David Huzzard: Examining the final two months

Now that the Washington Nationals are almost fully healthy and have added Jonathan Paplebon, it is as good a time as any to discuss what to expect for the last couple of months of the season. The Nats may not be done adding players before the non-waiver trade deadline tomorrow or via the waiver trade market in August, but those moves are expected to be much smaller and no trade will make the Nats better than having Anthony Rendon back in the lineup.

Whether it was from magic, voodoo or a standard deal with the devil, the Washington Nationals entered Wednesday night fourth in the National League in runs per game, having scored 4.19 runs a game. With all the injuries and underperformance of Desmond and Ramos, this is truly a miracle, and all credit should go to Danny Espinosa and Clint Robinson for stepping up in the absence of Rendon and Zimmerman. It is honestly a little difficult to imagine the Washington Nationals offense being much better than it has been, but Werth, Zimmerman, and Rendon are better players than the guys they're replacing and those players are better bench bats than those that they replace. The offense holding even would be a pleasant surprise and give the Nationals a good chance at winning a lot of games down the stretch.

When it comes to the pitching staff, its reputation far exceeds the production. The Nats are ranked eighth in the NL in run prevention, having allowed 3.92 runs a game, not far off the NL average of 4.06. If the Nationals hope to reach their potential, this is going to have to improve, but run prevention isn't as easy as offense to understand. There are three components: starting pitching, relief pitching, and defense.

When it comes to starting pitching, the Nats are ranked second in all of baseball and first in the NL in fWAR and first in all of baseball in FIP, but only ninth in ERA. The Nationals starting staff has the potential to be better and has suffered from some bad luck or poor defense since the FIP is so much lower than the ERA. As good as the starting staff has been so far this season, they should be better for the final two months.

The Nationals bullpen is interesting. They rank sixth in all of baseball in FIP and seventh in fWAR, but thirteenth in ERA. The production of the Nats bullpen is middle of the road and the potential is Top 10. This isn't just bad luck or poor defense; some of the Nationals relievers give up hard hit balls that don't happen to be home runs while still not walking hitters and getting strikeouts. Aaron Barrett is the poster child of this. He has a 2.28 FIP, which says he's an elite bullpen arm, but a 4.10 ERA, which says he should be only pitching down by multiple runs. However, watch Barrett pitch and you'll see it's not bleeders and bloopers beating him. It is good, solid contact. Barrett has the chance to be a good reliever down the road, but he shouldn't get the chance to work towards that in high-leverage situations for a contending team. The trade of Papelbon helps with that and could benefit the future of Barrett more than anything else.

You may have noticed that both the starting pitchers and the relievers have better FIPs than they do ERAs. FIP removes everything out of the pitchers control, meaning the defense doesn't count against the pitchers. There really are no good defensive stats, but the Nationals are 21st in the majors in UZR and 22nd in DRS (defensive runs saved), meaning that the Nationals defense is pretty bad. The only thing the Nationals can really do about this is to replace Ian Desmond with Trea Turner, but scouts are divided on Turner's defense and it is unknown as to if that would be a true upgrade.

Even with the poor defense, continued production from the offense, starting pitching living up to its reputation and an improved bullpen should have the Nationals in good position to take the division and get another chance at winning a playoff series.

David Huzzard blogs about the Nationals at Citizens of Natstown. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidHuzzard. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our regular roster of writers.