The Washington Nationals have a lot riding on the upcoming season. Though 2012 is supposed to be the beginning of the team’s window of contention, a bad 2011 would be devastating. Every last bit of fan good will—if any remains—would be forever lost.
Six years of losing ugly is too much. A seventh year would end the Miracle in Washington before it ever started.
Assuming April’s roster will remain roughly as it is now, this will be an improved team. And by season’s end, the Nationals should amass somewhere between 73 and 80 wins.
There is one particular player on the roster that will be the lynchpin for the 2011 team. If he struggles, the Nationals will struggle and will likely win just a few more games than in 2010. But if he regains his form and just plays up to his career numbers, the Nationals could make a run at respectability.
That player is Nyjer Morgan.
Scary, huh?
I’ve been watching baseball in Washington since 1965 and I have never seen a player implode like Morgan did last year.
He threw a ball into the stands in Philadelphia and hit a fan (he says he was giving her the ball). He ran into Cardinals’ catcher Bryan Anderson and almost looked as though he was trying to injure him, even though he didn’t have the ball.
But once was not enough. He did it again in Florida, bowling over their catcher with an overly-aggressive slide. And finally, he charged the mound when Marlins’ pitcher Chris Volstad threw behind him with a “you gotta learn your place, kid” fastball.
And early in the season, he threw his glove in disgust because he failed to stop a ball from flying out of the park. The only problem was the ball was laying on the warning track while he jumped up and down like a seventh grader.
And while causing all this trouble across the National League, he also stopped hitting and fielding.
In 2010, Morgan batted just .253/.319/.314 with no homers and 24 RBI. He struck out 88 times while walking just 40. Morgan swiped 34 bases but got caught 17 times.
But over his first three seasons, he was tremendous, batting .303/.362/.391 and averaged 25 doubles, 10 triples, 4 homers and 42 RBI over a 162-game season. He averaged 42 stolen bases.
Morgan’s defense also suffered last year. He committed five errors, the most of his career, and his .986 fielding percent was below league average. His assists dropped from 13 in 2009 to just two last year. Even his excessive range factor—thanks to his blinding speed—was down in 2010. He was taking bad routes to fly balls and the balls he did reach all too often just bounced off of his glove.
He looked confused and dazed as he kept getting picked off first base over and over again. No one is exactly sure what happened.
The job of a leadoff hitter is to get on base and then move into scoring position so that the big bats can drive them in. In his first three years, Morgan averaged 83 runs scored per season. Last year, he scored just 60. And it’s easy to see why. His on-base percent dropped from .363 to just .319 in 2010. He wasn’t getting on base often enough to get driven in by the middle of the order, and the team suffered for it.
And in those fewer times he did reach base, he got picked off before he even had the chance to be thrown out at second.
It was a horrible season.
So which is the real Nyjer Morgan? Do we accept that 2010 was an aberration and that he will return to his old self or was last season the harbinger for a new reality that features a once promising center fielder regressing into a career minor-leaguer?
I think the ghost of Nyer returns, replete with his always-happy smile and Elvis wig.
I don’t think there is any question that Morgan’s baseball instincts are not major league caliber. He was a hockey player first and foremost growing up, even to the point of moving to Canada to play against better competition.
He has to rely on his athletic ability to make up for those lack of skills. Time and again, we have watched Nyjer take off for a ball hit over his head and then run the wrong route, only catching up to it because of his speed and athleticism.
Last season, those wrong routes put him in the wrong place and the ball all to often fell for extra bases.
There were times that he bunted when he shouldn’t have, and didn’t when he should have. Other times he looked like a corkscrew as he tried to hit an Adam Dunn bomb into the right field bleachers. All the time, he just looked plain confused.
Something was going on last season. I don’t know what it was but can assume that—based on a lengthy professional career—it won’t return.
I actually think that Morgan will be better in 2011 because he will be a platoon player for the first time in his career. I doubt there is a player in the National League any worse at facing lefties than he is.
Over his career, Morgan is just .199/.292/.364 against southpaws while stealing bases at just a 48-percent clip. Against right-handers, though, he’s solid, batting .308/.361/.387 with a 78-percent theft rate.
And when a leftie takes the mount, Morgan takes a seat and Jayson Werth moves over to center field.
For his career, Werth has hit .302/.402/.550 against lefties, averaging 36 home runs, 106 RBI and 19 stolen bases over 550 at-bats.
That’s a pretty good center field tandem, a solid combination of power and speed.
And so the 2011 season rests on how well Nyjer Morgan plays. If he returns to his old form and hits .310-3-40 with 30 steals and a .365 on-base percentage in 120 games against righties, and if Werth hits .300 with eight homers, 20 RBI and nine steals against left-handers, the Nationals could reach .500.
Ryan Zimmerman, Jayson Werth and Adam LaRoche need runners on base to be able to drive them in. Ian Desmond—the presumptive second bat in the lineup—flourished there last season, batting .326/.359/.489 and would have hit 14 homers, 66 RBI and 31 steals over a full season there.
The pitching staff isn’t as much of a question mark this season as in years past. The bullpen—very solid in 2010—is even better this year. And what the starting rotation lacks in star power it more than makes up for in depth and experience.
The Nationals could have a starting five of Livan Hernandez, John Lannan, Jason Marquis, Tom Gorzelanny and Yunesky Maya with Ross Detwiler and Chein-Ming Wang waiting in the wings.
And that doesn’t even include Stephen Strasburg, who hopefully will be back sometime in August.
No, it is the offense that will make the difference in 2011. For Ryan Zimmerman and Jayson Werth to reach 100 RBI and Adam LaRoche 90, Nyjer Morgan has to join Ian Desmond on the base paths.
And here’s betting he will.
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