Could defense up the middle make up for loss of Harper's power bat?

LAS VEGAS - Anyone who's spent significant time around Mike Rizzo knows that what the Nationals general manager means isn't always what he says. There's a subtle subtext to his responses, which are calculated in such a way as to answer a question without revealing too much. Sometimes it's casual misdirection; other times, it's completely intentional.

But sometimes, a sound byte from Rizzo gives you much more than you really hear.

One of those moments came yesterday afternoon, when Rizzo met with the media in his suite at the Delano Las Vegas adjacent to the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. His first scrum of the Winter Meetings brought a lot of questions, including one about how the Nationals would compensate for the loss of Bryce Harper's power should the free agent slugger sign elsewhere for 2019 and beyond.

"Scoring runs is going to be a premium; it's been a premium throughout baseball, and I think we got to be much better at offensive efficiency and doing the small things to score more runs," Rizzo said.

The numbers don't lie. Harper has hit 184 home runs since breaking into the majors as a rookie in 2012. That's 15 percent of the 1,193 homers the Nationals have hit as a team during that span. In other words, out of every seven homers the Nationals have hit in the past seven seasons, one has come off Harper's bat.

It's not easy for a slugger to maintain the kind of consistency Harper has produced. He's hit fewer than 20 homers only once in his career - in 2014 when a torn ligament in his left thumb limited him to 100 games, a career low - and has gone deep 24 or more times in each of the past four campaigns, including a league-leading 42 blasts in his MVP year of 2015.

So how does a team make up for the loss of such a prodigious power bat? One way would be to get better at another phase of the game, preferably one that prevents the opposition from scoring.

If you look at defensive stats, it appears that the Nationals were a stellar club with the gloves in manager Davey Martinez's first season at the helm, posting a National League-best .989 fielding percentage and committing just 64 errors, fewest in the league. But appearances can be deceiving.

Other defensive metrics grade the Nationals very poorly. BaseballProjection.com rates them at a minus-22 for Total Zone Total Fielding Runs Above Average - or the ninth-worst mark in the majors and third-worst in the NL. Baseball Info Solutions gave the Nationals a minus-47 rating in Defensive Runs Saved Above Average, the sixth-worst mark in the majors and third-lowest rating in the NL. Harper was a big part of those down numbers, his Ultimate Zone Ratings and Total Zone Ratings, per FanGraphs.com, last among all qualifying outfielders and his minus-26 Defensive Runs Saved sticking out like a sore thumb. Yes, he was playing out of position, but he didn't play the position he was manning well.

What does this mean and how can the Nationals improve?

Well, traditional metrics only measure success or failure on balls a fielder gets to. If a fielder doesn't get to a ball, there's no real way to measure his ability do so, something the advanced stats attempt to do. They indicate the Nationals simply didn't get to as many balls as they should have, whether the result of poor positioning, tired legs or slow reactions. And that doesn't even begin to measure mental mistakes that really show up nowhere and frustrate managers to no end. Throwing to the wrong base, missing cutoffs, not being aware of the game situations - Martinez has vowed that the Nats will improve on the "little things" that they didn't do a very good job at in 2018.

Keep in mind last year's Nationals were a team that had Matt Wieters behind the plate, Harper manning center field and Daniel Murphy playing second base for much of the season. Juan Soto was a work in progress in left field. Pitchers raved about Wieters' game-calling, which is good, considering how the advanced metrics treat him defensively. Harper isn't a center fielder, and playing him there meant that a superior fielder in Michael A. Taylor sat on the bench, especially after Soto's offensive emergence. Murphy was slow to recover from microfracture surgery on his right knee, and even when he is at his best, he rates as a subpar defender.

One of the easiest ways to improve the defense is an old baseball cliché: strength up the middle. When your catcher, middle infielders and center fielder possess plus defensive skills, a team's pitchers are generally rewarded handsomely (and a good-fielding pitcher only adds more to the mix). Catchers can frame pitches to steal strikes and shut down the opposition's running game. Shortstops and second basemen gobble up ground balls, turning hits into outs, and slick-fielding tandems start double plays, a pitcher's best friend. A fleet guy in center field with a good glove can roam from alley to alley, catching balls that would otherwise roll to the wall and turn into extra-base hits. If he's got a good arm to go with his speed, he can make baserunners think twice about being too greedy and trying to advance.

Assuming Harper bolts for big dollars, the Nationals could replace him in center field with Taylor - perhaps the better short-term option - or Victor Robles, the likely long-term solution. Both are fast enough to cover more ground than Harper would have, and both have sufficient arm strength to rate as a weapon. The new catching duo of Yan Gomes and Kurt Suzuki grades well in pitch-framing and ball-blocking and can throw enough to control the running game.

That leaves the middle infield, where shortstop Trea Turner is the sure thing and second base is a huge question mark. Turner continues to improve defensively at a position where errors are often the result of trying too hard. But who he's paired with at the keystone could play a significant role in making sure the Nats are strong up the middle.

Wilmer Difo, 26, is younger and energetic - sometimes too much for his own good. But he fields what he gets to, for the most part. Trouble is, putting him at second base means the Nationals lose his versatility. Rizzo insists he's comfortable with Howie Kendrick playing second base, but asking a 35-year-old coming off Achilles surgery to man a position he hasn't played regularly since 2015 may be asking more than he can deliver. Still, Kendrick's .985 lifetime fielding percentage at second is tied for 44th in major league history.

This is why Rizzo may wait for the flush market for second basemen to come to him, plucking a strong defender out of the myriad of available players as a short-term bridge to rookie sensation Carter Kieboom, who is still learning the position. Or he'll focus on finding a more versatile infielder who is capable of playing multiple positions and gives Martinez different ways to go, lineup-wise.

"I think we've upgraded ourselves defensively behind the plate," Rizzo said. "I think that, defensively, in the outfield, we'll certainly be much, much better in runs saved. I think we're going to have to win games and maybe score a little bit differently this year. Pitching, defense, athleticism is really going to come to the forefront."

Live from the Winter Meetings: "MASN All Access" will broadcast on Facebook Live and on MASNsports.com today from 3-5 p.m. Eastern time and again from 9-11 p.m. Eastern time. Click here if you missed any of yesterday's coverage. Also, an expanded version of "The Mid-Atlantic Sports Report" will air on MASN today from 5-7 p.m. Eastern time, with news and interviews from the WInter Meetings.