Anticipating Something Better from DC in 2014

The expectations of baseball fans that begin to stir as the winter days slowly lengthen have a long, cruel history in Washington, DC. The collective winning percentage of all teams stretching back to 1901, when the Washington Nationals fielded one of the founding franchises in the nascent American League, is .458.  The new kids on the block are doing a little better. Since leaving Montreal, these Nationals have been winning at a .464 clip and that figure is likely to improve by the end of the 2014 season.  But the long years of failure have chiseled caution into the cornerstone of Nationals Park after a century that provided far more agony of defeat than thrill of victory.

Yet there is no holding them back as pitchers and catchers report today at roughly February’s mid-point.  Nationals fans are an un-medicated, raging horde of optimists as the light of the season peeks over the horizon and Doug Fister reports for his first warm-up drills in a Nationals uniform.  For reasonable prognosticators it starts with the 6′-8″ right-hander from Fresno State.  When the Nationals were posting back-to-back 100-loss seasons, Fister was paying his own dues with a similarly hapless Seattle Mariners franchise that first brought him to the majors in 2009.  He knows the frustrations that long-serving Nationals like Ryan Zimmerman and Ian Desmond have experienced. Fister pitched to a respectable 4.11 ERA in his second year, logging 28 starts yet registering only six wins against 14 defeats for the 2010 Mariners who lost 101 games that season.

Fister was traded to the Detroit Tigers in 2011 and became a winner at exactly the same time the Washington Nationals began to turn it around.  Fister is a big step forward for the Nationals that is more important than intangibles. Fister gives the kind of depth to a quality rotation that it has not had before. Strasburg, Gonzalez and Zimmermann were the best in the National League in 2012 when the Nats won 98 games and began this game of expectations. But each of the past two seasons, GM Mike Rizzo has imported a pitcher to round out the Washington rotation. Imports Dan Haren and Edwin Jackson were unable to match the other starters and Haren especially dragged down the rest of the rotation.

Fister has a chance to stand that record on its head.  Fister’s WAR rating has risen each of the past three seasons in Detroit and his 2013 4.6 (FanGraphs) figure was in the top ten in the American League. He joined Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and Anibal Sanchez who were first, second and fourth best among AL starters in 2013, so Fister thrives when pitching alongside other equally gifted hurlers. Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez and Jordan Zimmerman did not post the same kind of dominant numbers that Detroit’s rotation did in 2013.  But they can and that is why the game of expectations has heated up in DC.

The 2013 season went south in a hurry last April. Ryan Zimmerman was throwing the ball all over the diamond, Dan Haren was coughing up the game in the early innings, and Bryce Harper came to know the right field wall in Los Angeles as intimately as Bo Belinsky knew Mamie Van Doren. It will all start with Zimmerman again in 2014. He finished the 2013 season strong and his fielding at third base was on par with what fans came to expect during his Gold Glove years back in 2009. But Zimmerman should be able to build off his renaissance in the second half last season and the Z-man proved that when he starts to hit in the middle of the lineup the Nationals start to score runs. He and Jayson Werth will provide veteran leadership and offense to get the team out of their marks on Opening Day.

There are some downside concerns. Bryce Harper had off-season surgery to repair the knee he injured in LA. He has been pronounced 100 percent, but Ryan Zimmerman’s errant throws began with a sore and surgically repaired surgery. Adam LaRoche and Stephen Strasburg had small-scale surgical procedures as well, so several players in the lineup may still be feeling their way when the season opens Friday, April 4th.

The offense will benefit from the addition of Nate McClouth in much the way the rotation benefits from Fister. McClouth has been steady for the Orioles the past two seasons and had long years as a regular in Pittsburgh.  He can play all four outfield positions and the Nationals will need better production from their bench players after Roger Bernadina, Chad Tracy and others fell back to earth in 2013. Danny Espinosa is penciled in as the reserve infielder unless he regains enough form to displace Anthony Rendon at second base. Scott Hairston will be the first pinch-hitter off the bench and the group cannot help but improve over an aggregation that had trouble breaking the Mendoza Line in 2013.

Many  ( Bleacher Report , Richard Justice and Bud Selig) are predicting the Nationals will take back the NL East from the Braves. The loss of Brian McCann by itself is enough to drop Atlanta a notch, but the Nationals will have to earn the championship on the field. The biggest intangible will be new manager, Matt Williams. He is the antithesis of Davey Johnson whose long years in the dugout gave him a patient, fatherly manner that worked with the young Nationals in 2012. But Williams’ intensity should play well moving forward. He has vowed to make infield defense his first order of business with his new team and he has great talent to work with in Zimmerman, Desmond, Rendon and LaRoche. Espinosa’s glove was never an issue, so Williams should be able to coax top tier work from the group.

Defense and pitching will take the Nationals a long way, but it may be Matt Williams’ impact on players like Bryce Harper that may hold the key to how far the Nationals go in 2014. On paper they have as good as almost anybody. The Cardinals and the Dodgers will be near the top, but if Bryce Harper can take his game to the next level, Washington will have as much on both sides of the ball to play with anyone. There is a foot of snow on the ground and seven long weeks until Opening Day.  Keep the hot stove going because here in the Mid-Atlantic there won’t be baseball weather any time soon, just the anticipation of something better.