Washington Nationals: Injuries Are Devastating the Nationals Offense
The Washington Nationals have had injury problems in past years. The problem is reaching new heights (or lows) in the 2019 season.
The Washington Nationals are dropping like flies.
Anthony Rendon, Ryan Zimmerman, Juan Soto, and Trea Turner have all missed extended time due to various injuries.
Recently, four more Nationals have bit the dust: Matt Adams, Michael A. Taylor, Yan Gomes, and Andrew Stevenson have all left games due to injury in the last 72 hours.
In addition to Trevor Rosenthal and his “viral illness,” nine Nationals have hit the Injured List in the early part of this season.
The issue is that most of the injured players are key contributors. Furthermore, they are cluster injuries of the position players.
In Football, one injury to a few players at various positions is not a death sentence. But if in a two-week span, a team’s top four cornerbacks all go down while the rest of the team stays healthy, that is a significant problem that other teams can exploit.
For the Nationals, the injuries are centered around their offense. Now the team cannot score runs.
Excluding the cheat code that is Coors Field, the Nationals have scored four or more runs precisely three times since April 19.
That is not a typo. The Nats are averaging 3.35 runs over their last 14 games, excluding Coors Field games. By using the mean, that 3.55 figure skewed up because the Nationals scored ten runs against the Phillies last week.
If we subtract that game, the Nats have scored 37 runs in the 13 game stretch, which equates to 2.84 runs per game.
This offense without the All-Stars resembles a Triple-A lineup more than a Major League Lineup.
Coming into this season, one of the “sneaky” positives to this team was thought to be their offensive depth. To this point, only Howie Kendrick has been a positive contributor off the bench.
When healthy, the other bench members have been anything but productive. And now the Nats are relying on actual Triple-A players to play starting roles.
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Jake Noll, Carter Kieboom, and Wilmer Difo are being relied upon to play heavy innings, and it simply is a disaster. An utter catastrophe.