Reason for optimism: Paul Goldschmidt and Zack Greinke, Yasiel Puig and Clayton Kershaw & Co. have nothing on Bryce Harper and Max Scherzer.
Reason for pessimism: They missed the playoffs despite an MVP year from Harper and Scherzer's career year, and the competition is getting better.
Before I took a fresh look at last year's results this spring, I was under the impression that the Washington Nationals' 2015 campaign was a dumpster fire. After all, not only were the Nats prohibitive favorites to win the NL East, with more than a decent chance to be the only team in that division to finish above .500, but they were betting favorites by World Series futures odds. Yet when the season ended, they not only finished seven games behind the Mets, but also wound up an astounding 14 games back in the wild-card race. So, the logical conclusion is that their season was an epic failure.
After another review, I'm not so sure that is the case.
I mentioned in the Mets preview that they were every bit the 90-win team they portrayed in the regular season, but you know what? So were the Nationals. Playing the same opponents, the Mets scored 70 more runs than they allowed, while Washington had a plus-68 run differential. (Neither team had cluster luck that materially aided or hindered their actual runs scored/allowed.)
I recalled Jonathan Papelbon's arrival at the trade deadline as a disaster, so he must have been awful and the team tanked down the stretch, right? He was a negative presence, no doubt about that (nor a surprise, as my fellow Phillies fans nod ruefully) and his underlying skills looked shaky, but he had an acceptable 3.04 ERA. As for the Nationals, they actually played excellent baseball down the stretch, winning games over the last quarter of the season at the pace of an overall 91-game winner. That was almost exactly the pace they set in the first half of the season when they played like a 90-win team.
In other words, while something clearly went very wrong during the third quarter of the season, the broader point is that the Nationals spent 75 percent of 2015 playing exactly like the 90-win team they were expected to be, and which the underlying stats say they actually were at year's end.
So, why the impression the season was a disaster? Well, any time you have two players, as the Nationals did in Harper and Scherzer, post 17.5 WAR between them (per Baseball-Reference) everyone else on the team could merely be league average and you'd expect to win more than 90 games. The Nationals had a number of players who exceeded that hurdle, especially Scherzer's rotation mates (Gio Gonzalez, Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann). And the bullpen's ERA, at 3.46, was sixth-best in the National League.
So, the problem must have been the every-day players.
Pulling up the offensive stats won't tell you the total story, though. To the dismay of Washington's pitchers, who did their damndest to keep it from happening by striking out 22.5 percent of the batters they faced -- the fifth-highest rate in the majors -- when opponents hit the ball at fielders, only the Phillies thought, "Hey, these guys are good."
The Nationals' rotation actually struck out materially more batters than the much-heralded Mets unit did. So, not surprisingly, the Mets allowed more balls to be hit into the field of play than the Nationals -- 61 more to be exact. Despite that, the Nationals allowed 26 more runners to reach base by either hit or error. Further, despite allowing extra baserunners, and therefore extra chances for baserunner kills, Washington was below average at total double plays, outfield assists, caught stealing percentage and pickoffs. Defense has never been Washington's competitive advantage, but the bottom truly fell out last year.
There were problems on offense as well, as Jayson Werth ended up being the liability many predicted (albeit four years later than his detractors thought) and onetime future stars Danny Espinosa, Wilson Ramos and Ian Desmond didn't even come close to getting on base three out of 10 times. Their on-base percentage of .285 over 1,557 plate appearances goes a long, long way toward explaining how Harper could hit .330 with 42 home runs, slug .649 and still not drive in 100 runs.
So, if Harper and Scherzer aren't going to repeat their astounding seasons and merely be great, where will the improvement come from to win 90 games? It's probably not the rotation unless Strasburg has a peak year because Tanner Roark and Joe Ross enter the rotation. They have experience, but their results have been league-average-ish (Ross) and frightening (Roark). They'll be replacing Gonzalez and Fister, whose 2015 performances match those descriptions, respectively, pretty well.
On offense, former division rivals Ben Revere and Daniel Murphy join the lineup. While that will certainly help the OBP problem and set the table more to Harper's liking, I fear Washington's front office doesn't really grasp the root of the problem last year. Revere was the supposed anchor of a historically bad defense (see my Phillies preview) and if anyone needed a reminder of Murphy's defensive "prowess" and how it can undermine excellent pitching, all they need to do is watch a replay of the 2015 World Series.
Thanks to a probable increase in runs scored, projection-wise I've got the Nationals barely winning the division.
However, due to the defensive shortcomings and the marginal changes in the rotation, the wins market of 89.5 is too rich for my tastes. It might take a repeat of career years from their superstars to get back to the playoffs because the enemy they know (the Mets) has a 2015 pennant flying at Citi Field, and the enemy they might not be paying attention to (the Marlins) is closing very quickly.
2016 projection: 87-75 (first, NL East)
Bet recommendation: Pass