It's not exactly a secret that the Nationals fancy themselves a team just a walk up the driveway away from the doorstep of contention. It's also even less of a secret that the way the Nationals view themselves isn't particularly indicative of reality.
This disconnect from reality that pervades the Washington organization was illustrated no better than on Saturday. The Nationals, having secured a third straight series loss with their seventh consecutive L, slid to 30-40 with a 4-3 loss to the Miami Marlins at home Saturday. After the game, manager Dave Martinez sat down for his routine post-game media press conference. A reporter asked the question:
"When you look at the offense as a whole, I think you guys haven't produced like you've wanted to this month. For you, how much of that is on the players, on coaching, what's..."
At this point, Martinez cuts the reporter off.
"It's never on coaching," Martinez replies. "Never on coaching, okay? Coaches... work their asses off every single day. You know, we're not gonna finger point here and say it's the coaches. It's never on the coaches. Okay? They work hard... the message is clear. All the work is done prior, so sometimes they gotta go out there and they gotta play the game. It's always been about the players. Always, you know? I played this game a long time. Never once have I blamed a coach for anything. I mean, we worked our asses off to get better, they gave us information, and we used it. These guys understand what the game is, man. These coaches--I never had such a group of coaches that worked as hard as they do. I mean, usually they go over everything, they sit players every day... these coaches, you know, they work their asses off. And I know every coaching staff is like that. The players know, sometimes you gotta put the onus on the players, they gotta go out there and play the game, and play the game in the right way. We can't hit for them, we can't catch the ball for them, we can't pitch for them, we can't throw strikes for them. They gotta do that."
Woof. There is... a lot to take in there.
Let's start with the obvious. It's never on coaching. The team with the third-lowest walk rate, highest ground ball rate, lowest fly ball rate, and lowest average launch angle in all of Major League Baseball... while being the second-youngest team offensively in the Majors... doesn't have a coaching problem. I think that last part is the most striking, ultimately--it's not like this is a team full of veterans. Most of the bats on this squad and in this lineup came through the Nationals system one way or another. These are guys who are at their most moldable, the most ability to be shaped by a coaching staff, good or bad; I don't know how you put a team together that has the lowest average launch angle in baseball by nearly three degrees to the point where the average batted ball is generally hitting the ground before passing the pitcher's mound, but some of that--surely, SURELY SOME of that has to be on the coaching. Looking at you, hitting coach Darnell Coles and your known historical tendencies to sing the praises of shooting ground balls up the middle.
"The message is clear," Martinez tells the reporter. All these things considered--what in blue hell is the message? "What we're doing is good, keep it up"? "I don't know what the problem is so here's the data and you can figure it out yourself"? If there truly is a clear message being sent to players, literally everything would suggest it's the wrong message.
There's also the Nationals' defense. Before his rise to the majors in 2020, Luis García Jr. was given a 60-grade fielding tool by MLB Pipeline aggregators. In the time since, García has scored -23 Defensive Runs Saved and a -12 Fielding Run Value at the second base position in over 3,600 innings (for his own sake, I have excluded from this data the shortstop experiment).
Keibert Ruiz was given perhaps a generous 55 fielding tool as a catcher by Pipeline in 2021; since 2022, Ruiz has been the worst framer in baseball (Statcast) and a bottom 10 blocker in baseball, which contribute to his MLB-worst -39 Fielding Run Value in that span; the next-worst is his teammate, Riley Adams, who fell to -21 FRV in just a third of Ruiz's innings.
CJ Abrams, who in the minors was viewed as a potential option for a super-utility infield/outfield role that could hold his own at short with his athleticism, has posted by far the worst Fielding Run Value (-31) of any shortstop in baseball since 2022. These are three cornerstones of the Nationals; García is the biggest homegrown draft-to-bigs success story currently on the team, Abrams was an All-Star in 2024 by merit of his offensive breakout (which, surprise, was powered by a sudden uptick in pulled fly balls that allowed him to access power from his lanky frame), and Ruiz was inked to an 8-year, $50 million extension prior to 2023, affirming the Nationals organization's belief in his abilities. All of these three were expected to, at least, hold their own at their respective positions; instead, all three have been some of the worst and least valuable defenders in the sport for nearly three and a half years. This does not just happen. Something is being lost in translation, or more likely, that something, that voice in the ear of all three men that will hopefully allow them to continue to grow as defenders, isn't being communicated to begin with. When three guys in their early 20s are coming to the bigs and scouts are saying "well, this should be a league-average offense," and instead it's one of the worst in baseball year in and year out, the coaching staff is not bringing out what they need to bring out of their young players.
