The tarps have been rolled off the field and thousands of fans are slowly filling the stands of Nat’s Park as the Nationals take the field for their tenth season here in Washington. For the Nats, this season started when they reported to Florida in late February. They were soon predicted to win the World Series by ESPN after winning the division two years in a row, a prediction that has haunted the Nationals for the past 2 years when they failed to make it past the first round of the playoffs.
“I think that the Nationals look promising this year with a lot young talent and will win the division for the third time,” said freshman Kyle Mittauer. “But I don’t think they will win the World Series because they do not have enough experience even with Max Scherzer.”
During this offseason the Nationals acquired starting pitcher Max Scherzer from the Detroit Tigers. The Nationals hope that the new trade adds incredible depth to the Nationals already strong bullpen that highlights pitchers like Zimmerman, Gonzalez, and Strasburg all of which have had exceptional seasons with the nationals in the past.
“Jordan Zimmerman is an unproven rising star that I believe will have a positive effect on the rookies of the team because he has post season experience and will be able to relive [the rookies] tensions before the game,” said Mittauer.
The Nats main weakness is their middle infielders. Short stop Ian Desmond is batting an unimpressive .225 and has accumulated an impressive amount of errors for the first month of the season with a total of 9. Desmond’s struggles have hardly been helped by the performance of second baseman Dan Uggla, who was acquired as a free agent this spring after the Atlanta Braves decided to pay his contract and cut him from the team. Uggla is batting just .196 and Denard Span being the only one batting above .300, the Nationals offense is struggling to gain momentum.
“The Nationals weakness is the middle infield because they are getting injured and making a lot of errors,” said freshman Bhraeden Keith.
This early in the season, the Nationals have already placed five players on the disabled list including fan favorite Antony Rendon who played second base for the Nationals in 2014 and helped lead the team to the division title with an impressive 28 home runs.
“Rendon being on the bench means Uggla has to play and that causes a lack of team chemistry because Uggla is new and Rendon got the feel of things in the past two seasons,” said junior Ryan Hart.
This season is by no means off to a good start for the Nats whose record is 9-13 putting them six games behind the division leading New York Mets. But in a season with 162 games anything is possible. With the recent series win against arch rivals The Atlanta Braves, the Nationals aim to turn the season around going on a three game win streak and fans are hoping they will win the division for the third year in a row.
“The biggest competition to the Nationals is the Braves because over the past couple of years they have built up a big rivalry while competing for the division title,” said junior Andrew Krysinski. “There is a lot of tension between the players as well as the fans and that makes for some intense games.”