Four Predictions for the Second Half of the Nationals' Season

The Nationals have had a rough first half of the 2023 season. Yes, maybe they are not quite as bad as the Oakland A's, who were on pace to be the worst team in baseball history, like many thought they would be, but they currently are the 4th worst team in baseball and are just 2.5 games ahead of Colorado for the worst record in the National League.

For the optimists out there, you could say that the Nationals are on pace for 65 wins, which would be a 10 game improvement over last year's club. I think a lot of that has to do with the revised schedule where MLB teams have more diverse opponents as opposed to a littany of games within their own division, a place where the Nationals have not excelled in recent years. It is also due to MacKenzie Gore and a much better, All-Star even, Josiah Gray leading the rotation. Regardless, 10 games better is 10 games better. We will see if they can keep up the pace.

But the MLB season has a way of exposing teams. 162 games is no small task and even coming off a week-long break, the Nationals, like every team, will have to face the heat of the dog days of summer; the stretch of July and August where players tire, roster changes are made, and the motivation you once had at the start of the season gets tested or fades completely. The last two seasons we have seen the Nats collapse in August, and they weren't necessarily good before then either. That could be in part due to the major sales at the deadline that included Max Scherzer, Trea Turner and Juan Soto. While they won't move another major star like that, there could be more Nationals about to be shipped out that might lead to more August struggles. We'll predict that and more in our Four Second Half Predictions for the Nationals.

The Nationals Have A Lower Win Percentage In The Second Half

This one should come as too much of a surprise after I laid out how the past two seasons have gone for the Nationals in August. For what it is worth, I do think this team will be mostly the same after the trade deadline, which we will get to here shortly, but I think this team overperformed early in the season and we now will start to see the true colors show.

This team cannot hit for power and most of their pitchers are not strikeout pitchers. That makes it tough when you're relying solely on contact to win games, as we have seen throughout the season thus far. The Nationals currently sit at a .400 winning percentage through 90 games of the season. That means I have them at about 28 wins in the second half of the season at most, but I think it would be closer to the low to mid 20s. If they win 25 games, they would finish the season at 61-101, which sounds about right to me and also fits a lot of preseason projections for this team.

And of course, impact players such as Jeimer Candelario and Lane Thomas being dealt could very well be a catalyst for a second half slump.

Jeimer Candelario is Traded, but Otherwise the Nationals Stand Pat

Mike Rizzo and company deserve a lot of credit for turning around the farm system in the past couple seasons. Yes, it has been absolutely brutal to see some of our favorite players leave town in an unceremonious fashion, but the returns have been generally positive and we are in a much better spot as a team than we would have been had those trades not happened.

That being said, Mike Rizzo has had a history of underwhelming deadlines and the Nationals no longer have that coveted asset like they did previously with Scherzer, Turner and Soto. They still have some assets, but none that will break the bank in terms of a return haul like when they got Gray and Ruiz or Gore, Abrams, Wood, etc.

Now of course that history by Rizzo is primarily on the buying side of the deadline, but if you go back to 2018, the Nationals were a .500 team and clearly not playoff bound by the way they were playing. Rather than maximizing returns and selling at the deadline, Rizzo opted to wait until the now extinct waiver deadline to trade players like Daniel Murphy and Matt Adams and ultimately received nothing of value for them. They might not have generated a huge return, but Rizzo essentially gave them away by waiting too long.

That was five years ago now and hopefully Rizzo has learned his lesson, as he has been a much more active seller than he was a deadline buyer. But does that mean he will move a player like Lane Thomas, who is clearly having an outlier season and overperforming? My gut says no. Instead, Rizzo will look to move the expiring contracts, and the only one who is really worth anything to contending clubs is Jeimer Candelario.

Davey Martinez and Staff Retain Their Jobs

I could write an entire article on this prediction alone, but I will instead try to keep it brief.

I believe the Nationals are one of the worst coached teams in baseball from top to bottom. I believe the players enjoy playing for Davey Martinez and enjoy him as a person, which is important, but I do not believe Martinez or his staff are the ones best equipped to mold and develop this young team in order to get them to where they need to be. Darnell Coles above all else has done detrimental damage to some of these young hitters like Luis Garcia and Keibert Ruiz.

That being said, the ownership situation leads me to believe not much, if anything at all, will change. If Mike Rizzo and Davey Martinez are in fact tied together, then it is almost a certainty that Martinez will stay because Rizzo isn't going anywhere while the Lerners are still here. Even if a sale does happen in the coming months, I don't think a managerial change happens right away. It would like take a season under new ownership to play out so that they can make their own evaluations.

All this means is that despite what I believe will be another painful second half of the season, we will get more of the same in 2024.