In my discussions about the aforementioned Dave Martinez quote with various members of the baseball fandom, one sentiment very frequently rang true:
If it's "never on" the coaches, why are the coaches there?
Martinez is quick to reiterate just how hard these guys work. They work so hard. But what are they hard at work doing? Clearly it's not what the other teams are doing; the Tigers are only about a year older on average offensively, but they're scoring runs at a 6th-place rate in the Major Leagues despite playing at a much worse ballpark for hitters.
But if the coaches, who are hard at work... sitting guys down and giving them information... like a coaching staff is meant to do... are never responsible for the failures of the on-field product to deliver... as one user I heard from put it, if it's never on the coaches when the team fails, "success is never due to the coaches either. And at that point, why have coaches at all?" A second said that if failure were "never on the coaches and always on the players," "coaches would have no meaningful impact on the game, at all, ever, and would have no reason to exist"; a third replied simply with a GIF of a quote from Office Space: "What would you say you do here?"
The Nationals last year were, much like this year, the second-youngest team in baseball offensively; they also scored the sixth-fewest runs in the Major Leagues. With that knowledge, Dave Martinez announced, prior to the team's game on August 14, that the entire Major League coaching staff had been giving and signed contracts to assume their respective positions in 2025.
All this is to reaffirm what we already know: Martinez is complacent. He's not particularly invested in figuring out what needs to be done to help his young players learn, grow, and ultimately succeed. If they do succeed, he'll love to take credit for it; when they don't, well, past tension between him and Víctor Robles, or remarks he's made to the media about Luis García Jr. certainly don't lead me to believe he's in the business of getting behind his guys and defending them when things aren't going well. But Martinez believes himself invincible; in the six years (including 2025) since Martinez, who was brought in to lead a veteran team trying to squeeze what they could out of their closing window, was at the helm of a World Series victory, the Nationals have not once had a winning record; they found themselves the laughingstock of Major League Baseball in 2022 when they lost 107 games and were spurned by a 23-year-old confident enough in his talent to reject $440 million from the team that developed him (a gamble that paid off approximately twofold). Not once during any of this was Martinez, who, again, had zero experience taking the helm of a rebuilding franchise, considered to be on the hot seat; why would he be now?
The absolute only thing that can light a fire under this coaching staff's ass is for Martinez to get shitcanned yesterday. Demonstrate to the rest of the staff (not you, Doolittle, you're fine) that standing by and allowing promising talent to fall short of their true potential time and again--with those rare success stories very frequently coming in spite of the efforts of the coaches--is not going to be tolerated. There is too much talent climbing through the ranks right now. The talents of Dylan Crews, Brady House, Travis Sykora, Jarlin Susana, Seaver King, Alex Clemmey, Luke Dickerson, and the man this team picks first overall in the Draft come July: these cannot be allowed to simply fall by the wayside while Davey Martinez lounges in his chair after the game, looking up at the cameras with the same shit-eating grin he's always got, throwing his hands up and affirming his belief that his players have once again forgotten that they are there to play baseball, and nine innings of it. "We gotta get ready to catch the ball," he says about his defense; "I like the way we swung the bats," after the team scores one run and goes 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position.
I would love, oh I would so dearly love to be proven wrong. I would love for this team to start showing signs of progress, for a meaningful change to finally be made within the brass and a manager that didn't randomly antagonize his players to the media to finally regain the reins for this team. But until that happens, if it ever happens, the Nationals are going to continue to plateau, always within view of that elusive next playoff berth but never all too close to being within reach of it. Numbers were always overrated, anyway.