The Braves play their 54th game tonight, marking
the 1/3 point in their season. Their
record is reflective of a team that has met many expectations, exceeded a few,
and fallen woefully short of a few others.
Such is this case with most any team one might suppose, and considering the
offensive output compared to the notable underperformers (BJ, Heyward, Uggla, Justin Upton in May), one would
be hard pressed to go wanting for a better position at this point of the
season. It is under these somewhat ambivalent
circumstances that the Braves meet the anguished Washington Nationals for the
third time this season.
May has not been kind to the Nationals, who have limped
their way to a 14-13 record on the month and find themselves looking a 5.5 game
deficit to catch Atlanta in the NL east.
Offensively, the Nationals have been a disaster, and only the Marlins, a
disgraceful excuse for a professional sports franchise, boast a worse on-base
percentage. Like Atlanta, they’re
striking out a ton (22.3% of the time to Atlanta’s 24%), but unlike the Braves,
they are not walking enough to mitigate the effect (7.4% of the time to Atlanta’s
9%). The most telling statistic about
the Nationals offense is their dreadful team wRC+
of 82, good for 28th in MLB ahead of the Chicago White Sox and the
aforementioned quad-A Marlins. This a
team that is not hitting as well as it could, and the impact of Jayson Werth’s
DL stints as well as the slow starts of Adam LaRoche and Ryan Zimmerman demand
consideration when attempting to reconcile the rest of season expectations with
their performance to this point.
Baseball’s version of Evil Knievel, Bryce Harper, has been the only consistent
bright spot for the Nationals, but his inability to stay on the field has
hampered the offensive production for a team that needs him in the lineup to be
successful.
The starting pitchers have performed much closer to
expectations. Despite early questions
about his health, Stephen Strasburg has pitched much more effectively lately, and
Jordan Zimmerman has established himself as one of the most unsung right-handers
in the NL, worthy of #1 status in a rotation without Strasburg. Gio Gonzalez has been effectively wild, and
while he hasn’t recaptured the magic that made him such a hot name last season,
he’s still an excellent number three starter.
Ross Detwiler has worked the smoke and mirrors show very well thus far, outpitching
his peripherals to the benefit of an inflated ERA, and Dan Haren is Dan Haren:
you know he’s going to break, it’s just a matter of when. Zach Duke and Nate Karns have made spot-starts
for the Nationals, neither with much to show for it.
In the bullpen, Drew Storen is drawing the pointed ire of
Washington fans so far this season, while Tyler Clippard has been good enough on
the surface so as to avoid unwanted scrutiny.
A deeper look shows that Clippard has been the recipient of some
batted-ball luck, whereas the inverse is true for Storen, and thusly, we can
expect to see a little regression for each throughout the course of the
season. This is a push for the Nationals
as it relates to this particular circumstance, but it is a net-loss for the
welfare of the team. The most consistent
performer has been Craig Stammen, a right-hander with big splits between
righties and lefties, but the support from his underlying numbers to allow one
a measure of faith in his performance. Former
Brave and current closer Rafael Soriano has pitched well also, but even he has
some alarming peripherals pointing towards a cloudy future. The rest of the bullpen situation has been a
legacy of brutality for manager Davey Johnson’s club.
While this team will not live up to the lofty expectations
heaped upon them before the season started (most notably by Davey Johnson himself), they still possess
above-average talent on both sides of the ball.
Also working in their favor is the state of the NL east, which is making
a strong case for being the worst division in baseball due to the presence of
the Marlins, Mets, and the enigmatic Phillies.
Unfortunately for them, the Braves get to beat up on these teams as
well, and with 108 games left and a 5.5 deficit staring them in the face,
making up that difference may prove difficult, especially considering that the
hardest part of the Braves’ schedule is behind them.
If you believed that Washington was ~five games better than
Atlanta at the beginning of the season, as many people did, then it follows
that Washington’s chances of playing ~five games better than Atlanta with 2/3 of
the season remaining are small, but not insurmountable. FanGraphs
projects Washington to go 55-53 the rest of the way, ending the season at
82-80, which would undoubtedly be a huge disillusionment for a team expected by
most all prognosticators (including yours truly) to win the division and make a
deep postseason run. Those same projections
predict Atlanta to go 57-52 the next few months and end at 89-73. Personally, I think the projections for both
teams are too conservative, as I see the Braves closer to 95 wins and the
Nationals closer to 90. Either way, at
this point in the season, you have to like the position the Braves find
themselves in, and a series win against the Nationals this weekend could prove fruitful
for a team looking to win its’ first division title since 2005.
Series matchups:
Friday, 7:30 (local
broadcast)
Stephen Strasburg v. Julio Teheran
Saturday, 7:15 (FOX
national broadcast)
Gio Gonzalez v. Tim Hudson
Sunday, 1:35 (local
broadcast)
Nate Karns v. Paul Maholm
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