There are NINE NL teams who entered Tuesday in or within two games of the bottom two wild card spots, as there’s not so much ‘haves and have nots’ as much as ‘survivors’ in that realm.
The Nationals are one of those teams, in a virtual tie by winning percentage with the Giants for the third spot but outside looking in based on loss total – but still, if you said on June 18 the Nationals would be close, let alone in, would many have believed you?
Hours before the Nats went for their ninth win in the last 10, Grant & Danny had to wonder: can we legitimately buy this team as true Wild Card contenders?
“They’re one game under .500 and creeping up on positive run differential – they’re minus-9 right now, better than a lot of the teams they’re competing with,” Grant said. “If you took the team names out and just looked at the resumes of those nine teams, they'd be in the top half in terms of likeliness based on credentials to win a wild card berth.”
“Crazy to think about, but it’s true,” Danny replied. “For a while, it was, ‘they’re winning 2-1 games but when they lose, they get the doors blown off,’ and there’s a million flaws, and yet here they are. They're frisky, they're fun, they’re a track meet on the bases for the most part even though they still run into too many outs for my liking, but this is the style of baseball. It's aggressive, it's great pitching and usually pretty damn good defense, and you’re going, ‘this is no longer a complete fraudulent fun mess, this is like a real thing.’”
After a 71-91 season, the fact the Nats are 35-36 as we close in on halfway through is a nice harbinger, even if they don’t ultimately make it to October.
“They are near the midway point so this is no longer just, ‘oh, well, it's only been a month’ or ‘it's early now’ – this is what they are,” GP said.
“They are .500ish, even if I would take the under on that, but they are a .500ish team give or take that is a good pitching club with an excellent starting rotation and a very good bullpen, but an offense that’s just not good and does not consistently score runs because they don’t have enough guys who hit for power.”
And yet, again, here we are, with the Nats second to last in runs scored among those wild card contenders yet first out in the actual race, thanks to that pitching, which has overachieved in a way even without Josiah Gray for most of the season.
“If we're asking buy or sell this team as a wild card contender, I’m still going to sell,” GP said. “I don't think that Mitchell Parker's second half of the season will be as good as his first half was; he's gonna run out of some steam as a young pitcher, and I would say the same about Jake Irvin. I also think that while it's a good problem to have with a bunch of starting pitchers coming back, getting them back after rehab, it’s not going to be that everyone comes back and throws well right away; there’s gonna be ups and downs, peaks and valleys, good games and bad games, so I think the rotation will have a hard time keeping up with the pace they’re on. This is a team with no margin for error, so whatever turbulence there is with the pitching, that will be a little bit of an undoing.”
“I think that’s smart, and I also would add that their schedule in August and September is, on paper, pretty daunting, with teams like the Yankees and Orioles and Phillies a whole bunch of times,” Danny said. “They’re 7-0 against the Marlins, who are terrible, and all wins count the same and you don’t apologize for them, but eventually, when you live on this tightrope where you always have to be on you’re A-game, you can easily turn into chaos. There’s no easy button, no room for error, and it can go well or it can go really, really poorly. Luck runs out eventually; they’re more competitive than anybody thought and it's still a massive win, but I’m with you in selling them as a potential wild card team.”
Take a listen to G&D’s full synopsis above!
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