Saturday, November 10, 2007

 

Blowing Off the Dust...

Well, it's been another eventful season for our Nationals. As my legions of readers (all two of you) no doubt realized, I've neglected the blog terribly this season. I offer a multitude of reasons for the lack of postings:
  1. A second child (another girl, and cute as a button!).
  2. Other stuff.
That said, I have been been following the Nats as closely as ever this season, just not blogging about them. It's becoming a habit, but at the beginning of the past two season I promised myself that I would do my best to keep up with the daily grind of a 162 game season on the blog. Unfortunately, I've quickly fallen out of the habit in the past two years. I think it just suits my trains of thought more to evaluate and comment on the team once I have a full season's worth of data on which to rely.

With that in mind, I'd like to start my renewed interest in the blog with a look back at my last posting, which sadly occurred more than 7 months ago. In it, I made a bunch of predictions about the then-impending 2008 season. I realize that we're already more than a month into the Nats' offseason and that my esteemed colleagues in the Natosphere have already posted their excellent season roundups. Nonetheless, I consider this my tune-up post, so let's see how I did:
Player most likely to outperform expectations - Not that anyone on this club really has high expectations to live up, of course. That said, I know it's wrong and that he'll just break my heart in the end, but I'll go out on a limb and buy into the spring Guzman hype. .265/.320/.400 for the Guz sounds about right.
Conclusion: Incomplete data. The injured hammy on Opening Day along with the season-ending thumb injury on June 24 resulted in only 174 AB in 2007. While this isn't exactly a Rick Short type of sample size on which to base overblown projections, I think Guz would have likely met or exceeded expectations had he been healthy enough for 400+ AB.
Player most likely to underperform expectations - J-Patt, unfortunately. I just can't see him staying healthy for an entire season. PECOTA projects a meager 95 IP, which I think he'll beat, but I don't think he'll make it to 150 IP. Let's say 115 IP, 4.20 ERA.
Conclusion: Even worse than expected. Recurring injuries limited Patterson to less than 50 IP for the second straight season. At this point, I think he's one more underwhelming performance away from officially deserving the flame-out tag. In the meantime, we get to enjoy the offseason "drama" of weekly updates on J-Patt's recovery. With the Rays in need of starting pitching, I wonder if Bowden hasn't dangled Patterson as part of his rumored interest in oft-injured CF Rocco Baldelli?
Zimm v.2 - No sophomore slump for the pride of Clarendon. .300-25-100, and your starting third baseman for the NL All-Star team (David Wright, who? Miguel Cabrera, wha?)
Conclusion: D'oh! Zimm did indeed undergo a mild sophomore slump, regressing slightly by most offensive measures and in the field (8 more errors than in '06), though he remains a significantly better defensive 3B than league average.
Attendance - The season ticket delivery snafu, the removal of Hard Times Cafe, and a fairly awful team do not attendance records make. Nats fall below 2 million in attendance on the year for the first time since they returned to Washington.
Conclusion: Yahtzee! Admittedly, this wasn't a hard prediction to make, what with the exceedingly low preseason expectations and it being the last year at RFK. For what it's worth, I also think that 2007 will be the last season in a generation that the team will attract less than 2 million fans.
Date when Nook Logan gets replaced in the starting lineup - May 20 vs Baltimore. People who look at that .351 spring OBP and see hope need to take a crash course on why you shouldn't rely on small sample sizes.
Conclusion: Semi-D'oh! Logan did indeed continue starting when he got back from his Opening Day foot strain, but his .265/.304/.345 line in 325 AB did nothing to change my opinion that he doesn't belong in any team's starting lineup, despite the strong defensive showing. He flitted in and out of the starting lineup and never really got going aside from a brief hot stretch in July-August. Needham has the definitive take on the 2007 Nats CF position and I highly recommend it.
Trade deadline moves - Dmitri Young gets traded to the Cubs to fill in for an injured Derrek Lee, giving Casto the playing time he deserves at 1B.
Conclusion: Nuh-uh. Totally off on this one. Meathook blew away everyone's expectations and got a deserved spot on the All-Star team and the NL's Comeback Player of the Year Award. Did he deserve the 2 year/$10M deal? Given the dearth of free agent talent at this position this offseason and the as-yet unknown factor of Nick Johnson's health, I cautiously applauded this deal. In kind of a bass-akwards way, Young's deal also didn't cost the Nats compensation picks, since he barely failed to make the Type B cut in Elias' rankings.
2007 Record - 64-98, 5th place in the NL East. I think Shawn Hill will surprise and Jerome Williams will hold down a spot in the rotation, but I don't expect to see Nick Johnson back before mid-August and the effect of his lost OBP can't be overstated.
Conclusion: Way wrong. 9 games off should be cause for me to hang my head in shame and teach me that it's OK to be a biased fanboy from time to time rather than a stat geek.

So that's it for the first post-season posting. Don't call it a comeback. I never left.

# posted by JammingEcono @ 3:00 PM
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