This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
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25. Washington Nationals (75-87, fourth in NL East, 695 runs scored, 749 runs allowed).
If I ran last year’s capsule in this space, would anyone notice? The Nationals have the same core of players, mostly from the Juan Soto trade, and the same lack of investment by ownership in putting talent around that core. Last year’s Joey Gallo is this year’s Josh Bell. Last year’s Nick Senzel is this year’s Amed Rosario. Last year I had them at 74-88, this year I have them at 75-87.
I start to run into the same problem with the Nationals that I have with the Pirates. If the team’s management doesn’t care, then why should I? What’s the point of investing time and words into the analysis of an organization that has punted on the prime directive: trying to win. It’s hard to believe this is the same group that signed Jayson Werth and Max Scherzer and Patrick Corbin, that won four division titles in six years, that won the World Series in 2019. It’s no longer enough to point out how much they lost to the pandemic. It’s 2025 now, that can’t be the excuse any longer.
Adding Bell and Rosario and Paul DeJong to what could be an amazing core is an abdication of responsibility to the players and to the fans. Even much of the secondary group is in place, with Luis Garcia Jr. and Jacob Young and Keibert Ruiz, flawed players who are nonetheless ready to be one- to three-win contributors around James Wood and Dylan Crews and MacKenzie Gore while making almost no money at all. The Nationals start with a group of pre-arb players, making around the minimum, who should be worth about 13 bWAR, and then Gore, Garcia, and Ruiz making less than $13 million combined for another ten or so bWAR. That’s 23 bWAR for less than $20 million, and if you can’t build a playoff contender when you start with that kind of advantage, you should give up your job.
I don’t know how the Nationals escape this cycle, but each year they don’t take advantage, the core gets a little older, and a little more expensive, and a little closer to deciding to go play for a franchise that wants to win.
Upside: The core plays so well that it blows past that conservative 23 bWAR estimate and carries the Nationals above .500 and, for much of the year, in the wild-card race before finishing 82-80.
Downside: The OBP risk carried by that core undercuts its production, the low-strikeout staff is exposed, and the team is irrelevant from the jump, dropping to 65-97.
The Whole Hog: It’s been a minute since my last trip to Nats Park, so I had to check whether Ben’s Chili Bowl is still there. The half-smoke with chili from Ben’s is the best hot dog I have had in any ballpark, and just writing this has me pulling up the Amtrak schedule to D.C.
If I ran last year’s capsule in this space, would anyone notice? The Nationals have the same core of players, mostly from the Juan Soto trade, and the same lack of investment by ownership in putting talent around that core. Last year’s Joey Gallo is this year’s Josh Bell. Last year’s Nick Senzel is this year’s Amed Rosario. Last year I had them at 74-88, this year I have them at 75-87.
I start to run into the same problem with the Nationals that I have with the Pirates. If the team’s management doesn’t care, then why should I? What’s the point of investing time and words into the analysis of an organization that has punted on the prime directive: trying to win. It’s hard to believe this is the same group that signed Jayson Werth and Max Scherzer and Patrick Corbin, that won four division titles in six years, that won the World Series in 2019. It’s no longer enough to point out how much they lost to the pandemic. It’s 2025 now, that can’t be the excuse any longer.
Adding Bell and Rosario and Paul DeJong to what could be an amazing core is an abdication of responsibility to the players and to the fans. Even much of the secondary group is in place, with Luis Garcia Jr. and Jacob Young and Keibert Ruiz, flawed players who are nonetheless ready to be one- to three-win contributors around James Wood and Dylan Crews and MacKenzie Gore while making almost no money at all. The Nationals start with a group of pre-arb players, making around the minimum, who should be worth about 13 bWAR, and then Gore, Garcia, and Ruiz making less than $13 million combined for another ten or so bWAR. That’s 23 bWAR for less than $20 million, and if you can’t build a playoff contender when you start with that kind of advantage, you should give up your job.
I don’t know how the Nationals escape this cycle, but each year they don’t take advantage, the core gets a little older, and a little more expensive, and a little closer to deciding to go play for a franchise that wants to win.
Upside: The core plays so well that it blows past that conservative 23 bWAR estimate and carries the Nationals above .500 and, for much of the year, in the wild-card race before finishing 82-80.
Downside: The OBP risk carried by that core undercuts its production, the low-strikeout staff is exposed, and the team is irrelevant from the jump, dropping to 65-97.
The Whole Hog: It’s been a minute since my last trip to Nats Park, so I had to check whether Ben’s Chili Bowl is still there. The half-smoke with chili from Ben’s is the best hot dog I have had in any ballpark, and just writing this has me pulling up the Amtrak schedule to D.C.
