Washington Nationals: 2017 Season Review and Offseason Preview

What Went Right

The best position player on the Nationals was Anthony Rendon, who had a terrific all-around season that saw him reach career highs in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, home runs, and RBI. Rendon was also one of only five players with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title who walked more times than he struck out. In a year in which the strikeout rate in baseball rose for the 13^th straight year, Rendon’s strikeout rate dropped from 18.1 percent last year to 13.6 percent this year.

Despite his terrific season, Rendon is not one of the three finalists for NL MVP. He actually led the NL in Wins Above Replacement (Fangraphs WAR) among position players. The three finalists are Giancarlo Stanton, Joey Votto, and Paul Goldschmidt, who finished second, fourth, and tenth, respectively.

Superstar Bryce Harper was in the midst of the second-best season of his career when a wet base contributed to a nasty knee injury that kept him out for six weeks. Despite only playing about two-thirds of the season, Harper finished 13^th in WAR among position players.

Second baseman Daniel Murphy continued his assault on big league pitching that began in the second half of the 2015 season (and especially that postseason) with the New York Mets. From the beginning of his career through July 31, 2015, Murphy hit .288/.332/.417, giving him a 107 wRC+. This means he was seven percent better than the average hitter when league and ballpark effects were adjusted for. Since then time, he’s hit .328/.377/.563, for a 144 wRC+. Sorry, Mets fans.

There were two Nationals who had surprisingly good seasons. One was Ryan Zimmerman, who was named the top NL comeback player by the MLBPA for his .303/.358/.573 season. He went from a terrible 2016 season in which he was below replacement-level to a 3.3 WAR season. Michael Taylor also had a three-win season, thanks to a .271/.320/.486 batting line and very good defense in center field.

Shortstop Trea Turner was a three-win player despite playing just 98 games because of broken wrist. He was one of only three players in the NL to steal more than 30 bases. Turner’s 46 steals were third in the league to Dee Gordon’s 60 and Billy Hamilton’s 59, but they both played at least 40 more games than Turner.

The Nationals had two stud pitchers at the top of their rotation in Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg. Scherz and Stras are two of the three finalists for the NL Cy Young Award. Scherzer went 16-6 with a 2.51 ERA and 2.90 FIP in 200.7 innings. Strasburg was 15-4 with a 2.52 ERA and 2.72 FIP in 175.3 innings.

A third starter, Gio Gonzalez, was 15-9 with a 2.96 ERA but a 3.93 FIP, which suggests he had some luck to finish with an ERA under 3.00. Still, he pitched the second-most innings of any season in his career and the best ERA of his career.

The Nationals had the worst bullpen in the NL in the first half, but reinforcements came at mid-season and flipped the script. Ryan Madson (1.37 ERA in 19.7 innings) and Sean Doolittle (2.40 ERA in 30 innings) locked down the late innings. One guy who was there all season and had a surprisingly good year was Matt Albers, with a 1.62 ERA in 61 innings (3.40 FIP).