2021 ZiPS Projections: Washington Nationals

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Washington Nationals.

Batters

There are a lot of names from the 2019 World Series championship that are no longer here, but the two most important ones are: Juan Soto and Trea Turner. After missing Opening Day due to a positive COVID-19 test result, Soto made up for lost time, playing like a man possessed and hitting .351/.490/.695, one of those lines mainly produced by players with Hall of Fame plaques. He now has a 152 wRC+ in 1,349 major league plate appearances and turned 22 a month after his season ended.

There are 14 players in major league history with a wRC+ of at least 130 in at least a thousand plate appearances before their age-22 season. The two other active players besides Soto, Mike Trout and Ronald Acuña Jr., are two of the other brightest young superstars in the game (or at least youngish in Trout’s case). Another is Tony Conigliaro, one of the game’s saddest examples of a brutal injury derailing a career. Everyone else on the list is a Hall of Famer. And I’m not talking run-of-the-mill Hall of Famers; this is a list that features Jimmie Foxx, Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, and Mickey Mantle. The worst of this group is either Ken Griffey Jr. or Arky Vaughan. As such, Soto gets Ted Williams as his top offensive comp at his age. Not the Ted Williams who played in the minors for the Mariners, not a data error that led to an odd result, but the Ted Williams. I believe this is a first.

No matter where the Nats go from here, the team’s first priority ought to be locking up Soto’s services with a very, very lucrative contract for a very, very long time. Whether rebuilding, retooling, or pushing in the whole stack of chips, Soto is a foundational talent any team can build around. I’m a fan of Bryce Harper, but he was no Soto.

Next to Soto, it’s almost possible to forget about Turner, but that would be a mistake. Turner was even better than Soto overall in 2020, hitting .335/.398/.588 as a shortstop. Snagging Turner in a three-way deal, getting one over on the Rays and Padres, and somehow getting the best player in a Wil Myers trade that didn’t really involve his team will always be up there in president Mike Rizzo’s career highlights. Decision time on Turner is coming fairly quickly, however, as he’s only two years away from free agency, so the Nats are going to have to consider where they are as a team.

That’s the big question for the Nats. Like a lot of champions, the team blew hot and cold in their follow-up campaign. They did their best to mitigate the loss of Anthony Rendon, but it was a real hit to the team’s present-day roster and they’ve bled talent elsewhere. Adam Eaton’s miserable 2020 made the decision to decline his option easier, but that doesn’t answer how to fill another hole on the team. ZiPS is confident about better times ahead for Victor Robles, but Washington needs serious upgrades in left field, and at second and first base. And unlike last year, they aren’t so good that they can afford to just shuffle around with Ryan Zimmerman and whatever unsigned first baseman is looking for a team in March.

Pitchers

Max Scherzer showed some signs of mild decline in 2020: his control wasn’t quite as sharp, his swinging strikes dipped to his lowest percentage in years, and his fastball didn’t get quite the results it has in the past despite the velocity holding. But the word “mild” is key here. There’s no reason to actually be concerned, just enough to possibly put him an extra hair or so behind Jacob deGrom in the mental rankings of Cy Young candidates. This is hardly a major shock for a pitcher who turned 36 at the start of the 2020 season. The downhill slope is coming, but he’s still near the top of that hill. Importantly, it also likely ends in Cooperstown. If 76 projected WAR isn’t enough to make Hall of Fame voters check the Silver Hammer’s box, the 233 projected wins and his postseason performance plus bulldog reputation likely will be.

Stephen Strasburg missed most of the season due to injury, but in this case, it was a less concerning nerve issue in his wrist rather than the more traditional pitcher season-enders related to elbows or shoulders. Both Strasburg and the team believed discretion was the better part of valor here, and even though he pitched well through the pain, they decided to take the long view and avoid further damage. Assuming he’s healthy, I have few worries about Strasburg.

I’m slightly more concerned about Patrick Corbin given his velocity loss and the big drop-off in his slider. ZiPS isn’t panicking, however, and he still projects as one of the better third-starters in the league.

If I were a Nats fan, I’d be very happy and confident about the rotation’s top three. And I’d think about them non-stop because it would keep me from thinking about…the others. The back of the team’s rotation is very iffy and it’s a testament to the front-end talent that the Nats currently rank third in our depth chart rankings among starting pitchers. The bullpen remains in serious need of a talent infusion; ZiPS has most of the projected pen with an ERA+ under 100. The offseason is long, but they have a lot of work to do this winter.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2021 due to injury, and players who were released in 2020. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Finnish industrial death metal fourth-wave ska J-pop band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. ZiPS is assuming that the designated hitter will continue in force in 2021; if it does not, there will be widespread minor adjustments across the board come April.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article, or get angry at Dan on Twitter or something.