Washington Nationals: Team preview and prediction for 2020 season

Washington Nationals: 2020 Preview and Prediction

Personally, I wouldn’t be so quick to toss the Washington Nationals aside considering we’re shaping up for a shortened season with potentially an expanded playoff format. That means if these Nats can simply “get in,” then they’ll be right where they were last year. And with the shortened workload of the regular season, we could very well see this veteran group peak at the right time again.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have some big concerns with this team heading into 2020.

First and foremost, World series/championship hangovers are a real thing. Not only have we not had a baseball champion repeat in two decades, but the same goes for football where we haven’t seen a repeat champion since the 2003-04 Patriots, as well as hockey where even though the Penguins repeated in 2016 and 2017, the NHL had not seen a repeat champ before that since 1997-98.

Something happens to championship-winning teams the year after they win it all for whatever reason. Everything that went their way the previous year doesn’t carry over into the next.

If that’s once again the case, are Howie Kendrick and Kurt Suzuki going to have ceiling years again at ages 36?

This team had three starting pitchers (Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin) finish in the top eleven in the NL CY Young. Are all three going to have those types of years again? Is Strasburg, who’s notorious for health issues, going to stay healthy the season following his big extension?

These are all interesting questions that will be answered over the course of this year, but the two most intriguing ones are with Strasburg and Scherzer at the top of this Nats rotation.

Stras is the reigning World Series MVP and rightfully so. He was unbelievable all season long going 18-6 in the regular season with a 3.32 ERA and 251 punch-outs (the most of his career), as well as in the postseason going 5-0 with a 0.92 ERA. But injuries have been a big part of his career dating back to when the Nats benched him with an innings limit in the middle of a postseason run because he had just undergone Tommy John.

Now make no mistake about it, Stras certainly looked to have broken those chains and entered a new era of his career last season, but as with team World Series hangovers, we may also see a World Series MVP hangover, especially for a guy who just signed a big extension. There always seems to be some kind of pullback following a championship performance and/or a big contract extension, so it’s a legitimate fear that Stras will fall victim to that narrative.

As for Scherzer, look… Max Scherzer is one of the top pitchers in baseball even to this day. But he’s 35 now about to be 36 in July and one could argue last year wasn’t his typical dominant Max Scherzer year going 11-7 in a season where he missed a good chunk of time with his lingering back issues.

Didn’t he also miss Game Five of the World Series with those same back spasms? I’m not trying to say anything about anything because Mad Max is still one of the greats…………..but do you think possibly, maybe, just a tad that he could be on a bit of a downward slope?

I certainly hope not, but I think this is the time where we’re going to start to see the greats (that I grew up watching, personally) like Scherz, Justin Verlander, and Clayton Kershaw all start to wind down.

I know, I know I’m talking blasphemy. But it’s a real concern of mine, and Scherzer could…………I’m not saying he will, but he could start to regress.