Making History With the Nationals’ 1-2 Punch

Last Thursday, Nationals fans had the season flash before their eyes when Bryce Harper’s leg buckled while attempting an aggressive throw. The Nationals, to this point, have managed to withstand certain injuries, but no injury would be more crippling than a big one to the best hitter in the game. Thankfully for those with an interest, Harper’s issue was minor, and he was back in the lineup Saturday. In his return, he hit a home run; in his return, Max Scherzer no-hit the Pirates.

For all the Nationals have already been through, Harper’s been there all along, and Scherzer has too. That either player is having success is by no means surprising. The Nationals gave Scherzer a big giant contract, and Harper’s been hyped since he was still in the womb. The two were expected to be two of the best players on the team. But where the Nationals find themselves now is in a particularly unusual situation. That is: Bryce Harper has been the best position player in baseball. And Max Scherzer has been the best pitcher in baseball.

Obviously, that’s nothing we can prove. There are a million variables, and it would be impossible to account for them all. We don’t know how good, say, Harper’s defense has been. We don’t know how much Scherzer has benefited from his schedule of opponents. At some point, almost all these things become arbitrary or subjective, but I can say this much: I’m not making up the numbers. I’m just telling you what the numbers say. This is the combined WAR leaderboard, where for pitchers I’m giving them half-credit for sequencing and balls in play. Harper has a pretty decent lead over the next-best position player. And Scherzer has a pretty decent lead over the next-best pitcher.

You don’t even have to think much of WAR to arrive at the same conclusions. Harper has been a very conspicuous terror, and Scherzer’s coming off one of the best pairs of starts in the history of the game. The benefit of WAR, here, is that it allows for this to be further studied. For example, is this going to keep up? Are the Nationals still going to have had the best position player and pitcher, come the end of this season?

I mean, I don’t know. You don’t know. We’re all just guessing. But let’s guess, educatedly. We know Harper and Scherzer’s current positions. We also have rest-of-season projections, updated to account for what players have done in 2015. Scherzer has been the best pitcher in baseball, and he’s projected to be basically tied for the best pitcher in baseball over the remainder. So, in terms of Scherzer, the Nationals are in a good spot.

It’s a little different with Harper. He’s been the best, but Mike Trout is still projected better. If you combine the current leaderboard with the projected leaderboard over the remainder, here’s projected end-of-season WAR:

1. Mike Trout, 8.9 WAR
2. Bryce Harper, 8.4
3. Paul Goldschmidt, 7.4

By the math, right now the Nationals project to finish with the second-best position player, and the best pitcher. That’s awesome, but it’s not the same. Yet you could make the argument the projections are too slow to pick up on what Harper is becoming. He’s already blown his projections away, more than anyone else. Here are the five qualified hitters who have most greatly exceeded their preseason wOBA projections:

• Bryce Harper, +0.128 points
• Stephen Vogt, +0.086
• Todd Frazier, +0.086
• Jason Kipnis, +0.084
• Paul Goldschmidt, +0.082

By design, the projections are conservative. As people, we tend not to be conservative with these things, so the projections are a nice balance, but maybe Harper is pulling off a greater leap than Steamer or ZiPS think. Let’s just pretend Harper finishes with the No. 1 position-player WAR. We’re pretending. How often has a team ended up with the best position player and the best pitcher? I examined the past 100 years. Here’s everything I found:

Season	Team	Position Player	Pitcher
1932	Athletics	Jimmie Foxx	Lefty Grove
1937	Yankees	Joe DiMaggio	Lefty Gomez
1948	Cardinals	Stan Musial	Harry Brecheen
1949	Red Sox	Ted Williams	Mel Parnell
1987	Red Sox	Wade Boggs	Roger Clemens
1988	Red Sox	Wade Boggs	Roger Clemens
2015	Nationals*	Bryce Harper	Max Scherzer

The Nationals get an asterisk because, rather obviously, their season isn’t finished yet. But all those other seasons are finished. The most recent example of such a team: the 1988 Red Sox, with Boggs and Clemens. So, that would make the gap nearly 30 years. And no team has had the top position player and the top pitcher since baseball expanded to its current 30 teams. At least, not by this method, not according to this kind of WAR. You could do this same analysis differently, and maybe you’d generate a different result, but this is really just trivia. I’m providing you with trivia, based on FanGraphs WAR. Don’t make more of that than you ought to.

Those 1988 Red Sox were interesting — in addition to Boggs and Clemens, they also had Mike Greenwell, who that year was awarded 7.8 WAR. So, by the leaderboard, those Red Sox had the three best players in baseball. There have been some other interesting teams more recently. The 1996 Mariners had the best position player, and then one of the two position players tied for second. The 2001 Diamondbacks, and the 2002 Diamondbacks, both had the game’s two best pitchers. The 2001 version also had Luis Gonzalez, so that team had three of the top six final WAR figures.

The 2008 Indians would’ve had the two best pitchers, but for trading CC Sabathia. The 2010 Rays had two of the top three position players. The 2011 Phillies had two of the top three pitchers. Jumping back, the 2003 Giants had Barry Bonds, and they very nearly had the best pitcher in Jason Schmidt. Just a couple years ago, the Tigers had Miguel Cabrera win the AL MVP, and Max Scherzer win the AL Cy Young. The 2011 Dodgers had an outstanding Matt Kemp and an outstanding Clayton Kershaw.

Finishing with the respective No. 1’s isn’t a whole lot better than finishing with a couple top-fives. And compared to having a couple guys who excel at doing the same sort of thing, there’s nothing inherently superior about having the one best position player, and the one best arm. It just, you know, feels cooler. At the moment, the Nationals stand a good chance of ending the year with the best position player in the game. And they stand a good chance of ending the year with the best pitcher in the game. No club has been able to do that since baseball expanded to its current number of teams. The Giants once came awful close, but the Nationals could make it actually happen. Combined, Bryce Harper and Max Scherzer alone have more WAR than the Padres, Rockies, Mariners, Twins, Brewers, White Sox, and Phillies. You’d almost think this wouldn’t be a team struggling to remain in first place.