So 20 games into the 2019 season, the Nationals are a .500 team. It’s probably not what many of us were hoping for at this point, but perhaps we’ll have to recalibrate our expectations for this team as the season goes along.
After all, when the Nats first moved to Washington in 2005, the team exceeded expectations by leading the National League East for much of the season, then finished at .500, and in last place. Still, Washington baseball fans were thrilled to have a team after more than 34 years without one.
Similarly, in 2011, after watching the team lose 103 and 93 games in the previous two seasons, Nats fans were thrilled to have a team that reached two games over .500 on June 24, when manager Jim Riggleman suddenly resigned in a contract dispute. John McLaren and Davey Johnson guided the team thereon to an 80-81 finish, but Nats fans had justified hope that their team had turned the corner. Indeed, for the next seven seasons, the Nats finished either first or second in the division and made four trips to the NL Division Series.
Then in 2018, after the team’s first back-to-back postseason appearances, on 97- and 95-win seasons, the team sank to 82-80, and fans felt deflated and disappointed. It all goes to show that how you feel about baseball mediocrity truly does depend on your point of view.
But one trend in the Nats’ 10-10 season has to stop fans dead in their tracks. Closer Sean Doolittle has pitched in every one of the team’s victories to date and has amassed 10 innings pitched with only two saves to show for it. Two of Doolittle’s last three appearances have been in non-save situations where manager Davey Martinez felt he was needed to get the last three outs because no one else could. This pace is not only incompatible with modern bullpen usage but is completely unsustainable.
At this rate, on an 81-81 team, Doolittle would log 81 appearances and 81 innings pitched. On a team that expects to make the postseason, he would run in excess of 90 in each category. Last season, although injured for the last month, he pitched in just 43 games, with 45 innings pitched on an 82-win team. The workhorses were Matt Grace, with 56 appearances and 59 2/3 innings pitched and Sammy Solis, with 56 appearances and 39 1/3 innings pitched. For comparison, on the 108-win Boston Red Sox, closer Craig Kimbrell logged 63 appearances and 62 1/3 innings pitched and Kenley Jansen accumulated 69 appearances and 71 2/3 innings pitched for the 92-win, NL champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
We haven’t seen this kind of pace for a closer since the 1970s, when rubber-armed relivers routinely logged three-inning saves. Mike Marshall set the record for appearances by a relief pitcher and won a Cy Young Award in 1974 by appearing in 106 games with a whopping 208 1/3 innings pitched for the 102-win, NL champion Dodgers, and he followed that up by leading the league in appearances in the next two seasons with Montreal. Shortly afterward, Kent Tekulve came along and racked up seasons of 91 appearances and 135 1/3 innings pitched for an 88-win Pittsburgh team in 1978 and 94 appearances and 131 1/3 innings pitched for the Pirates in 1979, when they won 98 games and were World Series champions.
Since then, managers have used closers more selectively, with most logging about one inning per appearance and usually only in save situations. The major league leader in pitching appearances has exceeded 90 only twice in the past 30 years. The last time we saw such a pace in Washington was in 2006 and 2007 when Jon Rauch, who was not the team’s closer, pitched in 85 and 88 games, respectively, on 71- and 73-win teams.
Doolittle has not shown a propensity to handle this kind of workload. He missed significant time in 2015 and 2017 with shoulder injuries, and the end of last season with a foot injury. The Nats will need to find someone else who can reliably take the ball in non-save situations, or their star closer will likely burn out. If that happens, a .500 finish might be the best Nats fans could hope for.
