This Nationals Team Is … What, Exactly?

Baseball games are not football games, which is why it can be silly — narratively dishonest, even — to treat any one of 162 as if it’s one of 17. Yet throughout every baseball season, there’s always a handful of games that feel like they might define a team, for better but much more often for worse.

The Nationals played one of those games on Wednesday. Or, more accurately, they blew one of those games in an almost unbelievable way. They entered the eighth inning in San Francisco up eight runs. Then, after a historic implosion from their bullpen, they lost, 11-10, on a walk-off grand slam. The difference between a win and the loss felt seismic, even if, in the standings, it was only the difference between a 35-34 record instead of 36-33.

And so, when the Nats returned home Friday, their manager, Blake Butera, told reporters he was curious to see how his club would respond. And after dropping the series opener to the Mariners, the response, across Saturday and Sunday, looked like scoring 18 runs in back-to-back blowout wins. The Nationals beat the Mariners 8-3, then 10-1.

By taking two of three from Seattle, the Nats are 37-35 and have won eight of their last 10 series. It’s now the third week of June and they still lead the majors in runs scored (six more than the Dodgers, the best team money can buy, in the same number of games). If the season had ended Sunday — which, to be crystal clear, it didn’t — the Nationals would have missed the final wild card spot by a game. So what’s any of that mean, other than the finale in San Francisco, deflating as it was, didn’t sink this refreshing year?

Through the widest lens, it means the trade deadline is one series closer and the Nats have yet to fold into what they were supposed to be. Supposed to, of course, can be an even sillier concept than treating a single baseball game as an inflection point. But the people in Vegas typically have a decent feel for how teams will fare, and they projected these Nationals to win around 65 games. In a twist, then, the Nats are on pace to finish 83-79, almost all because of an offense that continues to rake. And as more time passes without a meaningful regression, the approaching deadline gets even more compelling, since that’s when each executive offers the most honest public assessment of their team — solely with whether they add pieces to make a run (buy) or trade away parts with an eye on future years (sell).

It is also the first deadline for Paul Toboni, the Nationals’ new president of baseball operations. When I spoke with Toboni on June 1, he brought up the tension of buying or selling at the Aug. 3 deadline before I could (though it was pretty high on my list of questions). It wasn’t out of nowhere, necessarily, since I was asking about roster-building strategies and what he had gleaned from finishing the first two months of the season with a winning record. But it was clearly on his mind, shown by how he answered a question about whether he would let positive early results influence his plans for this year in a meaningful way.

“So we talk a lot about being really stubborn with the vision that I basically just talked about,” Toboni said, referring to not being a prisoner of the moment with his decision-making, which he feels would be a disservice to fans who deserve the best possible approach for now and later. “But then be flexible in the details of how to achieve that. If the team was pushing like a 100-win year then that’s the extreme, right? Should we operate differently at the deadline than we would if we were on pace to win 60 games? Like, yeah, we absolutely should, because we have a chance to make the playoffs and make a run at the World Series and we should operate differently when that’s the case.

“What we all struggle with, I think, or we’re forced to really think strongly about is: Typically when you are in buy mode at the deadline, you are taking away wins in future years and pulling them forward to the present. The question is if we should do that and to what extent should we do that? And I think how we’re operating right now is like, we’re going to be open-minded on everything, but first let’s just worry about realizing our potential over these next 60 days or whatever it is, so we can put ourselves in position to actually make that decision.”

I noted that, in the two examples he presented, the team was either on a 100-win pace or a 60-win pace, which would each offer the easy answer on whether to buy or sell.

“I know, I know,” he said with a laugh, a nod to how the Nats’ current trajectory — the fringe of the playoff race if they kept playing like this for the next six weeks — would be the most complicated outcome for someone juggling a surprising burst of success with a long-term plan. Did that mean he was relieved the deadline is in early August and not early June, when we talked in the Nats’ dugout?

“Yeah,” Toboni said without missing a beat. “But we’re also going to be prepared if we are in that position, like, how do we tackle this? And I think clarity comes with time.”

Since that interview, the Nationals were swept by the Marlins at home, then went 4-2 on a West Coast trip, then smacked the Mariners’ elite pitching staff around with their bats. The strengths on offense are loud: James Wood, CJ Abrams, James Wood, a much improved Keibert Ruiz, James Wood, more power from Luis García Jr., more power from Jacob Young, a recent surge from Daylen Lile, 10 homers from Curtis Mead, better swings from Dylan Crews of late, then James Wood, James Wood and James Wood. (I mean, seriously, with his 20th homer and two other hits Sunday, Wood has a .972 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, behind only Shohei Ohtani in the National League).

The pitching remains the issue, entering the week with the sixth-worst staff ERA (4.66) in the majors and the second most homers allowed (102). One bright spot, at least in recent weeks, is Miles Mikolas, who was getting pummeled in April but now hasn’t allowed a run in his last 11 ⅔ innings, including seven shutout frames against the Mariners on Sunday. Seattle managed just three hits off him, all singles. Mikolas’s fastball velocity has ticked up. His season to date is a testament to the new staff’s ability to improve individual performance, including, though not limited to, pairing him with a reliever who pitches the first inning of his appearances. The same goes for starter Zack Littell, who had a bad April before thriving in May (although he had a rough outing Friday).

Players getting better as the season goes on certainly matters. But eventually, usually well before October, there’s a point at which concerted, data-driven player development can only take a roster so far, especially if it’s been punching above its weight. At the moment, whether the Nats’ offense is sustainable is less of a question than if their pitching staff can hold up enough to let the bats keep influencing outcomes. They have the fifth-best run differential in the NL (+13) because they can flat out hit. Butera, though, has often had to walk a tightrope with his bullpen, which has covered the most innings in the majors by a good margin. For much of the season, the first-year manager has been short on reliable lefties in the pen, though he’s impressed people throughout the organization with how he’s balanced a matchup-based approach with not throwing pitchers in three consecutive games.

If you flattened the Nats’ situation to a basic set of facts, a team with the league’s best offense, a team hanging on the edge of the wild-card race, should jump at any opportunity to improve its bullpen and rotation. But as Toboni put it, time will soon tell whether those facts still apply in late July.