Is NL East heating up?
An offseason darling, a defending champ, a potential upstart and an underachieving team try to ramp up a division that seemed destined to be a four-team race.
❚ MLB team notes, Pages 12-15
❚ Power rankings, Page 19
In an era when so many teams believe in the value of tanking, the National League East had four teams seriously focused on winning.
It was going to be a four-team race, maybe even baseball’s best division race.
The Atlanta Braves were the defending division champions. The Philadelphia Phillies were the big spenders of the winter. The Washington Nationals had three big-time starting pitchers and the core of a team that had won the division three of the last five years. The New York Mets had a rotation led by the Cy Young winner and a new general manager who came right out and declared his team as division favorites.
This was going to be fun. Maybe, it still could be. Gabe Kapler thinks it still will be, even if the first two months of the season have been fun for Kapler’s Phillies and not nearly as much fun for the Mets and Nationals.
“Both the Mets and the Nationals were dangerous coming into the season, and both are dangerous now,” the Phillies’ manager said. “It’s similar to how you’d view a perceived .300 talent who is hitting .260 with 200 plate appearances under his belt. Talented teams will often be there at the end.
“This division is full of talented teams.”
Two months in, though, it’s easy to see the flaws along with the talent. Even the Phillies (3122) and Braves (30-24), who were separated by 11⁄2 games to start the week, have had rough stretches that exposed weaknesses.
The Mets (26-26), 41⁄2 games back, have stumbled over and over, repeatedly putting manager Mickey Callaway’s job on the line. Their highest-paid player, Yoenis Cespedes, last week suffered a broken ankle while rehabbing after surgery on both heels. Their second highest-paid player, Robinson Cano, then went on the injured list with a quadriceps injury, which was not suffered when twice in three days he failed to run out ground balls and conceded double plays. One of their best hitters, Michael Conforto, was out from May 16 to May 26 with a concussion after he and Cano collided in the field.
The Nationals (22-31) have had even more injuries, with four of their eight regular position players out of the lineup at the same time. But the bigger issue has been with a bullpen that has had the worst ERA in the major leagues and the secondmost blown saves in the National League.
“We’ve played a lot of close games, and we’ve struggled to perform in the late innings,” general manager Mike Rizzo said. “It’s very frustrating to lose games late.”
Last week, the Nationals fell to 12 games under .500, the most since the 2010 season. To put it another way, Bryce Harper, who debuted in 2012, played 927 games for the Nationals over seven seasons, and never in that time were they that far below break-even.
Dusty Baker managed the Nationals for two seasons, and in that time they never fell even one game under .500. But Baker’s team lost in the division series both years, and ownership demanded a change.
Now with Dave Martinez’s team struggling again, there are questions whether the Nationals will fire him and go to what would be a sixth manager in nine years.
For now, Rizzo is preaching patience, pointing out that the Nationals have 11 games remaining against the Phillies and all 19 still to play against the Braves.
“There’s plenty of time,” he said.
The Mets would say the same thing, and starting pitcher Noah Syndergaard offered a reminder that the 2015 Mets were a .500 team as late as July 4 and ended up playing in the World Series.
But that team was never more than one game under .500 at any point, and this team has already fallen as far as five games under. That team added Cespedes in a midseason deal; this team is unlikely to get Cespedes’ bat back in the lineup before the end of the season.
Oh, and that team was playing in a division with three teams that finished with 90plus losses. This team is chasing the Phillies and Braves.
Even with Harper’s uneven first two months, the Phils look to be better than they were in 2018, when they were in first place as late as Aug. 12 but lost 27 of their last 39 games. They have the division’s deepest lineup and the resources that should allow general manager Matt Klentak to find some fixes with midseason trades.
Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos has already been active, trying to aid a bullpen that has been hurt by both injuries and subpar performances. The Braves used 24 different pitchers through the first 54 games, with nine different starting pitchers.
“If we can have the entire pitching staff trend up, it should lead to more wins for the rest of the season,” Anthopoulos said.
The Braves have a real chance, in large part because Atlanta keeps bringing talented young hitters to the major leagues. Ronald Acuna Jr. hasn’t fallen off from the form that won him the 2018 NL Rookie of the Year award, and when Austin Riley was called up to replace injured Ender Inciarte, Riley responded with five home runs and a 1.060 OPS in his first 12 games.
The Braves also had a pair of off-field wins, getting Acuna and young second baseman Ozzie Albies to sign team-friendly contracts that keep Albies under team control through 2027 and Acuna through 2028.
Entering the week, the Braves hadn’t spent a single day of this season in first place. But they were never more than four games out, not bad for a team that trailed the Phillies by three games after a season-opening series sweep.
“We’re still a long way from the end of the season,” Anthopoulos said. “With over four months left, it’s too early to make any predictions.”
There’s still time for the fourteam race to develop, still time for the Mets and Nationals to recover. After all, the Nationals still have Max Scherzer, Patrick Corbin and Stephen Strasburg in the rotation and Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto in the middle of the lineup. The Mets still have Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom, along with first baseman Pete Alonso, whose 17 home runs in the first 51 games make him a front-runner for NL Rookie of the Year.
Then again, there’s also time for the Braves to fix their pitching problems, still time for Harper to get really hot and carry the Phillies to what would be their first division title since 2011.
No matter what, it should be interesting.