Defense

Baseball Prospectus has published something called a Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency (PADE) report, which, as the title suggests, attempts to determine a team's defensive effeciency after adjusting for park effects. (We're masters of the obvious, by the way.)

The news isn't good for our Nats. They rank 19th out of 30 teams, and only one team below them--the San Diego Padres--made the playoffs, and they were a .500 team. The New York Yankees were 17th, but that's largely attributable to their abyssmal defense early in the season--the Yanks were on pace to finish last in the analysis. The Yankees turned around their offense by making lineup adjustments, which were soon followed by a climb up in the standings.

There are two salient points here. First, our defense wasn't as good as some were positing during the season. Second, we need to upgrade the defense if we're going to be a playoff team.