![]() ![]() That 2010 Giants rotation was just the 13th-best in baseball (13.1), which can, in part, be attributed to Barry Zito and Todd Wellemeyer’s combined 258 innings. ![]() Washington’s rotation had the best fWAR of any rotation in baseball this season with 21.4. Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Patrick Corbin, and Anibal Sanchez as a four-headed starting monster is a really easy 1:1 comp with Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, and Sanchez, even if the Nationals’ quartet is far, far better than the Giants’. ![]() They haven’t won easily, and because of that it feels tempting to compare them to the Giants’ 2010 team but really, they’re a mix of all three World Series teams. This is their first year to flex late into the postseason and they’re setup to do well in this World Series. LA? You know, the Nationals have been on the NL elites for a while - in the regular season. It’s a lot easier to imagine them as one of those scrappy teams from 2010-2014, instead of an elite NL unit like LA or, uh. They weren’t the best team in the field when they got in and they’re not the on-paper favorite for the World Series. The Nationals feel a lot like the Giants playoff teams. Some day, the Giants might be in a position to compete in the postseason in the same way these teams are able to compete: with power and depth. In both cases, they have owners who are willing to spend to stay at the top of the heap. They were really bad and got really lucky with the timing of their being bad (Ah! Bryce Harper was the best hitter available the year they had the #1 overall pick) and then they developed the talent that they had. But the Nationals are the proto-Astros, too. They are the best team in baseball, and they got this way through the innovation of creative destruction. The Astros are the most advanced organization in baseball. That’s not a good story line, but it will almost certainly be one. That worked, and now that model is being replicated throughout the league, either directly (through staff defection) or indirectly (through the obvious nature of analytics).Īn easy story line for the World Series between the Astros and Nationals is how the Astros are so technologically advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic while the Nationals are an old school team that plays and manages from the gut over a computerbot. Even though Jeff Luhnow inherited Jose Altuve, he still had to rebuild the entire development system including the front office culture. The Astros didn’t get this way just because they were bad. The Giants’ lack of player development, specifically where hitters are concerned, speaks for itself. Prior to that, the $6 million they spent on Lucius Fox, a top-10 international prospect in 2015, didn’t get them anywhere while Juan Soto - the #22 prospect in 2015 - signed with the Nationals for $1.5 million and is now an All-Star. Only in the past five years or so have they picked up on the important of international development. Meanwhile, the Giants were already showing the fruit of their development labor and transforming into a winner based on the best practices of the previous generation. The Nationals had a better player development system in place than the Giants did and they got that way in part because of their Montreal Expos carryover but mainly because they were really bad for a long time after moving from Montreal to Washington (640 losses from 2005-2011) and got smart, talent development-wise along with the rest of the league. That doesn’t automatically mean the Nationals’ model is “wrong” or stuck in the past, just that the Giants misunderstood what made it work or took too long to model themselves after. The Nationals model is the one Bobby Evans wanted the Giants to follow the Astros model is where Farhan Zaidi hopes to copy in some way for the Giants. But the Astros used to be NL Westers - they’re cool, too.īeyond that, both teams reflect ideologies the Giants have sought to pursue. Meanwhile, Brady, in a rare show of wrongness felt they were the eighth-worst team in the postseason. Doug correctly pointed out that they’ve been the team most worth rooting for all along. The Nationals feel like good representatives for the National League. ![]() They’re neither the Yankees nor the Dodgers. Both have obvious strengths (starting pitching). The Nationals are fighting to preserve their history-altering run.įrom the Giants fan perspective, you can’t go wrong rooting for either team. What’s at stake? The Astros are trying to cement their status as the team of the future. The best overall team in baseball against a team that should’ve been in the World Series years ago. ![]()
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