The Washington Nationals homestand, just completed, illustrates in miniature a baseball fan’s experiences over a lifetime.
The Nats are roughly a .500 team. That’s the talent level you’d expect if you were a fan from age 6 to 96. But, for 10 straight days, every game at Nats Park was experienced by ardent fans as either a joyous 1.000, full of promise, or an abysmal .000 that, at least for a while, feels almost unendurable.
On some recent days, fans could hardly get higher about their team’s future. On some days, often the next day, they could hardly feel worse.
During this fortnight, the Nats won a game 13-3. Laughers are fun. They also got a walk-off win on a Dylan Crews hit. Drama works nicely, too.
Trending
Daylen Lile won National League Player of the Week, then hit two more homers to start his next week —14 RBIs in eight games! Cade Cavalli, the team’s new ace, had his ninth straight quality start, second-most in team history after only Max Scherzer’s streak in 2019.
On Tuesday, rookies Yoyo Morales and Jared Simpson were the hitting hero and winning pitcher on their first day in the majors. The Morales and Simpson families were sitting together in Nats Park. Morales had a homer, a long double and a single. Simpson got nine outs on the eight batters that he faced. The moms and dads hardly knew who to high-five next.
My favorite feel-good of the season is now lefty reliever Erik Tolman, who touched 100 mph with a 0.00 ERA in his first four Nats games after five years of misfortunes that’d make Job feel lucky by comparison. Two Tommy John surgeries were his little injuries.
In the minors in ’23, making his second TJ comeback, Tolman hopped over the foul line for luck, but caught his cleat and fell awkwardly.
“I tore every ligament in my [right] knee, [my] hamstring tore off my bone, and then the peroneal nerve ruptured,” said Tolman in a TV interview. “I lost all feeling in my foot, which resulted in a foot drop.”
Tolman had to learn how to walk again. He now pitches with a brace on his lower leg and, when barefoot, still doesn’t have full feeling in his foot. But his fastball sits at 96-to-99. On a foul pop up, Tolman made an acrobatic twisting snag, reaching backward over his head. Did somebody say the Nats needed a left-handed reliever more than any other one thing?
So, top that! What can go wrong?
Plenty. Baseball gives you a day to enjoy a Tolman, or a seven-inning, one-run 106-pitch outing by another southpaw rookie, Jackson Kent. But you also get just one day to rehab from the ugliest losses.
On Sunday, the Nats bullpen turned a 2-0 lead in the ninth into a 6-2 loss. The gruesome way that they did it shows why baseball fans deserve medals. Miami took a 4-2 lead on a bunt single, three walks, a hit batter, two double steals (one of home plate), a wild outfield throw on a sacrifice fly and multiple mental errors. The Marlins’ only “hit” had gone 10 feet in the air. But the next Miami hitter compensated for that distance disparity with a 400-foot home run.
George Solomon, the Washington Post’s great sports editor for 28 years, emailed me: “Nats ninth inning performance Sunday as low as you can get.”
When a team blows its 35th save of the year, and the blown-save record, at least for this solar system, is only 37, a fan learns to root in the fetal position.
On a roller-coaster homestand as crazy as this, even rookie managers with cherubic faces get crusty. After one lazy 13-1 loss, Blake Butera publicly threw his team under the bus — where they deserved to be. His accusation of “lack of energy” is one step from “quit.”
Twice, Butera relieved Jake Irvin in the fifth inning before he was eligible for a win. It was the percentage move. Vets seldom like that; good managers don’t care. Butera also yanked Jorbit Vivas out mid-game for not running out a pop up. It would have been a waste for this season to be so cuddly that a ticked-off Butera never showed up.
In other sports, devoted fans may wait a week for real news, or at least a few days. In MLB, the full range of a team’s possible futures rush at you constantly.
For example, with his current torrid streak, Lile now has a career OPS+ — OPS adjusted for era and home park — of 115, or 15% better than league average, in 929 plate appearances. Lile isn’t James Wood: 136! But 115 is in the same neighborhood as Ryan Zimmerman, Adrian Beltré, Roberto Alomar, Barry Larkin, Mickey Vernon, Thurman Munson and Byron Buxton. And Lile is only 23.
Counterbalancing that, Crews now has a .215 batting average in more than 800 plate appearances. After his walk-off hit, teammates pounded his back with joy because he’s such a hard-working, hard-nosed but hard-on-himself player who expects greatness — not mere goodness, much less mediocrity — from himself.
Take a deep breath. The average No. 2 overall draft pick has a career WAR of 15.2, not 50.0, and, if he’s an outfielder like Crews, a career average of 199 homers, not 500.
Useful centerfielder B.J. Upton (16.5 WAR, 168 homers), who was never an All-Star, is a fair measuring stick for a player in Crews’ draft slot, not Reggie Jackson. Crews has climbing to do, but reaching the top of a hill, not an Alp, might suffice.
As this season winds down, let’s step back. In recent years, the Nats have been almost unwatchable, even for a lunatic like me. This year, the fact that a late-season homestand could be engrossing proves how much progress the Paul Toboni regime has made.
You play for the scoreboard every day. But, over a season, your run differential tells plenty of truth, too. In ’26, the Nats have improved from -214 (awful) to +14 (average). That’s enormous.
Once a team becomes competitive again, as the Nats have, the sport regains its power to please. In one homestand near the end of a typical season for a typical team, so many remarkable things happen that a MLB fan can hardly believe it all, pulling out hair one night, but waking up smiling after the next game.
It’s 13-3 your way one night and a 13-1 loss two days later. This whole Nats homestand was a useful 6-4, with plenty of young players to ponder for the future. But in the final game Wednesday, the first-place Braves, kicked the previous night by those rookies, kicked back with a 9-0 win. The Nats got two hits.
After many years, you know this is how it goes. You internalize a coping mechanism for loss and an endless anticipation of hope. That sounds like daily existence. Recuperate and repeat. For a lifetime.
Author
