All the Games Count

Every game matters, whether it is played in the first week or in the last. It is easy to dismiss the significance of the first weeks of the season, but trends emerge even as early as Spring Training that will haunt the sixth months to follow. The Washington Nationals trip north to Fenway Park was hinted early on as a first look at two teams that could well end up facing one another in the World Series. That notion took a serious beating on Monday when the two teams played an afternoon game that begged the question whether one of them belonged any where near the pinnacle of the game. The Nationals embarrassed themselves with continued sloppy play and lost Game One, 9-4, and the score doesn’t do the affair justice.

Washington’s schedule has been rated the easiest in baseball as they are reputed to be head and shoulders above the rest of the NL East, from whom they ran away in 2014 and finished up by 17 games over the closest competition. The Phillies and the Mets did not get the memo, because the lightweights put a beating on the erstwhile Champs taking two of three games and making the Nationals look bad in the doing. Washington could barely dent the scoreboard and though they had the lead behind fine starting pitching, they fumbled the ball repeatedly and squeaked out the final game against the Phillies only when they managed to score four runs–their most prodigious output of the season.

Where did that power house team go that Washington was fielding this year?

The injuries will be the first thing that loyalists will point to. Denard Span, Anthony Rendon, and Jayson Werth started the season on the disabled list and Span and Rendon will likely not return until the first of May. With confidence pundits will say that the Nationals will gain their stride when these players are healthy and will easily coast to victory in the five months of baseball after their return. It is the safe bet, but the first week of the season gives reason to wonder. The inability to fill behind those players adequately is symptomatic of part of the problem and one reason red flags should be hoisted over the Nationals one week into the season. The problems may have deeper origins that the absence of three players have just revealed.

The biggest problem has been the inability to score runs. The team with the largest run differential in the National League during the 2014 season, has averaged just slightly more than 2 runs per game so far this year and while the starting pitching has been everything it was supposed to be, the team is managing to find ways to lose despite them.

As good as the 2014 Nationals were, the weak links were visible for anyone to see in the playoffs. Drew Storen took over as the team’s closer and had a nice run to get the team into the playoffs, but he could not get the one out necessary to put away the San Francisco Giants after Jordan Zimmermann’s masterful Game 2 of the NLDS. The press blamed Matt Williams for asking so much of Storen and they got away with it clean. But the bigger problem was the anemic attack that could not mount any threat against the Giants pitching staff. Both the Washington bullpen and its offense have picked up where the team left off in October.

Rather than spend money to add a convincing middle of the order presence or bring in a bona fide closer, Mike Rizzo pushed all of his chips into the middle of the table to acquire Max Scherzer. Adam LaRoche took his bat elsewhere and the biggest addition the team made behind him was Yunel Escobar. The marginal benefit of adding the Cy Young winner to the best rotation in baseball has been second guessed early and often. But watching the Nationals play behind Scherzer, this curious and quirky decision to pay over $200 million for one player demands further attention.

The best answer to surface is that the Nationals do not trust the Tommy John repaired arms of Jordan Zimmermann and Steven Strasburg. The average life expectancy of a repaired elbow is seven or eight years and both pitchers will be nearing that benchmark in the next few seasons. Zimmermann will command a healthy contract if he continues to pitch as he has for the past three years, but it has become clear he will not return to DC. So the move to bring in Scherzer is one for the long term competitiveness of the team. Viewed from that angle the signing makes sense, but it does nothing to improve the 2015 team that many still regard as the best overall.

The other notable player who will likely follow J-Zimm is Ian Desmond who was offered a long term contract but found it wanting. Watching Desmond’s play at shortstop in the first few games of the season, a casual observer would think the Nationals dodged a bullet. Desmond has always made more errors than a championship caliber middle infielder should, but he has won Silver Sluggers for the past three consecutive seasons and those gaudy figures are among the ones that have caused everyone to pencil the Nationals into the top slot again in the National League East. But the whole of the player will be judged at the end of the day and for all the talk of Desmond’s leadership skills, he has yet to prove them in the heat of it.

On Monday afternoon at Fenway the Nationals were every bit as atrocious as they were during the first week. The second week promises no respite as two young outfielders played a pop fly into a two run double and Desmond continued his sloppy play and record setting strikeout rate. So far there are more questions than answers in DC and one wonders whether Anthony Rendon and Denard Span can save Matt Williams’ bacon? Can a team with so many players looking at the exit really put it all together for one final run? There is plenty of time to send the script back to re-write, but all of the games count and living down the first week of play may require heavy sedation if it gets any worse.