What’s up with the Washington Nationals?

The phrase “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” is widely tossed around in sports jargon. But if there’s one game in particular to which the phrase most applies, it’s bound to be baseball with its 162 game schedule that stretches from the pre-Cherry blossom days of early April to the Halloween costume rush of mid-October.

And so the Nationals should take comfort in that long-run mentality, one day after getting swept by the St. Louis Cardinals to drop below .500 for the first time all season. Wait, what? The Washington Nationals below .500 and in third place at the end of the first month of the season? The defending NL East Champion Washington Nationals who are essentially returning their same — but now more experienced — core unit? The darling of the pre-season pundits Washington Nationals who most inside the Beltway pronounced would rival the dominance of Ruth and Gehrig’s ’27 Yankees???

Not so fast. Despite the pre-season hype over how high the ceiling is for Bryce Harper or whether Stephen Strasburg would challenge the single season strikeout record without a pitch count, the fact is that this is their first season playing with any sort of expectations. And while they are not necessarily being crushed by the weight of those expectations, there is definite cause for concern at 10-11.

Errors and power outages have been their undoing. Nineteen errors through 21 games certainly ain’t pretty and doesn’t help your pitching unit. Yet, they have coped. Strasburg for example, although tagged with a 1-4 record, has an ERA of just 3.16. That’s indeed a respectable number — good enough to get most starting pitchers to the All-Star game — and is around the number most managers would dream of for the ace of their staff. More concerning has been a sluggish offense. The Nats have just four runs in their last four games and in their last four series (three against division opponents) they have a run differential of -19. Even a cursory glance of their at-bats can tell that Nats players are chasing pitches and exhibiting over-angst at the plate. Together they are just 2-10 against teams with records above .500 — perhaps all tell-tale signs of the pressures from weighty expectations?

Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images

Adding insult to injury, they were swept this week by the Cardinals — the same Cardinals who ousted the Nats from the playoffs last year — and dropped two of three to the Mets over the weekend. The many Mets fans around the DMV were surely keeping a close eye on the Friday night match-up between Strasburg and Mets pitching phenom Matt Harvey. Both are 24 years young and their consistent mid-90s fastballs will make them the aces of their respective staffs for many years to come. If both stay healthy, then the NL East is in for a treat as this enticing pitching rivalry develops in the coming years.

Should the Nats be concerned about their latest skid? Absolutely. Is it time to panic? Definitely not. There’s still plenty of baseball to be played. With April not even fully in the books we are just getting started and the Nats’ offense is too well balanced to stay mired in this same rut. Just recall how long it took the Miami Heat to click in their first season after being burdened with such endless expectations. In a city where you can’t go more than one block without stumbling into a yoga studio, the Nationals would do well to channel some zen-like calmness to purge any nervous jitters stemming from being the team with the target on their backs.

Keep calm and carry on, Nats fans.

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