Coming Apart

The lack of a tranquil team chemistry is one of the most misused excuses in baseball. Winning breeds chemistry, and teams with incompatible personalities often win and win big. Reggie Jackson was one of the most disliked players in baseball history, but his teams in Oakland and New York won championships despite his personality because they had great talent. Losing teams are said to have chemistry problems when locker room disputes arise, but those same players often coexist peaceably when their team is winning.

So it is with the Washington Nationals. Before the All Star Break we heard that this team had been built to play a certain style of baseball and to win in a certain way. We were told that the team was devoid of prima donnas and made up of blue collar players devoted to winning as a team, not to accumulating personal records. Players like Jose Guillen and Brad Wilkerson were exalted as examples of the best of the team's values and work ethic.

That was then, when the Nationals were in first place and surging toward an apparent playoff spot and National League East crown. But now that the Nationals are 6-17 since the All Star break and have lost 22 of their last 30 games, everything has changed. Now we are told that the Nationals are a team in disarray, a team of conflicting and perhaps incompatible personalities, a team without the offensive talent to win consistently. Now that the Nationals are losing the team's management is looking for explanations for the change, looking for someone or something to blame for the sudden turn in the team's fortunes.

The sad fact is that fundamentally nothing has changed. What distinguishes baseball from every other sport is the length of its season. A 162 game schedule is unforgiving; it ruthlessly exposes as pretenders teams who can win for a time by prevailing in a disproportionate share of close games, by hitting way above their historical averages, and by avoiding significant mistakes and errors. The playoffs are different; in a seven game series most anything can happen, and wild card teams who were exposed as second tier teams in the regular season can get hot and advance far into the playoffs or even win the World Series. But the regular season is an extraordinarily accurate gauge of a team's talent and value.

For the first half of the season the Nationals were one of those teams that defied the odds and won more games than their on-field performance would normally merit. The Nationals allowed as many runs as they scored, and their expected won-loss record was no more than .500. As we and countless other commentators have stated, no team that allows as many runs as it scores wins consistently over time. The Nationals' first-half record was a gift, and Jim Bowden had the chance essentially to monetize and lock in its first half record by making the trades that were necessary to transform the team into a legitimate contender for the National League East title.

Bowden chose not to do so. He never seemed to recognize the need for significant upgrades in the team's batting order. When it was painfully obvious that the Nationals needed better hitters, Bowden said he was looking to trade for pitchers. And he insisted that his trade for essentially a fourth outfielder with inflated statistics induced by Coors Field would solve all of the team's real or perceived hitting problems. Having made that inconsequential trade, Bowden decided to roll the dice and hope the team could duplicate in the second half the extraordinary success it had in the first.

That was a mistake. The schedule has exposed the Nationals as a team with a very good pitching staff, but without a consistently productive offense. The Nationals are unable to score against some of the league's worst pitching, let alone against some its best. Without a consistently productive offense, the Nationals have lost game after game by one run, games they were winning in the first half of the season when all the breaks were going their way.

Only now that the Nationals are losing do we hear that the team's chemistry is bad, and that players like Jose Guillen and Brad Wilkerson are at each other's throats. We shouldn't be surprised that competitive athletes are reacting negatively to consistent losing, especially when those same athletes were becoming accustomed to consistent winning a little more than a month ago. Just as winning bred a certain chemistry, losing is ripping it apart.

But we also shouldn't be surprised that a team that allows as many runs as it scores it drifting back to .500. We shouldn't be surprised that a team that won nearly every one-run game in the first half isn't having nearly the same success in the second half. And we shouldn't be surprised that a team that is last is home runs, slugging percentage, and runs scored is losing a whole lot more games that it is winning.

As we said before, this isn't a team that was "built" to win as it did in the first half. This is a team that is a remnant of a team that was the victim of a fire sale organized by Omar Minaya before it was banished from Montreal. This is a team that by all rights should be .500 or worse, but that overachieved for 82 games of the season.

Jim Bowden had his chance to capitalize on that success by using trades to strengthen the team for the stretch drive. Having failed to do that, Bowden can't complain now when the same team starts to fare as its on field performance suggests that it should. And he can't use the players' frustration at losing as a reason for why the team is losing. The burden for this rests squarely at the feet of Jim Bowden. As we said a day after the trade deadline passed, fire Jim Bowden!