If no one has already done it, someone in Washington should file a missing persons report with the District of Columbia metropolitan police. Note I said persons – plural – because many members of the district’s major league baseball team have been missing for months. In fact, it might already be too late for a missing persons report to do any good. If it hasn’t already, time is running out.
As recently as the start of the season, the Nationals were widely considered to be a clear-cut favorite to win the National League East title. More than that, many so-called experts and fans alike expected the Nationals to go all the way to the World Series and probably win it.
Five months later, this is where the Nationals are. The Pittsburgh Pirates swept a three-games series from the Mets recently, and the Nationals couldn’t slice even a game off the Mets 4 ½-game lead over them because the Nationals lost all three games they played against the San Francisco Giants.
Since then, circumstances have become even worse for the team that was supposed to erase from the reputation of the nation’s capital “first in war, first in peace, last in the American League.”
The capital earned that ignominious sobriquet when the town’s team, the Senators, played and played poorly in the American League. Given new life in a new league with new owners, Washington was supposed to rise again.
A new corps of players was supposed to resuscitate baseball life in the district, but the Nationals are nearing the end of another President’s term and nothing has changed.
The names of the Nationals regulars have appeared in their lineups most of the season, but they have been missing in action nonetheless. I called the D.C. metropolitan police department to see if I could learn anything about their mysterious absence from first place.
“Has anyone reported them missing?” the desk officer who answered the telephone asked, repeating my question to make sure he heard me right. “No, no one has reported them missing.”
The Nationals led the N.L. East at the All-Star break, and a victory the day the season resumed increased their record to 49-39 and their lead to 3 games. However, five fatal weeks followed. The Nationals lost 20 of their next 29 games, and the reinforced New York Mets whizzed by them, winning 16 of 29.
The Mets, though, were just starting. Entering Friday’s game, they had won 30 of their last 45 games, including the last 7, and had taken a season-high 6 ½-game lead over the Nationals.
Who said the Mets wouldn’t make the post-season? OK, I admit I did in a column posted here three months ago. Unexpected events of the last six weeks, however, have drastically altered the N. L. East landscape.
There has been, of course, the inexplicable play of the Nationals. But without the other event the Mets would have been unlikely to have been in position to overtake the Nationals. As the non-waiver trading deadline approached, Sandy Alderson, the Mets’ general manager, who had been lying in the weeds, emerged and made three trades.
Actually, Alderson made four trades. He got infielders Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson from Atlanta in one, reliever Tyler Clippard from Oakland in another and outfielder Carlos Gomez from Milwaukee in yet another. Before the Gomez trade was official, though, Alderson cancelled it, claiming Mets’ doctors had found that Gomez had a hip problem.
The Brewers were skeptical, saying Gomez had no hip problem, and they turned around and traded him to Houston, where he has played 26 of the Astros’ 27 games. At the same time, the Mets acquired another outfielder, Yoenis Cespedes, from Detroit.
The Cespedes trade prompted speculation that Alderson killed the Gomez deal because after making it he found he could get Cespedes and preferred him.
If that was the case, give Alderson credit for creative thinking because Cespedes has been the central force behind the Mets’ month-long onslaught. In 26 games, in which the Mets have an 18-8 record, he has driven in 23 runs, has hit 8 home runs and has a .284 batting average, .341 on-base percentage and .560 slugging percentage.
Alderson did not return a telephone call seeking comment on the Gomez-Cespedes speculation, but whatever motivated his change of mind, the Mets have benefited.
With five weeks left in the season, neither team figures to benefit from the schedule. Their schedules are similar. They have six games remaining with each other, which favors the Mets because the Nationals would have to win all six or at least five to slice significant fat off the Mets’ margin.
Otherwise they both play the division’s three other, losing teams and one series against an A.L. East geographical rival. The Mets get the Yankees, the Nationals the Orioles.
I didn’t see the Mets being in this seemingly commanding position this late in the season, but this isn’t the same Mets’ team that was in the dugout and on the field the first four months. That team had terrific starting pitching but not enough hitting to support the pitching. The Mets offered clear proof that teams can’t win games, 0-0.
The Mets and the Nationals weren’t supposed to be in their present positions on Sept. 1. To hear the so-called experts talk or the digitally inclined to project before the season, the Nationals would easily win the division title and the Mets, at best, would contend for a wild-card spot.
I have never liked pre-season predictions or projections, even when I had to make them as part of my pre-season preview for The New York Times. Too much happens during the season that can affect pre-season views – injuries, for one; trades, for another.
The pre-season projection that catches my attention is PECOTA, a typically arrogant formula concocted by a baseball fan with too much free computer time. In this instance it’s Nate Silver, who made a name for himself not in baseball but in politics with his impressive accuracy of calling the outcome of the 2008 presidential election in 49 of the 50 states.
At the time, I believe I suggested that Silver should stick to politics. But his PECOTA concoction goes on, now under the aegis of Baseball Prospectus.
PECOTA is an acronym for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, a sabermetric system that forecasts performance of teams and players. Named for a former major league infielder, Bill Pecota, who was a career .249 hitter, the system has its advocates and its critics. Include me in the latter group. I cite as Exhibit A the pre-season PECOTA projections for this season.
PECOTA projected Los Angeles and St. Louis to win their divisions with 97 and 89 wins, respectively. The third division winner? Washington with 92 wins, 10 more than the Mets. The Mets began play Sunday with a 5 ½ games lead over the Nationals.
How about the American League? PECOTA projected division winners to be Boston, Detroit and Anaheim. To reach PECOTA’s projected records, the Red Sox would have to win 27 of their last 33 games, the Tigers 22 of their last 33 and the Angels 25 of their last 33.
At the start of play Sunday, Boston and Detroit were in last place in their respective divisions.
Pre-season PECOTA utterly disrespected Kansas City. The 2014 American League champions had an 89-73 record last season and PECOTA projected a 72-90 record for this season. The Royals, before Sunday’s game, led the A.L. Central by a whopping 14 games with an 80-49 record, having already exceeded the projection assigned to them.
The Houston Astros lead the A.L. West by 4 games with a 72-58 record despite PECOTA’s projection of a of a last-place finish with a 77-85 record.
PECOTA considered the Blue Jays (82-80) and the Yankees (80-82) also-rans in the A.L. East. They are contending for the division title, now a game and a half apart.
PECOTA had the Cubs finishing 82-80, the Pirates and the Brewers each 80-82 in the N.L. Central. At the moment, the Pirates are 30 games over .500 and fighting St. Louis for the division title. The Cubs are in a less enviable position but in good shape for a wild-card spot nonetheless. The Brewers barely show up in the standings, 21 games under .500.
PECOTA, though, uses all sorts of statistics to project teams’ won-lost records. I think that’s where the arrogance comes in because it is saying, “We are more sophisticated than everyone else because we have this unfathomable formula.
The primary question remains: What happened to the Nationals?
Mike Rizzo, the chief of the Nationals’ baseball operations, didn’t return a telephone call to discuss the answer to that question.
Besides their failure to win the division title, their poor performance may cost Bryce Harper the most valuable player award. By leading the league in so many statistical categories, Harper is clearly the best player in the league, but the team’s failure to make the playoffs could undermine his value, prompting voter support for someone such as Andrew McCutchen of Pittsburgh.
But the team’s over-all failure would be much worse than Harper’s individual failure. Harper is not underachieving; his team is.