The Nats have had a good start. They continue to be fed by close wins (yesterday was only the second time they've won a game by more than 2 runs) and a relatively weak schedule* but if they are beating the worst that likely means they aren't the worst themselves, which was an honest question to start the year. But of course we only have the start of the year to go on and that's not much. If you look at all the worst teams last year they all had longer stretches of better baseball at various points. The A's went 13-12 at one point. The Royals finished they year 15-12. The White Sox pulled off a 22-15 stretch, which is actually really good. And the Rockies went 13-8.
So bad teams do have good stretches. But all of these teams started badly. Some had good Mays, other good Augusts, but no good Aprils. But you don't have to go back too far to find a 100 loss team that started 10-11. The 2022 A's did. The short of it is you don't really know until you get well into a season, like Memorial Day if they Nats are around .500 you can feel pretty good they aren't going end the year with triple digit losses.
That's a long way away! Well it's a long season. But let's work in reverse. Let's say the Nats finish April one game around .500. In the past 2 seasons what teams have done that.
In 2023 no one finished the month .500 or one game under. A bunch of teams were one over.
- NYY - finished 82-80
- LAA - 73-89
- PHI - 90-72
- SDP - 82-80
- BOS - 78-84
- CHC - 83-79
In 2022 four teams were around .500
- SEA (+) 90-72
- HOU (+) 106-56
- PHI (E) 87-75
- OAK (-) 60-102
Huh. Well that didn't help. In 2023 we saw kind of what we'd expect. If your April was around .500 you are probably a .500ish team. You might push a bit higher like the Phillies getting 9 over or fall a little lower like the Angels falling 9 under but the window was there. In 2022 we saw one team play amazing the rest of the way*** and another team play terribly****. So I guess anything CAN happen.
Ok well we don't know much, other than this is a nice surprise that they team is not starting slow. Whether it is really real and they might be .500, sort of real and they are going to be not good but competitive, or not real at all, well I guess that doesn't matter right now. But the longer they keep it up the more likely it is this is who they are. That is a fact.
*You wouldn't have thought it to be going into the year but that is what it looks like now. The Astros are among the worst teams in baseball. The Dodgers are barely over .500. There is a big mish mosh in the middle of baseball right now with a handful of actually good teams** and the Nats haven't played any of them, except maybe the Philles or Reds (but not both). Meanwhile they've played the A's, Astros, Rockies, and Giants, half of the worst 8ish teams in the league.
** By record - Yankees, Orioles, Cleveland, Atlanta, Philly, Milwaukee, Cubs. By stats - Orioles, Red Sox, Guardians, Royals, Atlanta, Mets, Milwaukee, Reds.
*** The Astros after starting 7-9 would have runs of 15-2, 20-5, and 22-6 during the year. They'd only lose back to back games 8 times the rest of the year and three in a row once.
**** The A's after starting 10-9 would have
runs of 7-25, 3-12, and 7-21 during the year.