It’s funny to say now, but Davey Martinez realized this year’s Nationals were ready to win when he watched last year’s Nationals lose. It wasn’t the defeats themselves, 107 of them in all, but the way the young players responded.
They moped. They sat in silence and hung their heads. They looked miserable.
Part of the manager wanted to cheer them up, to remind them that this was all part of the process. But part of him rejoiced. “It’s a good sign,” he says.
So this spring, he addressed the team. “Hold onto that feeling,” he told them. “Losing like that all the time, it’s not fun. Eventually, we’ll be on the flip side of it, and you’ll feel a big difference.”
He says, “I think that's what they feel now.”
They sure do. At 62–76 with a month to play, they are already guaranteed a better record than they had last year. With a strong final push, they could finish close to .500. And they are already starting to dream of October, several seasons ahead of the organization’s internal schedule. Team officials used to talk about 2025 or ’26 as the target year. Now that seems pessimistic. So how far away are the Nationals?
“Not far,” says 25-year-old third baseman Carter Kieboom, the Nats’ first-round pick in 2016.
“Next year could be really, really fun,” says 25-year-old righty Josiah Gray, whom Washington acquired in the first real move of the rebuild, the trade that sent Max Scherzer and Trea Turner to the Dodgers in 2021.
“I definitely think we’re surpassing everybody’s expectation,” says 26-year-old second baseman Jake Alu, the Nationals’ 24th-round pick in 2019. That includes his own: Coming into the year, he admits, he thought the team was “a few years” away. “We’re definitely seeing it a little bit quicker,” he says.
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They begin a series against the Dodgers this week, which is unlikely to boost their record. But Martinez relishes those games, too. He sees himself as a teacher first, and he enjoys the chance to develop players at the major league level while trying to win. Before the Yankees series last month, he encouraged rookies to visit Monument Park, to take in the history, to listen to the crowd. Even in a rare Yankees off year, the Stadium is a challenging place to play, and he wants his young players to get used to that now. “Ninety feet,” he said to them. “Still baseball.”
Most of the baseball that fans have seen in Washington over the past few years has been putrid. In the three years after the Nationals won the World Series in 2019, only the Pirates were worse. The fall was precipitous. Nearly all the stars from the title team struggled in ’20, and that team lost eight of its first 12 games and never really recovered. In ’21, seven games out of the playoffs at the deadline, they began the teardown, trading Scherzer and Turner to the Dodgers for Gray and catcher Keibert Ruiz. Last year, after star right fielder Juan Soto turned down a 15-year, $440 million extension offer, they sent him to the Padres for starting pitcher MacKenzie Gore, shortstop CJ Abrams and two outfield prospects who will likely debut next season.
If you are going to undertake a gutting of the roster like that, you better hit on every prospect you get back. Remarkably, the Nationals just about did. If they can get their walk rates down and last longer in games, Gore and Gray should be able to headline a rotation. Ruiz has struggled defensively but been about average at the plate this year. Outfielder Lane Thomas, picked up at the 2021 deadline from the Cardinals for starter Jon Lester, has been the team’s best player. Outfielders James Wood and Robert Hassell III, the two other prospects in the Soto deal, look like future stars, as does ’23 No. 2 pick Dylan Crews. All could be in Washington next year. Not bad for a team that, a year after winning the World Series four years ago, looked like it might never win one again.
“Seeing where they were when I first got drafted, obviously, and then how it kind of fell off and everything and everybody went other places, you kind of see the entire rebuild,” says Alu. “And so seeing every spot and seeing what's happening down the lower levels and continuing to go up is pretty special.”
Watching the team grow up together gives its players a unique perspective, they say. They have lost together. Now they are ready to win together.
