The Nationals’ season isn’t quite on life support, but there’s been a bad accident, and the family’s been notified. The situation appears to be dire, and while Tuesday brought its own fresh horrors, that wasn’t the day that slaughtered the dream. It’s the most recent event, the currently most upsetting event, but the Nationals weren’t even supposed to be in this situation in the first place. They’ve had problems for weeks, for months, and now they’re about out of time to save themselves and move on to the tournament. The Mets have simply done too much. The Nationals have simply done too little.

The story would be interesting if it were any division race. What makes this one extra interesting is that it’s this division race. The Nationals were expected to run away with the NL East. The Phillies, as assumed, have been bad. The Braves, as assumed, have been bad. The Marlins had the look of being mediocre. The Mets had the look of a fringe contender. The Nationals had the look of a champion. These are our preseason odds. The Nationals were given an 86% chance to win the division. They were projected to clear the Mets by 13 games. If the Nationals won out, and the Mets lost out, the Nationals would clear the Mets by 18 games. This was supposed to be a relative cakewalk. It’s been more of a…nailwalk? I don’t know. It’s been bad, is the point.

So: why? How has this happened? Obviously, the Mets have quite a bit to do with it, but this post is to focus on the Nationals. Where did this go wrong?

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I went to a baseball game in Oakland last night. This wouldn’t have any bearing on this article if not for this: I drove to the game, and in that 30-minute drive to the stadium, the Washington Nationals went from clawing their way back into some sort of contention in the NL East by beating the Mets to looking up October beachfront condo rentals. When I got in the car, there was the prospect of an interesting September division race. When I got out of the car, poof — that was all but gone. One inning, three pitchers, six walks, and six runs after the start of the top of the seventh, the score of the game was tied at 7-7, and all it took was a home run off the bat of Kirk Nieuwenhuis in the eighth to finally sink the Nationals.

If you follow either or both of these teams, yesterday’s seventh inning was an encapsulation of how the season has unfolded. The Mets have been one of the best stories in baseball; the Nats have been 2015’s poster child for the biggest gap between performance and preseason expectations. One of the most alluring things about baseball is how large season trends can play out in the microcosm of a single inning, and so the seventh inning saw a shift in win expectancy inline with the arc of the Nationals’ season, from spring training to today:

At one point, with two out and one on in the top of the seventh, the Nationals had a 99.2% expectation of winning the game. And, while late 7-1 leads are blown in games many times during the course of an entire baseball season, when they happen in this sort of context and with this kind of futility, it’s our responsibility to break them down.

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Back before the 2012 season, Frank McCourt owned the Los Angeles Dodgers. He had purchased the team in 2004, inheriting a club that featured a $105 million payroll in 2003. Nearly ten years later, he sold the team to the deep-pocketed Guggenheim-led group — handing over a club that also featured a $105 million payroll. Major League Baseball revenues had doubled during McCourt’s tenure as team owner — and salaries for players increased at something close to the same rate — but the Dodgers, sitting in one of the biggest media markets in the country, stuck to the status quo after fielding one of the bigger payrolls in baseball at the beginning of the century. The Dodgers have finally caught up with the times (some would say surpassed) in terms of payroll, but while their $300-plus million payroll might seem enormous, the team would still be right in line with the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox if those two teams had not slowed their spending in recent years.

Prior to the arrival of the Dodgers’ new ownership and $8 billion cable deal, the Yankees were the only team to exceed a $200 million payroll. The Yankees crossed that threshold in 2005, but kept their spending fairly static over the following decade, only getting above $225 million once (in 2013) and falling below that mark last season. Their total outlay on players was often somewhat higher, given the luxury-tax payments the team was forced to make every season. Given the Yankees’ spending over the last decade and the Dodgers’ spending over the last few seasons, it might appear that the luxury tax is not much of a deterrent towards spending, but as Nathaniel Grow detailed back in May, the luxury tax has kept spending down at upper levels.

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Around little-league parks, and even on the back fields of certain schools and organizations, you might hear a common refrain from the batting cages. “Chop wood, chop wood,” is how Bryce Harper mimics the coaches he’s heard before. The idea is that a quick, direct path to the baseball — like an ax chop — is the best way to get quickly to the ball and create the backspin that fuels the power.

Turns out, pretty much all of that is wrong.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
New York NL at Washington | 19:05 ET
deGrom (169.0 IP, 78 xFIP-) vs. Strasburg (91.0 IP, 82 xFIP-)
After last night’s unsightly debacle — a game the club lost despite holding, at one point, something better than a 99% win expectancy — the Nationals are not unlike a friend who’s just recently learned of his wife’s multiple infidelities. Unavoidably, your first encounter with him after these revelations will be an uncomfortable and awkward one. Also, he might have to sleep on your couch. Likewise, observing the Washingtons this evening might be uncomfortable. And likewise, they might need to sleep on the 25 couches you have.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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Taking full advantage of the September roster expansion, the Chicago Cubs called up 22-year-old infielder Javier Baez to help fortify the team’s middle-infield situation. This isn’t Baez’s first taste of the big leagues. In fact, he doesn’t even qualify as a rookie anymore. As you probably recall, he spent the final two months of 2014 season in the majors, where he turned in a historically bad performance as the team’s second baseman.

Just how bad was it? Baez hit a pitcher-esque .169/.227/.324 in 52 games with the Cubs last year. His on-base percentage was the lowest of any hitter who recorded at least 200 plate appearances. Most alarming of all was his 42% strikeout rate, which made him the only player in the game’s history to have a strikeout rate above 40% in more than 200 plate appearances.

After his strikeout woes continued into this year’s spring training, the Cubs had Baez open the year in Triple-A, and kept him there until last week. Baez hit pretty well following his demotion. In 70 games, he hit .324/.385/.527 — which was good enough for a 144 wRC+. That’s markedly better than his 108 wRC+ at the same level last year. Read the rest of this entry »

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Let’s get right to the point. It’s not often that I use OPS instead of wOBA or wRC+, but sometimes OPS is just easier, like when you’re relying on the Baseball-Reference Play Index. OPS is the inferior statistic, but the correlation is very strong, so, with that out of the way, here are this year’s worst-hitting catchers, by team:

• Twins, .591 OPS
• Marlins, .580
• Mariners, .466

I’m not one of those people who minds when commenters make note of typos. I actually appreciate it — I hate little mistakes, and I want to have them corrected. Some of you might feel like the above includes a typo, specifically with regard to the “4” in the Mariners number. I assure you, that number is very much accurate. If the 4 were a 5, the Mariners would still be in last. The 4 is a 4. This is only going to get worse.

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