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August 3, 2005

Prospectus Today

Falling Back to Earth

by Joe Sheehan

Last night, the Nationals lost 5-4 to the Dodgers, dropping to 56-50 and falling 5 1/2 games behind the Braves in the NL East race. That record is still far ahead of what you might project from their runs scored (408) and allowed (434), which mark them as a sub-.500 club. The Adjusted Standings Report, which considers that and more, calls the Nationals a "true" 49-57 team.

The Nationals' second-half swoon should not come as a surprise. This was never a great baseball team, despite being the "It Boys" of baseball for a few weeks in June. A run of good fortune--and poor competition--in one-run games helped the Nationals push their record over .500 while they were just barely outscoring their opponents on the season. Once the good fortune ended, so did their run atop the NL East. The Nationals have lost nine straight one-run games, and now have a 24-19 record in those contests. Since their last one-run win, over the Phillies on July 8, the Nats are 4-16 overall, but have been outscored just 79-53 in that stretch. It's just the reverse of their outcomes for much of the first half, and just as there was no underlying reason for them to go 24-8 in one-run games, there's no underlying reason for them to be 0-9 since. That's just the way one-run games go; the outcomes are generally unrelated to team quality. (See the chart at the bottom of the column for more on this.)

Baseball is not a morality play. There's no good and bad way to play, and you don't win or lose because you adopt or reject a particular style. All the ex post facto analysis of the Nationals that talked about their bullpen, their ballpark, their fundamentals, their clutchness, their veterans who had been through so much in Montreal and who now got to play in front of big, enthusiastic crowds…that was all a mirage. The Nationals were in first place because they'd played with about the quality of a .500 team, and they'd been fortunate in close games.

In baseball, you win by being good at scoring runs and preventing them. In the short term, you might distribute those runs in a way that inflates or deflates your record, but those two skills are going to dictate your final record more often than not. If your record is disconnected from your run differential, you can usually bet that the former will find its way back in line with the latter in short order.

That's what has happened to the Nationals. They're the same team they were in the first half, just with a bit less good fortune, and now with a lot fewer people paying attention.

The difference between the Nationals and, say, the White Sox is that the White Sox, while playing well in one-run games (23-11), are also playing very well outside of those contests (46-25). Moreover, there are considerable underlying reasons for the overall success the Sox are having--improved team defense, much improved home-run rates for their pitchers, both of which contributed to excellent run prevention--that aren't in play for the Nationals. They have a lousy offense, and once you strip away the park effects, their pitching staff isn't much to look at. They're 11th in the NL in K/BB, 15th in strikeout rate.