We dig into the archives and figure out which Washington Nationals Opening Day lineup was the best in team history by WAR
Opening Day is finally upon us. Tomorrow afternoon, the Washington Nationals will take the field at Nationals Park for a game that counts in the standings. They will be taking on Edinson Volquez and the Miami Marlins (1:05 p.m ET, MASN).
In the short history of this franchise being in Washington D.C., the Nats have played 12 games on Opening Day. This will be the sixth time the team has opened the season at home since Nats Park opened in 2008.
While Opening Day is a day of hope amongst all baseball fans, it hasn’t been quite kind to the Nats. The team has won four of their last five games on Opening Day, which has improved what is now a 5-7 record since 2005.
Since this is a great day in the baseball calendar, we thought it would be a good day to take a look back at the past Opening Day lineups since 2005. In the course of a 162 game season, your first lineup isn’t always going to be the lineup you put out there in September or October or even the best lineup.
Using Baseball Reference’s WAR stat, we are going to rank which Washington Nationals team had the best Opening Day lineup. Share with us your Opening Day memories in the comments section below.
We are going to go from worst to first, so let’s start with a team where we have profiled certain players over the last month or so: