David Huzzard: Overlooked and underappreciated

By many metrics, the Nationals' starting staff is the best in the majors, the offense is scoring 4.77 runs a game and if one wants to find a weakness with this team, one might point to the bullpen. The Nationals bullpen isn't statistically bad by ERA, FIP or fWAR, but it has blown the third-most saves in the majors and has blinked first in several tie games. The Nats have struggled to find a replacement for Tyler Clippard with Casey Janssen on the disabled list, and don't even ask what happens if the starting pitcher can't complete seven innings.

With all the struggles by the Nats bullpen in late and close situations, there is one reliever that isn't struggling. Drew Storen has had the quietest great start to the season of any Nationals player. Storen has 10 saves in 11 tries, a 1.20 ERA, 10.2 strikeouts/nine innings, 1.8 walks/nine innings and has yet to give up a home run. Storen has been excellent, but no one has noticed and that might be the best news possible since people only notice relievers when they're blowing games, and Storen isn't the only Nationals player to get off to a quietly hot start.

When Anthony Rendon went down early in spring training and then started the season on the DL, it was expected that the Nationals offense would struggle until he got back, but it has scored 4.77 runs a game. A lot of that credit belongs to Danny Espinosa, who is hitting .261/.356/.455 in 27 games so far in 2015. While many might be skeptical whether this can continue, walk percentage and strikeout rate are two stats that are said to normalize quickly and Espinosa is walking 3.8 percent more often than he has in his career and is striking out 8 percent less. Both of those numbers point to Espinosa being more selective at the plate, and if he can keep that up, there is no reason he can't continue to play better in 2015 than he has before in his career.

While Espinosa continues to fill in for Rendon, there was another fill-in that helped the Nats. Michael A. Taylor began the season as the starting center fielder and had an .814 OPS in his first run with the Nationals, then was brought back as the fourth outfielder when Reed Johnson injured his foot. Taylor has seen his numbers take a bit of a dip since he returned to the majors as a bench player, but he still has a .795 OPS on the season and hit a go-ahead grand slam to lead the Nationals to a 9-6 victory against the Diamondbacks yesterday.

Adding to the list of overlooked Nationals are a couple of .300 hitters that play a position where offense might not just be secondary but tertiary. Wilson Ramos has not only been able to remain healthy, but has the longest active hit streak in the majors and a batting average of .318. His backup, Jose Lobaton, isn't hitting too bad himself with a .906 OPS despite limited opportunities. Catcher isn't a position where a team expects to find offense, but both of the Nats' catchers have provided exactly that and it helps to lengthen an already deep lineup. Add in the contributions from the quality fill-ins mentioned above and it is easy to understand how the Nationals are scoring 4.77 runs a game without one of their best hitters.

It feels a little weird to say that the Nationals closer, starting second baseman, top position player prospect and starting catcher are overlooked and underappreciated, but that is what happens when you play on the team with a star the size of Bryce Harper. While Harper finding his potential and Stephen Strasburg struggling to find his have dominated the recent headlines about the Nationals, there are other players on the team and the Nationals wouldn't have been able to claw back from 7-12 to 19-16 if it weren't for those players.

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.