Will the Nats run it back in 2020?

Fourteen years after baseball returned to the District of Columbia for the first time since the 1970s, and after a quartet of first-round playoff heartbreaks over the preceding seven years, the most entertaining Washington Nationals team of them all broke through and won a World Series. They rode a dominant starting rotation and potent lineup while papering over the worst bullpen in the sport (principally by not using it), winning five elimination games along the way, four of them against the acclaimed two best teams in the sport, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros. It was a remarkable season, and when the dust settles and the champagne and beer are washed out of the uniforms, where do the Nationals go from here?

Thoughts on the coming labor kerfuffle

For the past several years, the winter of 2018-19 has been billed as the biggest baseball free agent bonanza in a long while, but for the second straight year, major league clubs are showing that they are far more hesitant to pay out nine-figure salaries to players whose peak years are, by and large, behind them. What was supposed to make this year different was the unprecedented arrival at free agency of two star players, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, who reached the majors at such a young age that despite their six-plus years of service time they both just completed their age-25 seasons. Given what we now know to be true about the aging curve, this of course means that both players theoretically have several of their very best years immediately in front of them, and both at this point in their careers are on track towards building Hall of Fame careers. Baseball-Reference's similarity score rater through age 25 has three inner-circle Hall of Famers (Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Robinson, and Eddie Mathews) and two certain future first-ballot inductees (Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera) among Harper's top ten player comps, PLUS Andruw Jones, who was a Hall of Fame talent through age thirty before injuries and poor conditioning short-circuited the back end of his career. Machado's comps through the same age also include three Hall of Famers (Ron Santo, Cal Ripken, and Griffey) in addition to Jones and future no-doubter Adrian Beltre, who additionally rates as Machado's best year-by-year comp for five of his six MLB seasons (Santo is the other). Interestingly, Harper shows up as one of Machado's age comps (sixth), but the reverse is not true. Very rarely in the forty-odd years of free agency have any players this talented and this young hit the open market, and two of them doing so at the same time has never happened. All of this is quite familiar to most serious baseball fans, but it bears repeating for the more casual fans out there.

Nationals trade proposal

A quarter of the 2017 baseball season has come and gone, and things are beginning to crystallize a little (although only a little). Raise your hand if you thought that the Colorado Rockies would have the best record in the National League in late May (followed by the Diamondbacks!), or that the Milwaukee Brewers would be leading their division thanks in part to a blistering April from AAAA journeyman-turned-Korean demigod Eric Thames.* The third division leader in the National League, meanwhile, the Washington Nationals, are exactly where they were expected to be at the start of the season, except that none of their division rivals (most notably the injury-ravaged Metropolitans) are putting up much of a fight; the rebuilding Atlanta Braves are closest right now, six and a half games back and four games under .500.

Eaton a Better Fit Than Sale

The buzz from yesterday afternoon/evening at the Winter Meetings was that the Washington Nationals may have given up too much (in the form of young pitchers Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, and Dane Dunning) for Chicago White Sox outfielder Adam Eaton, who has never played in an All-Star Game but who does have, as several people (notably Dave Cameron of Fangraphs) pointed out, a skill set that has made him one of the more valuable players in baseball since he became a full-time regular three years ago. I believe that this trade will work out well for both teams, and that the main reason it ever might look bad for the Nationals is due to the organization that their three young pitchers went to.

Team Endless: Phight for Philly

We saw our first big breakthrough on the offensive end this weekend in our final Zero Gravity tournament, breaking the fifty-point barrier for the first time in our second game. Unfortunately, we were not able to capitalize on that success and close out the game, losing 57-50. However, I do think it was a big confidence boost to a couple of players in particular who had been more or less invisible on offense, and were able to see what could happen when they asserted themselves.

Team Endless: Battle for the Belt

After ten games and a lot of growing pains, we have finally identified our single biggest weakness; we struggle, in the words of Jay Bilas, to "score the ball." There was a lot of growth this past weekend over four games on our home hardwood, especially after our flop in New Jersey two weeks before. We defended better and rebounded better, but we are not going to win many games if we are only scoring in the thirties. You can get away with that in elementary school, and even sometimes in middle school, but not by tenth grade. We simply have to put the ball in the basket more often.

Team Endless: NJ Spring Crossover

Our second Zero Gravity tournament of five was this past weekend in Wayne, New Jersey, and we were looking to rebound from starting our season 0-3 with a couple of flat efforts in our first two games. To that end, we had spent our two practice days last week (which involved working around both the Maryland primary elections - which knocked us out of our regular practice space - and some mid-week rain) refocusing on defense, rebounding, and toughness. I don't know how many of you are NBA fans, but perhaps you caught this segment on TNT's studio show, with Kenny Smith illustrating good team defense through the use of actual connective bands between players that broke if they did not move as a unit. I was inspired, and after a trip to the hardware store, I came up with a very similar teaching tool, using rope, Velcro, and lanyards that come apart.