2014 MLB Playoffs: Making a Case for the Washington Nationals as Your New Team

You're a fan without a nation. 

The 2014 MLB Playoff field is set, and while you mourn your beloved New York Yankees from your home probably nowhere near New York, you need a surrogate team. Well, the Washington Nationals bandwagon is accepting applications, and no other franchise makes a better case for your temporary affection. 

The single biggest selling point for Washington isn't its National League-best 96-66 record, but the way in which those 96 games were won. 

And the only way to truly understand the grit that defines the Nationals is to take an uncomfortable trip down memory lane.

The Nationals don't play with a chip on their shoulder; they carry around a family-sized bag that they picked up from a 2013 season that can only be qualified as an abject failure.

The Nats were coming off a 2012 campaign that saw them earn the best record in baseball, and the core of that season's roster was still intact for 2013. But the Nationals underperformed from the get go, finding themselves in the conversation for "baseball's most disappointing team," according to an article by SportingNews' Justin McGuire that year. 

The individual parts were a disappointment—i.e. Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg—and their sum was a disappointment. 

It is for that reason that Washington is taking nothing for granted this year, and it's made the Nationals the most fun team in baseball to watch. And from top to bottom, every member of Washington's roster wants to win every game. 

And they want it bad.

In a season that spans 162 games across five-plus months, two distinct moments during the summer of 2014 can be pointed to as evidence of that spirit. 

In middle-to-late August, Washington matched its franchise-record win streak of 10 games. 

That's not the impressive part. 

Half of those games were won in walk-off fashion. The Washington Post's Neil Greenberg calculated the likelihood of a run like that to be around 0.0977 percent. 

That's the kind of season 2014 has been for Washington. The Nationals are extremely talented, and they've won the games they're supposed to win, which should have been good for six or seven of those 10 games. 

The remaining wins in the streak? Baseball giveth and baseball taketh away, and the Nationals have made good on the former this year.

The other instance that encapsulated what Washington has been able to do this year fell on the very last day of the season.

Jordan Zimmermann's no-hitter in game No. 162 of the year saw him exercise complete dominance over helpless Marlins hitters, until the very last out. 

Steven Souza Jr. took over in left field before the start of the ninth inning, making just his 21st big league appearance of the season.

The rookie then made arguably the best catch of the season on a line drive from Miami's Christian Yelich to preserve the first no-hitter in franchise history.

From players like Souza just cutting their teeth in the majors to the host of veterans Washington added to its roster this season—like Kevin Frandsen, Nate Schierholtz and Nate McLouth—every National seems to have bought into first-year manager Matt Williams' plan. 

But while that deep and eclectic Washington bench has stepped up when their names have been called, it's the everyday starters playing up to and beyond their potential that has made Williams a candidate for NL Manager of the Year.

Outfielder Denard Span came over from the Twins before the 2013 season. In the two years he's been with the Nationals, he's created the phenomenon known as #Spanning and, in 2014, set Washington's franchise record for hits in a season with 184. 

In just his first full season, third baseman Anthony Rendon collected the third-most at-bats and the fourth-highest WAR in the National League.

It's also rumored that he's never frowned in his life, and Nationals hitting coach Rick Schu told The Washington Post's Adam Kilgore that he thinks Rendon can win Washington's first batting title before the third baseman's young career is over. 

First baseman Adam LaRoche's 92 runs batted in were good for fifth-most in the NL, and he finished the season with 26 home runs. 

That's just to name a few, and you'll notice I made no mention of Harper or Ryan Zimmerman.

The two most recognizable field players on the Washington roster were inactive for a combined total of 201 games this season. And in their absence, the Nationals have gotten by on those career years from the rest of the lineup and their pitching rotation. 

A pitching rotation that will mow you down. 

Washington's staff earned the best ERA in the bigs at 3.03 this season, fueled by one of the scariest starting rotations in recent memory.

Scary enough to make ESPN's Doug Glanville say this: 

The Nationals' 106 quality starts are the second-most in the majors, and Strasburg's career-high 242 strikeouts are top-five in baseball.

This year's playoffs feature a potpourri of relative newcomers and frustrated postseason regulars that can't win the big one.

Of the 10 teams, only San Francisco and St. Louis have won a World Series in the last 10 years. 

The Nationals' path to the pennant will see them play either the Giants or the Pirates in the divisional round and then the winner of the series between the Dodgers and the Cardinals in the NLCS. 

And as a franchise that has only existed in its current state since 2005, Washington will have far fewer die-hard supporters than any of the teams it could possibly face. 

So for those of you who are staring into the hopeless void that is October with your team's schedule clear until pitchers and catchers report in February, you'd be well-served to latch on to the Nationals while you can still say "I told you so" as they hoist the World Series trophy.

Unless you're a Braves fan.

Bryce Harper probably burned that bridge for you a long time ago.  

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