Stan Kasten: Nats Could Begin Spring Training with Current Roster

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More than 4,000 Washington Nationals' fans braved the winter weather to pack Nationals Park and listen to team president Stan Kasten give his "State of the Team" speech.

The Nationals called it NatsFest 2009.

Washington Post reporter Chico Harlan called it the "Stanifesto."

Catchy. Very catchy.

Kasten spoke at length about the state of the Washington Nationals with less than a month before the start of Spring Training.

He was candid to be sure, but was he right?

Kasten underscored-over and over-that last season's 102 losses, the worst in baseball in 2008, was a direct result of the team having the youngest (read: least experienced) roster in all of baseball.

He also told the crowd that the Nationals lost more player-days to the disabled list than any team in all of baseball.

While he didn't say it, he implied it. The Nationals could have survived the season as the youngest team, or the most injured.

But not both.

Fair assessment?

Absolutely.

A cursory check of the Nationals' starting lineup finds at least 400 games missed to injury during the 2008 season, and that number swells to more than 450 when you add the games missed by the starting rotation, mostly by Shawn Hill and Matt Chico.

It got so bad it was almost comical.

Nick Johnson went down and was replaced by Dmitri Young, who went down and was replaced by Aaron Boone who went down and the Nationals found themselves playing second baseman Ronnie Belliard at first.

Until-you guessed it-he went down as well.

Kasten believes, as I do, that at some point the injury bug will have its fill of Nationals' players and will move on in search of fresher meat.

And then Kasten got to the heart of his speech.

The Nationals have made great strides this off-season with the acquisition of outfielder Josh Willingham and starting pitchers Daniel Cabrera and Scott Olsen.

And try as they might, the Nationals have had no luck luring any quality free agents to Washington.

This is where would have inserted some good news if he had some.

But he didn't.

He took a deep breath and told the crowd exactly what they didn't want to hear:

"I don't know that the team is going to be much different between now and Opening Day."

Crap.

Oh, Kasten went on to talk about improvements at the ball park and better food and other such window dressing, but the only thing that mattered was that he believed that the Nationals as currently constituted was probably what the team would trot out on to the field come Opening Day.

Let's get passed the whole Thomas Boswell shrieking mee-mee aspect of what Kasten said.

How good, or bad, will the Nationals be in 2009 if the roster remains as it is?

Dr. Phil says that the best predictor of future actions are past actions.

I agree.

So lets take a look at the team's current starting lineup—as best as I can ascertain it—along with those players' career statistics based on their playing a full 162-game season.

To be sure, every player listed won't survive the season unscathed, but on the other hand, a few of the players will likely play above their career averages. So these numbers should be very representative of what they should produce.

There are a couple of caveats, to be sure. Lasting Milledge should do much better than his career numbers as he continues to gain experience. Elijah Dukes' numbers are based on his 2008 season alone. His 2007 stats were too skewed by all the arrests to be a fair representation of what he had done at the major league level.

And Jesus Flores' stats are based on him playing a full 162 games, which he won't play. 130 games is more reasonable.

Stan Kasten is right.

The Washington Nationals will be okay if the team can't add any additional players through trades or the free agent market.

No, there is no Alfonso Soriano in the lineup, but neither is there a Mario Mendoza.

In 2008, the Nationals as a team hit 117 home runs and drove in 608 runs. If their career averages holds true, this starting lineup could hit 25 more homers and drive in 20 more RBI than last year's entire team.

Last season, the mighty Mets (well, at least their starting eight) clubbed just eight more homers and about the same number of RBI as the projected numbers for next year's Nationals.

That's not too bad, right?

Look, I know that all the woulda's and shoulda's and coulda's don't count for much. The Nationals could just as easily have another injury plagued year as not.

But the time has come for a little optimism in the Nats' Nation.

The offense can be above average in 2009, maybe even a little better than that. How many games will this "can be a good offense if everything breaks right" win in 2009?

I have no idea.

If the pitching staff (which we'll cover tomorrow) performs well, .500 is not out of the question, maybe a game or two above. If they tank, if the kids get hammered, then things won't look so rosy.

Seventy-three wins if the pitching sucks and 83 wins if Jordan Zimmermann and Daniel Cabrera pitch well enough sounds about right to be.

What say you?