn’t do that.”
Then Hudson stepped back, offering a look at how he will roll the shortcomings through his head.
“You’d have to ask everyone else, but I’m not putting too much weight in a 60-game sample size,” he continued. “I know this team is better than howwe played this year. I think if we would have gotten 162 games, or obviouslymore than 60 games, wewould have showed that. I’m not going to lose sleep this offseason over a 60-game sample size. I’m sure a lot of guys in that locker roomwon’t either.”
Here are the complicated truths of what the Nationals just did: Their record, 26-34, was their first losing finish since 2011, a year before Bryce Harper debuted and they began an eight-year run of contending each summer. Their winning percentage, .433, was the lowest since 2010, the year Stephen Strasburg’s arrival brought new legitimacy to Washington. And it all was based on 60 games, asHudson noted, a littlemore than a third of the schedule that typically measures teams.
In 2019, Washington started 19-31 and wound up taking the title. In 2020, it started 19-31 and was eliminated four days later. The season, shortened by the novel coronavirus pandemic, wasn’t made for a veteran club prone to injuries and easing in. If nothing else, the Nationals made that clear.
“Just as I was the architect of the world champions in 2019, I’m the president and general manager of the last-place Nationals this year,” Mike Rizzo said on Saturday. “That stings. We’re going to do everything we can not to have that happen again. We’re a winning organization. We’ve got a bunch of winners over here and our goal is to win again next year in 2021.”
Before then, Rizzo has a lot of decisions to make. The Nationals hold club options for Aníbal Sánchez and Adam Eaton. Veterans Eric Thames andHowieKendrick have mutual options for next year. Sean Doolittle, Kurt Suzuki, Ryan Zimmerman, Asdrúbal Cabrera, Michael A. Taylor and Javy Guerra become free agents in Novem
ber. Then there are a number of non-tender candidates. The roster could be overhauled by spring.
The needs will depend on who Rizzo brings back. They could include a corner outfielder, a first baseman, a catcher, a back-of-the-rotation starter and a reliever or two, one ofwhomshould be left-handed. They could, too, be informed by the Nationals’ assessment of whatwent wrong.
In 2018, after his first year as manager, Dave Martinez sifted through the worst parts of an 82-80 finish. In 2020, after signing an extension to stick with the club for the foreseeable future, he is flipping the approach. That doesn’t meanMartinez saw no faults in howtheNationals played across the past eightweeks. He often derided their defense, and was fairly open about how much the rotation struggled.
But he wants his players to bottle their improvements and throwaway the rest. He also wants them to keep gripping their championship.
“I really feel horrible for the guys,” Martinez said of the Nationals having to receive their rings and raise a banner in an empty stadium. “They earned every bit of that. And I always tell them: Look, 2021 is coming. There will be baseball. Hopefully, there will be fans. And these fans won’t forget. We’re world champs, and nobody’s ever going to take that away fromus.”
Each positive can be placed aside a shortcoming. Juan Soto won the National
League batting title with a .351 average, and led the whole league in on-base-plusslugging percentage. Victor Robles, on the other hand, reached base in less than 30 percent of his plate appearances and never quite adjusted to adding 15 pounds of muscle. Trea Turner led the league with 78 hits and became a premier shortstop. But his defense sagged. Rookie Carter Kieboom went the opposite way, with his glove and arm reliable at third, but his bat producing just one extra-base hit in 122 plate appearances.
The list goes on. The bullpen found bright spots in Tanner Rainey and Kyle Finnegan, then reasons to wonder how consistent Hudson and Will Harris can be in 2021. The rotation hopes to welcome back a healthyStrasburg, then needsPatrick Corbin to sharpen his sinker and go back to limiting contact. The team, as a whole, has a lot of roomto growafter slogging through a summer that, in reality, was more about keeping everyone healthy and safe.
The Nationals were happy with their ability to achieve that. It was their other efforts that slipped.
“When you’re a winning organization, I feel like there’s only one good season. And that’s winning aWorld Series,” Turner said Sunday. “There’s only going to be one team this year that accomplishes what they wanted. And everyone else, I’m sure fans and players, are going to be frustrated with howit ends up.”