Playing Patience or Panic with 4 Washington Nationals' Troubling Early Starts
It's the game you love to hate with the team you probably picked to win the 2015 World Series: It's time to play a round of Patience or Panic with the sub-.500 Washington Nationals.
Major League Baseball just wrapped up its second week of games, meaning we have a sample size just big enough to extract trends and just small enough for them not to matter in the grand scheme of things.
The Nationals' vaunted starting rotation has been more permeable than expected, but the group still owns the eighth-lowest ERA in the majors at 3.13. And the defense behind them, spearheaded by MLB errors leader Ian Desmond, hasn't been much help.
Washington will be back over .500 and contending for the division title in the coming weeks, but it's unrealistic to think all the team's problems will simply disappear with the return of Denard Span—and eventually Anthony Rendon—to the lineup.
Here, we'll take a look at four players who have contributed to the anxiety in the Nationals' first 13 games and try to decide what problems will persist as the season goes on.
RHP Stephen Strasburg
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Stephen Strasburg went 5.1 innings in each of his first two starts and came away with a 6.75 ERA and two losses.
Following a 10-hit, five-earned run outing against the Red Sox last week, ESPN's Buster Olney delivered a State of the Strasburg address on ESPN Radio's SVP & Russillo.
""I can remember, during the postseason last year, talking with players who were basically saying to me, 'You know what? This guy's got to show us something. This guy's got to be better than what he's been so far,'" Olney said. "And I think that's not going to happen until he wins in October and he's consistently dominant throughout a regular season the way a Felix Hernandez or a Clayton Kershaw has been."
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After that concerning start to the season, the 26-year-old righted the ship Sunday with a dominant appearance against the Phillies. Strasburg turned in 7.1 innings, allowing just five hits and one earned run with seven strikeouts in his first win of the season.
His third start of the year leveled his ERA down to 4.50 and put the Nationals within a game of .500.
Verdict: Patience
Olney prefaced that quote by saying Strasburg will always be measured against the expectations of the flame-throwing phenom from San Diego State. That's why two duds to start the season are magnified and intrinsically panic-inducing.
But last season, it took Strasburg until May to drop his ERA under 4.00 for good, and he still finished with 14 wins and the most strikeouts in the NL.
SS Ian Desmond
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To put Ian Desmond's April defense in the same category as death and taxes would be an insult to death and taxes.
Every year, Washington's longtime shortstop spends the first month of the season bobbling balls and bouncing throws to first. This year is no exception, and Desmond has racked up a MLB-leading eight errors in 13 games.
But to his credit, Desmond definitely isn't pretending the problem doesn't exist. He took ownership of the situation after the Nationals' Saturday loss to the Phillies, via The Washington Post's Chelsea Janes.
""Brutal," said Desmond, who is accustomed to poor defensive Aprils, but none this troublesome. "But I've been here before. I'm going to work my way out of it. I don’t think I can work any harder than I'm working. I guess if this is the biggest problem in my life I got, then I guess I'm doing all right. At the end of the year, it's going to be good looking back at this and knowing I made my way through it."
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Verdict: Panic
By no means am I suggesting Matt Williams should bench Desmond. He is batting .314, so that's out of the question.
The manager confirmed his plan is to let Desmond figure things out in due time.
"He is going to be back out there tomorrow playing short for us and helping us win a game," Williams said, via MLB.com's Bill Ladson.
That's the right decision, but it's still scary to wonder how much more damage Desmond will do before his path of destruction ends. While he does have a track record of tightening up his defense after the first month, it's not crazy to suggest his eight errors have actively cost Washington at least a couple of games this season.
And for a team like Washington that's supposed to win the World Series but has yet to crack the .500 mark, losing any more games by way of the error is a terrifying prospect.
1B Ryan Zimmerman
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This offseason, Ryan Zimmerman was apparently bitten by a radioactive Keith Hernandez and developed first baseman superpowers.
But Zimmerman's highlight reel full of acrobatic diving stops has masked the 30-year-old's anemic start at the plate. Through 13 games, he's batting just .184. That's the second-worst average among qualifying National League first basemen, behind only Philadelphia's Ryan Howard.
For roughly the first week of the season, the entire team was asleep at the plate. The Nationals averaged just over two runs per game in their first seven contests. But Washington has hit its stride since then, scoring at a rate of six runs per game, and Zimmerman has yet to catch up.
"This happens every year, and it's exhausting answering questions about it, honestly," he said of the team's early offensive struggles, via CSN Washington's Chase Hughes. "But I understand that you guys have to ask. It is what it is."
Verdict: Patience
You can't really overstate how ironic this is, but Zimmerman's value right now is his defense, and his sluggish start at the plate isn't really hurting the team.
And true to form, he's still hitting well enough with runners in scoring position. He leads the team with 11 RBI so far this year.
Zimmerman has never finished a season batting worse than .266, and that was just his second full season in the majors. Even last year, when he played just 61 games, he put together a .280 average.
Washington's elder statesman will be just fine.
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RHP Jordan Zimmermann
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Jordan Zimmermann probably got the low point of his entire season out of the way last week in Boston. The Red Sox chased him out of the game in just 2.1 innings after he gave up nine hits and seven earned runs.
He improved in his next start, turning in 6.1 innings and giving up two earned runs against Philadelphia Saturday, but he certainly hasn't looked like the guy who finished fifth in NL Cy Young voting last season.
"He still wasn't as sharp as he normally is," Matt Williams said via MASN's Byron Kerr. "Threw strikes, but wasn't quite as sharp as normal. His velo was there. It was strong, felt good, just couldn't get it done today."
Zimmermann is riding a two-game losing streak, something he only did once in his 32 starts last year. And his 6.14 ERA is the highest among Washington's five starters.
Verdict: Panic
If you're Jordan Zimmermann, you shouldn't panic. You'll find your top-of-the-rotation stuff some time this year, if not in your next outing.
But if you're a fan who owns a No. 27 Nationals jersey, you should panic. Because Zimmermann's slow start could be enough to convince Washington to trade him before the deadline.
The righty is in a contract year after he and the team failed to agree on an extension in the offseason. And the Nationals floated his name in trade talks all winter, including a proposed deal with the Red Sox, as reported by The Washington Post's James Wagner.
Tanner Roark won 15 games as a starter last season, and he's perfectly capable to reclaiming his spot in the rotation should Zimmermann leave.
The Nationals need help in a lot of areas, none of which is starting pitching, so Washington could conceivably flip Zimmermann for more depth if it finds the right suitor.
*All stats courtesy of MLB.com
Danny Garrison is a Washington Nationals Featured Columnist on Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @DannyLGarrison, where you can reprimand him for jinxing your team and hold him accountable for any wrong predictions.
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