The fire alarms went off at Nationals Park all night Saturday while the Nationals were in Miami and their broadcast group was in Washington, the type of hellish parade preceding another equally atrocious mark: 19-31. A year ago — or is it 100 by now? — the Nats stumbled to the same record before a historic turnaround led to them winning the World Series.
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The 19-31 start became an integral storyline of their 2019 season, so much so that it was intertwined with their championship ring ceremony.
A year ago, 19-31 was improbable, the word used as the title of the team-produced documentary that chronicled the World Series run. Now? After a 7-3 loss to the Marlins? It’s just embarrassing.
“We know we can’t start 19-31 again,” catcher Yan Gomes said in July.
He was right: They couldn’t start that way in a 60-game season. But they could finish it that way. “Finished” might not be quite the right word for a team that never got going, for one general manager Mike Rizzo claimed all spring was through talking about last season. Remember when this one was about defending the title? That is, until the world stopped and the celebrations went out the window and the opt-outs and injuries and underperformance piled up.
Saturday was the night the Nats fell to 19-31, but the second game of Friday’s doubleheader, in which they had utilityman Brock Holt pitch the seventh and final inning, was a new low. Every day seems to bring some bout of bad news, whether it’s another player out for the season — the latest being Adam Eaton on Thursday — or another frustrating on-field performance.
The Nationals entered Saturday with a minus-30 run differential. They are one of the worst teams in the majors in all meaningful stats, including in the NL East standings, where they trailed the fourth-place Mets by 3 1/2 games and would need a serious hot stretch to avoid the same fate of just two other teams: the Red Sox in 2014 and the Marlins in 1998. They won the World Series the previous year, then finished in last.
The Marlins held an infamous fire sale. The Red Sox saw the writing on the wall and unloaded several big contracts. Neither team would bounce back quickly. The Nationals may not, either. It’s one thing to not care much about this season, to not be that upset about a team playing in a pandemic that looks listless a year after captivating a fan base, a city and a big part of the baseball world. There’s a collective shrug that many people have about the 60-game season, which followed such a magical championship run.
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But what about next year? How much rope should the Nationals be given? How much patience should be given to Rizzo, who now has a three-year extension, to make the improvements that need to happen? How motivated, in a time when many organizations everywhere are slashing personnel and payrolls, will the Lerner family be to spend big and try to win again in 2021?
It’s a fair question for a team in total crisis mode, a team that, in going 19-31, has been truly awful to watch. There’s really no way to sugarcoat it.
Between season-ending injuries to Eaton, Stephen Strasburg, Starlin Castro, Tanner Rainey and Sean Doolittle, the underperformance of Asdrubal Cabrera, Carter Kieboom and Victor Robles and plenty of others who have been hurt and bad at various points (such as Will Harris and Howie Kendrick), there aren’t a lot of bright spots not named Trea Turner. Even Juan Soto hasn’t been immune; he was sidelined with a sore elbow and is still looking for his first home run in September.
They don’t have enough time for 19-31 to be an in-season wakeup call. But it should be one hell of an alarm for this offseason.
The Nationals need two starters, a third baseman and a first baseman. They can’t afford to keep the infield as is and continue to think that losing Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon in successive years is somehow an offensive hole that can be fixed internally. They need a right fielder and may need to take a good, hard look at Robles in center field, too. They need a left-handed reliever and to really think about whether Harris’ and Daniel Hudson’s performances were anomalies or enough to warrant the need for more late-inning options.
They are 19-31, again, and in a week, it won’t matter. Sure, laugh at the absurdity of it all because in 2020, we are all short on laughs. But remember, the Nationals weren’t supposed to be like the Marlins or the Red Sox. They didn’t sell anyone at the deadline and they tried, at least on paper, to win.
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You didn’t need to hear the jarring fire alarm in Washington on Saturday to know the warning is here, that the champagne buzz has long faded. This season has seemed to be over for a while, but the worst thing the Nats can do is chalk all it up to a shortened season. They have significant holes and could be at a serious crossroads if they don’t start well in 2021.
(Photo: Mark Brown / Getty Images)
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