What to Watch For This Nats Season

Last week on Opening Day I came out strongly in favor of being optimistic about the direction of these new Nats and was rewarded with a 3-1 start including a joyous 13-2 beatdown of the Philadelphia Phillies, so naturally I have to be thrilled to be proven correct, right?

Well, not really, and not because they’re now 3-2 and I might’ve already missed my bragging window. While I remain optimistic these results are not really what I was talking about. The new Nats front office and coaching staff are not miracle workers who discovered and built an NL MVP candidate from a waiver wire pickup on his sixth team in six seasons (Joey Wiemer). Nor do I think they can suddenly turn guys like Keibert Ruiz or Jake Irvin into viable major leaguers. They are scientists not alchemists, building an evidence-based, repeatable process that makes small impacts that can create an edge when the talent level is even.

I will not be looking at the win-loss record, or runs scored, or even individual player’s OPS or ERA as a measure of the team’s success this year. Instead, what I’m focused on is how the Nats develop and establish their process throughout the season. How do they tailor recommendations to each individual player’s needs? How do they manage the feedback loop between process and results? Can they maintain player attention and buy in when the team is 15+ games under .500 in early July?

The old coaching regime loved to give basically the same advice to every player, focus on contact over power and hit to all fields on offense, and attack in the zone without concern for velocity on the pitching side. For some players that’s great advice, for most it was not, and it was a lazy, universal approach to development. Paul Toboni and Blake Butera have both talked a lot about developing individual improvement plans for each player and working with them to understand how they measure progress against the set goals.

How we as fans can track that progress is by following three stats for hitters: chase rate (swings at pitches outside of the zone), exit velocity (max and 90^th percentile), and in-zone contact rate. For pitchers, we’re interested in velocity, pitch shape (vertical attack angle), and pitch usage percentages (changing existing usage, adding a new pitch). Velocity and pitch shape should mostly be self-explanatory, for the usage what I’m following is how well the Nats identify a pitchers best/worst pitches and help them develop custom attack plans to emphasize their strengths more. For example, Jake Irvin has a pretty bad fastball, can the Nats help him reduce his usage of it while still finding a way to get through innings efficiently?

If a player had trouble in one of these areas last season – and every Nats hitter struggled with at least one – we can track it for them. The actual improvement plans can be different. For example, CJ Abrams and Ruiz may both focus on exit velocity, but for Abrams that might be swing improvements to unlock more power, while for Ruiz it could be reducing his swing rate so he has less weak contact. Below is a table with my first guess at what the Nats could be focusing on with their carryover players from last year.

Overall, the potential improvements will likely be small, a couple of percentage points or miles per hour, but what we’re measuring here is the Nats’ process and how effective they could be in the future with players starting from a stronger talent foundation. To that end, this will be a full season project, because the other key will be helping their players keep up these improvements as the grind of the season wears them down and opposing teams adjust their plans of attack. Luckily the Nationals have an excellent test case in Abrams who has proven over the past two seasons that he struggles mightily with staying invested throughout the season. Fewer Nats players experiencing a post-All Star break crash will show these coaches are successful in engaging players when the enthusiasm of spring has fully worn off.

Finally, these Nationals players will present a great test case for how the coaching staff and front office adjusts when their first improvement plan doesn’t work. Sometimes all the training in the world isn’t going to help a player lay off the pitch off the corner or keep his fastball up in the zone. When the weakness we identified in the stats at the start of the year still looks like a weakness in July, do the Nats stubbornly stick to the process because they refuse to acknowledge the results, or can they find a new point of emphasis to work around the weakness?

To that end, sadly five surprisingly decent games are not enough to make any sort of definitive statement of the effectiveness of the new crew, even if it does feel great to watch a team that looks good, for however brief a time that is.