Opportunity knocks as Nats rebuild
Retirement, free agency riddle roster
On April 21, 2019, Stephen Strasburg took the mound for the Washington Nationals in Miami and blew through the Marlins, allowing two hits in eight innings.
That night, Ryan Zimmerman cranked two homers. Trea Turner sat out with a broken finger, Anthony Rendon with a sore left elbow. And Max Scherzer watched from the dugout, absolutely aching for his next start. The World Series title was still more than six months off.
On April 21, 2022 — also known as Thursday — Strasburg was in Florida, rehabbing an injury again. Zimmerman is retired. Rendon plays for the Los Angeles Angels, Turner for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Scherzer for the New York Mets. The 2022 Nationals ran out a lineup that included a pitcher who had been discarded by the worst-in-baseball Baltimore Orioles and four position players signed as free agents and given one-year deals.
The only players to start both April 21 games three years apart were outfielders Victor Robles and Juan Soto. The other seven starters in 2019, plus the injured Turner and Rendon, played 4,894 games in a Nationals uniform. The other eight starters Thursday — which includes the designated hitter — had combined for 458 appearances as Nats when the day began.
The fun, familiar reasons to show up at Nationals Park are scattered across Major League Baseball — if they’re playing at all. So just 15 games into this season, there are important questions: “Who are these guys?” dovetails with “Why should I come to the ballpark?”
“Losing is never fun,” general manager Mike Rizzo said before his team dropped a 4-3 decision to the Arizona Diamondbacks. “It never is. It goes against everything you’ve ever been brought up in this game to do.”
What is being required of Nationals fans right now is to remember what it was like around here in the summers of say, 2009 and 2010. There has to be joy in discovering the players who might not help them win a game on a particular night in 2022 but could be a major contributor in a season with more promise. Josiah Gray and Joan Adon combined for 11 2/3 innings of one-run ball in a Tuesday doubleheader sweep. Keibert Ruiz had two hits Wednesday and two more Thursday. There are glimmers there: Maybe that’s 40 per cent of a dominant, rebuilt rotation in 2024 and the switch-hitting catcher who will handle the staff.
“When you see a 23-yearold starting pitcher like Adon, when you see a 24-year-old pitcher like Gray — rookies this year,” Rizzo said, “and you see Cole Henry in Double-a pitching well, you see (Cade) Cavalli in Triple-a knocking on the door, you see the remnants of what we discovered back in ’08, ’09, ’10.”
Remember what it was like when Ian Desmond came up in September 2009, hit .280 with seven doubles, two triples and four homers, and suddenly you thought, “He could be the shortstop on a division winner?” Remember what it was like in June 2010, when Strasburg made his 14-strikeout, biggestevent-in-baseball debut, and you allowed yourself to wonder, “Could he someday be a World Series MVP?”
Transport yourself back. The years from 2012 to 2019 brought five post-season appearances, a World Series championship, plus more regular season wins than every team but the Dodgers. Don’t lament that they’re gone. Embrace that they’re a possibility again. A far-off possibility, sure — but what’s baseball without hope?
“I always talk about being where your feet are, right?” manager Dave Martinez said. “More so now than ever before, you really got to focus on the day at hand and teaching ... It’s about growth and watching these young kids get an opportunity to play and watch them grow, watch them mature and evaluate and see where we’re at and try to figure out where they’re going to be by the end of the year and who they can be.”
There is faith involved in all that for managers and executives. There’s also faith for fans. It can be a tough sell. The attendance for the four games of this series against Arizona: 9,621, 11,720, 15,774 and 14,424. The first — played Tuesday afternoon after a rainout Monday night — was the smallest announced crowd for a Nationals game since baseball returned to Washington in 2005 (excluding 2020 and 2021, when there were limitations on crowd size amid the pandemic). The others ranked fifth-, 30th- and 16thsmallest.
This is an adjustment — for everyone. What to look for?
“This is such a valuable experience for these young guys — even in defeat sometimes,” Rizzo said. “It’s a learning process every time . ... But what you’re seeing is the core of young players that will be part of the next championship club.”