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World Series or Bust

2017 Articles Leave a Comment
“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
– some dead nun
 
Countless Cubs fans lived their whole lives and never saw their beloved team win the World Series. The same goes for generations of Red Sox fans. Some teams were good. A lot were bad. And every year ended the same – with a loss and the promise of next year. Because winning the World Series is hard. Even when you have the best team. The euphoria that gripped Chicago last year, and Boston before that, was long overdue – for those still alive to enjoy it. Will any of us still be alive if and when the Nationals ever win it all?

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Nats Power Rankings: May 22

2017 Articles, Features Leave a Comment

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.

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Oliver Perez Shines in Tarp Application Outing

2017 Articles Leave a Comment

Oliver Perez: number 46 on the roster, number three or four-ish in our hearts when the situation calls for a lefty specialist, and number one in foul line jumpers. Saturday, the relief pitcher became the number one enemy of rain. As the grounds crew struggled to pull the tarp over the field at Sun Trust Park, Perez, like a baseball James Bond, stepped in.
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The MAT Experience, Volume 3

2017 Articles Leave a Comment

It might seem like the third time is the charm for Michael A Taylor. Handed a starting role when Adam Eaton went down with a torn ACL, MAT has nearly picked up where Mighty Mouse left off. Since getting plugged into a starting role in Center Field on April 29 through the end of Thursday’s game, Taylor is hitting .328/.369/.557. He’s getting on base and hitting for power, with four doubles, two triples and two home runs, a combination that has him hitting 41% better than league average. He has even swiped two stolen bases to zero caught stealing. Maybe it took a couple turns for Taylor to put it all together, and 2017 is where everything finally clicks?

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Erick Fedde, Relief Pitcher?

2017 Articles 2 Comments

If you’re reading this you already know that the Nationals bullpen has been bad; like really bad. Despite the the offense leading the MLB in nearly every major category, the bullpen (or lack thereof) has been the defining storyline of the Nationals 2017 season so far. I’m not going to beat a dead horse: We all know that the bullpen has been holding back what appears to be an all-time great Nationals offense and will continue to be a major issue as the season progresses. Finally, on Tuesday night, the front office took a drastic step towards fixing this problem; transitioning Erick Fedde, the organization’s top pitching prospect, out of the rotation and into a relief role.

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Trea Turner Faces Early Struggles

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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.

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