Yup.
It’s really astounding, but it is, I suppose, a useful baseball education in terms of how the whole team is the sum of all its parts. Since the Nats came to D.C., the one thing they had going for them was the pen. They had no offense at all, the fielding was mostly sub-par, and the staff ace was usually somebody who might make a fourth rotation spot elsewhere, backed up with two guys in the same boat and two more who would start nowhere else in the majors. But they played respectable ball in 2005 and '06, and more than merely respectable in '07. But last year the pen started to deteriorate – Cordero never came back from a shoulder injury, and Ayala and Rauch were traded for bats and pitching.
Now the rotation, although young, isn’t bad (esp. once we dumped Cabrera), the offense is top third, the defense is, well, still pretty bad, but that’s a function of having Willie Harris sit because Dunn and Hernandez are more effective at the plate. (And Catcher Jesus Flores has been hurt for a month or so.) But that pen is a fuckin’ wasteland. The people left over from the fire[man] sale last year are the sometimes devastating, frequently wild Colome and Hanrahan, and the former workhorse Saul Rivera. He and Ayala used to alternate reliably in middle relief. Once Ayala left and Saul had to start pitching practically every game, he was much less effective.
So once that all cratered in the first month of the season, the team had to grab whoever was available, which mostly meant guys at the end of their career. We fired pitching coach Randy St. Clare (other than Acta, the only coach who didn’t get fired last year). I was aghast when I heard it, because everybody says Saint was the smartest pitching coach in the game. But Nats pitching early this year had a very finesse approach, and the young guys they had on the mound really didn’t have the control to manage it. The new guy, Steve McCatty, is apparently much less technical and more “Throw strikes, make him beat you.” Which is probably a better fit for the staff we’ve got. It’s only been a week with the new regime, but in the last couple weeks the bullpen is much less shaky, but the offense has dropped somewhat. Perhaps this is blind optimism, but from what I see, it looks like this is because of a structural improvement in the way the pen is running at the same time as the offense is just going through one of the cool periods you get over 162 games. I doubt very much they’re going to contend for the Mets record, but they’ll certainly lose 100 again. How could they not?
Oh, as for Willingham’s RBI stats – it’s a bit misleading as a proxy for offensive performance generally, because he’s mostly been pinch hitting for the pitcher, so he comes up well after Dunn or Dukes cleared the bases. He’s going to be an every-day fielder now batting in the middle of the order, though, so that should change.
–Cliffy
