Welcome back to the latest in a series, in which we review the previous week in Nationals baseball and power rank the players according to their performance. This is an extremely unserious exercise; at no point should it ever be confused with actual baseball analysis. Don’t worry, I will do my best to make sure that is obvious. Without further ado: your Washington Nationals, ranked according to power. Continue Reading Nats Power Rankings: June 5
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Anthony Rendon: Still The Best Player No One Talks About
Anthony Rendon hates talking about himself. You don’t have to ask him, or even watch him play: Just watch this interview after his three-homer, 10-RBI afternoon on April 30th. Hear him credit his team’s pitching for the reason why he helped beat the Mets into oblivion, which was, of course, completely unrelated to him getting six hits in six trips. That performance was the talk of the league for, oh, five hours or so. Then the Mets revealed Noah Syndergaard had torn his lat in that game, and Rendon’s name headed to the sidebar. That is exactly how Rendon wants it to be: let him play his game, not talk about how well he’s doing it, and smile the entire time. Unfortunately for Anthony Rendon, it is time to start talking about Anthony Rendon. Many will argue for Bryce Harper, Max Scherzer, Trea Turner, or Joe Blanton (just making sure you’re still reading) as being the Nats’ best player. Here, I’ll make the case for Anthony Rendon in that argument, and, if nothing else, the team’s most complete and underrated player.
Continue Reading Anthony Rendon: Still The Best Player No One Talks About
Off-the-Field Recap: Jose Marmolejos Is In This One
There’s nothing quite like narrowly escaping a sweep by the Atlanta Braves to really put life, love, liberty, and the Washington Nationals off-field happenings into perspective.
Continue Reading Off-the-Field Recap: Jose Marmolejos Is In This One
Nats Power Rankings: May 22
Welcome back to the latest in a series, in which we review the previous week in Nationals baseball and power rank the players according to their performance. This is an extremely unserious exercise; at no point should it ever be confused with actual baseball analysis. Don’t worry, I will do my best to make sure that is obvious. Without further ado: your Washington Nationals, ranked according to power.
Trea Turner Faces Early Struggles
The date is May 16, 2017, and over the last 15 games Trea Turner has been worth -0.3 Wins Above Replacement. If that sounds bad, that’s because it is bad. For Turner it’s not just a slump, a ding, a blip, it’s literally the worst fifteen game stretch of his entire Major League career. If you look at the linked graph, the next worst time in his career was his first fifteen games, where he was worth -0.1 WAR. Yet if you just waited two more measly games, Turner had upped his rolling average to an even zero, and from then on he has never been worth less than a replacement level player for any 15-game stretch in his entire career. That is, not until the first game of Sunday’s double header, where his rolling value (despite hitting a home run) dipped below zero for the first time since his 17th game in the bigs.
The Strange Case of Enny Romero
With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Off-the-Field Recap: Disabled List Daze
It was a week like any other week. Max Scherzer took another no-hitter into the sixth inning, the Nationals played sub-par games against the Orioles, the Washington Capitals were eliminated in the second round… But from beyond the DL, Adam Eaton led the charge to break up the monotony that led to off-field highlights of the week.
Nats Power Rankings: May 8
Welcome back to the latest in a series, in which we review the previous week in Nationals baseball and power rank the players according to their performance. This is an extremely unserious exercise; at no point should it ever be confused with actual baseball analysis. Don’t worry, I will do my best to make sure that is obvious. Without further ado: your Washington Nationals, ranked according to power.
Joe Ross, Bullpen Ace?
While Matt Albers obviously has the closer role on lockdown, the bullpen is still a big, fat question mark. Luckily for the Nationals, the answer to their bullpen struggles is already on the roster! In fact, he just got demoted to AAA. Confused? Let me explain.
Off-the-Field Recap: The Adam Week
The only thing the Nationals think is more fun than scoring 23 runs in a game, is the friends they made along the way.